tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74614943764265584512024-03-08T15:28:13.290-08:00Crucible TimesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-32204259232084744392012-04-27T16:39:00.000-07:002012-04-27T16:47:19.591-07:00Shaping Perceptions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 25px;"> What do you believe? What you see with your own eyes, or what you are told to see?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 25px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">I'm reposting below from Jim Hoffman's very fine 9/11 Research site:</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/retractions/jennings.html">http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/retractions/jennings.html</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;"><br />
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<h1 style="line-height: 35px;">
Peter Jennings</h1>
<h2 style="line-height: 26px;">
Famous <em>ABC</em> Anchor Makes Candid Observation, Is Immediately Corrected</h2>
<div style="line-height: 21px; max-width: 700px;">
On the day of the attack, <em>ABC News</em> anchor Peter Jennings made a candid observation about planned demolition as the cause of the South Tower's collapse. Although Jennings did not retract his statement, his co-anchor, Don Dahler, quickly stepped in to correct him. The following exchange was broadcast live on the <em>ABC</em> network starting 20 seconds after the onset of the South Tower's destruction.</div>
<div class="anon_quote" style="background-color: #f0f2eb; max-width: 700px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 4px; padding-top: 4px;">
<pre style="color: #600040;" xml:space="preserve"><em>Peter</em>:
Let's go to the Trade Tower again, because we now have ...
What do we have? We don't...
<em>Unknown Voice</em>
It looks like a new plume, a new large plume of smoke.
<em>Peter</em>:
Now it may be that something fell off the building. It may be
that something has fallen, yet we don't know to be perfectly
honest, but that is what you're looking at is the current ..
that's the scene at this moment at the World Trade Center.
Don Dahler, from ABC's Good Morning America, is down in the
general vicinity. Don, can you tell us what just happened?
<em>Don</em>
Yes, Peter, it's Don Dahler here. I'm down here four blocks
north of the World Trade Center. The second building that was
hit by the plane has just completely collapsed. The entire
building has just collapsed, as if a demolition team set off,
when you see the old demolitions of these old buildings, it
folded down on itself, and it is not there any more.
<em>Unknown Voice</em>:
That should be it.
<em>Peter</em>:
Thanks very much.
<em>Don</em>:
It has completely collapsed.
<em>Peter</em>:
The whole side has collapsed?
<em>Don</em>:
The whole building has collapsed.
<em>Peter</em>:
The whole building has collapsed?
<em>Don</em>:
The building has collapsed.
<em>Peter</em>:
That's the southern tower you're talking about.
<em>Don</em>:
Exactly, the second building that we witnessed the airplane
enter, has been .. the top half had been fully involved in
flame; It just collapsed. There is panic on the streets.
Thousands of people running up Church Street, which is what
I'm looking out on, trying to get away, but the entire .. at
least as far as I can see .. the top half of the building ..
at least half of it .. I can't see below that .. half of it ..
just started with a gigantic rumble, folded in on itself and
collapsed in a huge plume of smoke and dust.
<em>Peter</em>:
We are talking about massive casualties here at the moment,
and we have... Whew.
Extraordinary.
<em>Don</em>:
There is panic on the streets. There are people screaming
and running from the site. The gigantic plume of smoke has
reached me probably a quarter of a mile north of there.
<em>Peter</em>:
Now this is what it looked like moments ago.
My gosh.
The southern .. tower ... 10 o'clock eastern time this morning,
just collapsing on itself.
This is a place where thousands of people work.
We have no idea what caused this. Um ..
If you wish to bring ah .. anybody who ever watched a building
being demolished on purpose knows .. that if you're going to
do this you have to get at the .. at the under infrastructure
of a building and bring it down.
<em>Don</em>:
Peter?
<em>Peter</em>:
Yes, Don.
<em>Don</em>:
What appeared to happen from my vantage point .. the top part
of the building was totally involved in fire, and there was ..
there appeared to be no effort possible to put that fire out.
It looked like the top part of the building was so weakened by
the fire that it just .. the weight of it just collapsed the
rest of the building .. that's what appeared to happen.
I did not see anything happening at the base of the building.
It all appeared to to start at the top and then just collapse
the rest of the building by the sheer weight of the top.
There was no explosion or anything at the base part of it,
but I .. I did see that the top part of it started to collapse,
the walls started to bulge out, bricks, glass, things coming
out, and then it collapsed in on itself, and it appeared to
just fold down from there, from the very top.
<em>Peter</em>:
Thanks, Don, very much.
Um, just looking at that, I don't know why, but I'm .. when was
the last time the United States was attacked in this fashion it
was Pearl Harbor in 1941.
</pre>
<span><sup><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/retractions/jennings.html#ref1" style="color: #d00000;">1</a> </sup> </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 21px; max-width: 700px;">
Dahler's correction of Jennings is notable for several reasons.</div>
<ul>
<li style="max-width: 650px;">Dahler's confidence about what he saw is curious, given that he has just watched the first collapse of a large skyscraper in history.</li>
<li style="max-width: 650px;">His contention that "the top part of the building was totally involved in fire" contrasts with <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/fires.html" shape="rect" style="color: #002060;">photographs</a> of the event.</li>
<li style="max-width: 650px;">He states that "it looked like the top part of the building was so weakened by the fire ..." but photographs do not show obvious buckling of columns prior to the collapse.</li>
<li style="max-width: 650px;">His description that "... it collapsed in on itself, and it appeared to just fold down from there," contrasts with what photographs and videos show: that the building exploded outward.</li>
</ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-56741107286087705592009-12-23T23:41:00.000-08:002009-12-23T23:44:55.273-08:00Dust Bitten!It's been a long time between posts, but the evidence that 9/11 was an inside job only grows over time, thank to the hard work by so many courageous, smart people. Check this essay from Jim Hoffman:<br /><br /><center> <b> <h1> Explosives Found in<br />World Trade Center Dust </h1> <h2> Scientists Discover Both Residues<br /> And Unignited Fragments<br /> <!-- Of High-Tech Metal Incendiaries<br/> --> Of Nano-Engineered Thermitic Pyrotechnics<br /> In Debris From the Twin Towers </h2> </b> <b> <span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:1.6;"> by<br /> <span style="font-size:100%;"> Jim Hoffman </span> <br /> <span style="color:gray;">Version 1.00, April 3, 2009</span><br /> <span style="color:gray;">Version 1.01, April 9, 2009</span><br /> <span style="color:gray;">Version 1.02, October 23, 2009</span><br /> Version 1.03, December 7, 2009 </span> </b> </center> <a name="introduction"> </a><h2><a name="introduction">Introduction</a></h2> <p> <!-- Most scientific papers are arcane works intended for small audiences with in specialized fields. Few such papers threaten to undermine narratives of major events that underpin global policies such as the "War on Terror". --> <a name="introduction">The scientific paper </a><a href="http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM" shape="rect"> Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe</a> conclusively shows the presence of unignited aluminothermic explosives in dust samples from the Twin Towers, whose chemical signature matches previously documented aluminothermic residues found in the same dust samples. The present review of the paper and related research is intended to summarize those findings for the non-technical reader. To that end, I first provide a short introduction to the subject of aluminothermic explosives, then outline the methods and results of analysis of the dust samples, and finally explore the significance of these findings. </p> <a name=""> </a><h2><a name="">Contents</a></h2> <ul><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#introduction">Introduction</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#">Contents</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#introduction">Aluminothermics 101</a> <ul><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#composition">Composition</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#reaction_rate">Reaction Rate</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#density">Energy Density and Power Density</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#nanocomposites">Energetic Nanocomposites</a> </li></ul> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#WTC_aluminothermics">Aluminothermics at the WTC</a> <ul><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#iron_spheres">Aluminothermic Residues: Iron-Rich Spheroids</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#unignited">Unignited Aluminothermics: Bi-Layered Chips</a> <ul><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#provenance">Provenance of the Samples</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#chip_structure">Physical Structure of the Chips</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#chip_composition">Chemical Composition of the Chips</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#thermodynamics">Thermal Behavior of the Chips</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#residue_analysis">Ignition Residue Analysis</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#conclusions">Conclusions</a> </li></ul> </li></ul> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#discussion">Discussion</a> <ul><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#faq">FAQ: Controlled Demolition With Aluminothermics</a> <ul><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#thermite_demolition">How Could Thermite, an Incendiary, Demolish the Towers, When Buildings Are Normally Demolished Using High-Explosive Cutter Charges?</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#crashes_versus_charges">Why Weren't Demolition Charges Triggered by the Plane Crashes or the Subsequent Fires?</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#installation_feasibility">How Could the Demolition Equipment Have Been Installed in the Twin Towers Without Tenants Noticing?</a> </li></ul> </li></ul> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#glossary">Glossary of Analytical Methods</a> </li><li> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#references">References</a> </li></ul> <a name="introduction"> </a><h2><a name="introduction">Aluminothermics 101</a></h2> <table class="smallfig" width="240" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/thermite_demo.jpg"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/thermite_demo_s.jpg" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Image from <a href="http://www.amazingrust.com/Experiments/how_to/Thermite.html" shape="rect"> AmazingRust.com</a> of a simple thermite reaction involving iron oxide and aluminum. <a href="http://hight3ch.com/post/thermite-vs-car/" shape="rect">This video</a> shows thermite melting through a car. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- The subject of aluminothermic explosives is surrounded by a great deal of misunderstanding - misunderstanding exploited by defenders of the WTC collapse theory to confuse the issue of how such materials were likely used in the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center. --> <p> <a name="introduction">Aluminothermic reactions are a class of energy-releasing oxidation-reduction chemical reactions in which elemental aluminum reduces a compound, typically by stealing the oxygen from a metal oxide. Aluminothermics range from low-tech preparations that take seconds to react and therefore release nearly all their energy as heat and light, to advanced engineered materials with accelerated reaction rates that yield explosive powers similar to conventional high explosives. </a></p> <p> <a name="introduction">Backers of the official account of 9/11, including </a><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/official/nist/index.html" shape="rect">NIST</a> officials, have dismissed evidence that aluminothermics were used to destroy the World Trade Center skyscrapers, claiming that thermite's slow reaction rate makes it an unsuitable tool for demolishing buildings. Despite repeated requests by scientists and researchers to address the potential role of advanced aluminothermic composites with high explosive power, officials have refused to acknowledge such materials. </p> <a name="composition"> </a><h3><a name="composition">Composition</a></h3> <table style="margin: 14px;" width="300px;" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td class="equation" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <pre space="preserve">2 Al + Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> → Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> + 2 Fe </pre> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> The canonical thermite reaction is simple, lacks the aromatic hydrocarbons and nitrogen found in conventional high explosives, and is highly exothermic. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="composition">The most familiar aluminothermic material is thermite, a mixture of a powdered metallic fuel such as aluminum, and a powdered oxide of another metal such as iron or copper. The thermite reaction involves the transfer of oxygen from the oxidizer (metal oxide) to the fuel (metal). </a></p> <p> <a name="composition">Because oxygen atoms bind more tightly to aluminum atoms than to iron or copper atoms, the reaction releases large amounts of energy and is described as highly exothermic. Whereas primitive thermite preparations release most of their energy as heat, modern preparations, such as found in munitions employed by the US military in recent decades, produce a targeted mix of heat and pressure through an accelerated but controlled reaction rate and the addition of pressure-generating compounds such as hydrocarbons. </a></p> <table class="smallfig" width="280" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/thermite_rates.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/thermite_rates_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <em>ABOVE</em>: Relationship of particle size to reaction rate in thermites<br /><em>BELOW</em>: General relationship of reaction rate to the form of energy released in compositions that have the capacity to be high explosives </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <a name="reaction_rate"> </a><h3><a name="reaction_rate">Reaction Rate</a></h3> <p> <a name="reaction_rate">The reaction rate of a thermitic material determines how quickly its aluminum atoms find oxidizer molecules to react with, and therefore how quickly the energy is released. Whereas the <em>energy density</em> of an explosive is determined by its chemistry, its <em>power density</em> is determined by its reaction rate, which, in the case of a thermitic material, is determined by its physical characteristics. Specifically, the reaction rate increases with the fineness of the metal and oxide powders and the uniformity with which they are mixed. </a></p> <p> <a name="reaction_rate">Because the particle sizes of the reactants must be very small to attain rapid reaction rates, such thermites are often referred to as nano-thermites. Such nano- or "super-thermites" typically have particle diameters on the order of a few hundred nanometers, requiring their synthesis by special methods. The reaction rate in turn determines the destructive character of the material. Whereas a cup of conventional thermite will melt a hole clear through a car's engine block, the same quantity of a nano-thermite composite explosive will blow the car apart. </a></p> <p> <a name="reaction_rate">Nano-thermite composite explosives typically embed the metal and oxide particles within a matrix containing compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and silicon. These additional elements generate high gas pressures upon exposure to the thermite reaction, which may be instrumental in imparting high-explosive properties to such materials. </a></p> <a name="density"> </a><h3><a name="density">Energy Density and Power Density</a></h3> <table style="margin: 8px;" align="right" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <th rowspan="1" colspan="1">material</th> <th colspan="2" rowspan="1">energy density</th> </tr> <tr> <th rowspan="1" colspan="1"><br /></th><th rowspan="1" colspan="1">by mass:<br />MJ/KG</th> <th rowspan="1" colspan="1">by volume:<br />MJ/L</th> </tr> <tr> <td class="rowset" colspan="3" rowspan="1">aluminothermic incendiaries</td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Thermite<br />(Al + Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>)</td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1" align="right">4.13</td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1" align="right">18.40</td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">Copper Thermite<br />(Al + CuO)</td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1" align="right">4.00</td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1" align="right">20.90</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="rowset" colspan="3" rowspan="1">nitro-aromatic explosives</td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1">TNT<br />(Trinitrotoluene)</td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1" align="right">4.61</td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1" align="right">6.92</td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="density">In terms of energy density, thermite is roughly comparable to TNT, packing slightly less energy per unit of mass but about three times as much energy per unit of volume. In terms of power density, thermitic preparations range across a wide spectrum, whose upper end appears to be comparable to conventional high explosives. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> </sup></span></a><span style="font-size:-3;"><sup><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref1" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">1</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref2" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">2</a> </sup> </span> </p> <p> Because thermites have historically had much lower power densities than conventional high explosives, they are classified as <em>incendiaries</em> rather than <em>explosives</em> -- a classification that has been exploited to conceal the use of aluminothermics in the World Trade Center attack. Despite the fact that high-tech aluminothermics have existed and been used by the military since the mid-1990s or earlier, methods of identifying explosive residues at crime scenes are frequently limited to analysis of nitro-aromatic explosives. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref3" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">3</a> </sup> </span> </p> <a name="nanocomposites"> </a><h3><a name="nanocomposites">Energetic Nanocomposites</a></h3> <p> <a name="nanocomposites">The term 'nano-thermite' applied to the unignited thermitic material discovered in World Trade Center dust, is potentially misleading because it doesn't capture the complexity and sophistication of this material or its known analogs. <!-- There is much more to the technology of aluminothermic weapons than milling and homogenizing metal and metal oxide powders. --> Perhaps a better term is energetic nanocomposites, a class of materials that has been used by the military for some time in applications spanning propellants, armor-piercing munitions, and reactive armor. In their diverse roles, energetic nanocomposites fulfill a range of requirements including: "high density, good mechanical properties, low sensitiveness, good stability, low cost, ease of manufacturing, and environmental acceptability." <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> </sup></span></a><span style="font-size:-3;"><sup><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref4" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">4</a> </sup> </span> To achieve these requirements, scientists developing advanced aluminothermic materials have learned to embed the fine powders in a carbon- and silicon-rich matrix. Kevin Ryan explains: </p> <blockquote> The mixing [of ultra fine grain (UFG) aluminum and UFG metal oxides] is accomplished by adding these reactants to a liquid solution where they form what are called "sols", and then adding a gelling agent that captures these tiny reactive combinations in their intimately mixed state (LLNL 2000). The resulting "sol-gel" is then dried to form a porous reactive material that can be ignited in a number of ways. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref5" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">5</a> </sup> </span> </blockquote> <table class="smallfig" width="240" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/TOCpage.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/TOCpage_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Graphic from a <a href="http://stinet.dtic.mil/dticrev/TOCWinter07.html" shape="rect"> DTIC (Defense Technical Information Center) Review publication</a> on advanced energetic materials. <!-- Energetic materials, those substances capable of releasing high levels of energy, are a critical component of explosives and propellants. Developing more efficient and powerful energetics has long been a goal of the Department of Defense. New scientific advancements, such as nanotechnology, promise to revolutionize this field. --> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> Energetic materials such as aluminothermic sol-gels have been an active area of research in the US national labs since the mid-1990s or earlier, including under the auspices of NIST itself -- a fact documented by Kevin Ryan in his extensively footnoted article <a href="http://911review.com/articles/ryan/nist_thermite_connection.html" shape="rect"> The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermites</a>. Also called "metastable intermolecular composites", <!-- "energetic nano-composites", --> "nano-structured energetic materials", or just "nanoenergetics", these materials have been the subject of numerous conferences, research papers, and patents in the past two decades. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref6" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">6</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref7" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">7</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref8" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">8</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref9" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">9</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref10" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">10</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref11" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">11</a> </sup> </span> It's also not difficult to find recent published papers on methods of reliably igniting such materials with minute low-power devices described as MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and manufactured much like conventional integrated circuits. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref12" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">12</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref13" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">13</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref14" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">14</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref15" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">15</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref16" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">16</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref17" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">17</a> </sup> </span> <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref18" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">18</a> </sup> </span> It requires little imagination to grasp how such techniques could be exploited to implement a covert, all-wireless controlled demolition. </p> <a name="WTC_aluminothermics"> </a><h2><a name="WTC_aluminothermics">Aluminothermics at the WTC</a></h2> <p> <a name="WTC_aluminothermics">The discovery of unexploded super-thermite in the WTC dust augments a </a><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/theories/thermite.html" shape="rect">large body of evidence</a> pointing to the use of aluminothermic materials in the destruction of the skyscrapers. The present review looks only at the evidence of explosives found in the dust and debris expelled from the Twin Towers. </p> <p> Even before WTC dust was subjected to the kind of microscopic scrutiny described in <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u>, several features of the dust analysis published by the USGS pointed to the use of aluminothermics. For example, the USGS data shows <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/residues.html#incendiary_residues" shape="rect"> high levels of barium</a> -- a fact that is difficult to explain, barring pyrotechnics. The high levels of iron and aluminum in the dust -- each ranging <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/dust.html#usgs" shape="rect"> from 1.3 to 4.1 percent of the dust samples by weight</a> -- also appears anomalous, although prosaic sources of the metals can be imagined. </p> <a name="iron_spheres"> </a><h3><a name="iron_spheres">Aluminothermic Residues: Iron-Rich Spheroids</a></h3> <p> <a name="iron_spheres">Micro-spheroidal particles in WTC dust consisting mostly of iron were documented in at least two scientific reports by 2005: a compilation of data by the USGS and a report for the owners of a skyscraper adjacent to the World Trade Center complex that sustained heavy damage in the attack. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> </sup></span></a><span style="font-size:-3;"><sup><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref19" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">19</a> </sup> </span> </p> <table class="bigfig" cellpadding="8px"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/IRON_03_IMAGE.jpg"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/IRON_03_IMAGE_s.jpg" border="0" /> </a> </td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/IRON_04_IMAGE.jpg"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/IRON_04_IMAGE_s.jpg" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="caption" rowspan="1"> Two images of iron-rich spheroids from the USGS <u>Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust</u>. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref20" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">20</a> </sup> </span> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table class="bigfig" cellpadding="8px"> <tbody><tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Illustration from a damage assessment report prepared for Deutsche Bank, the owners of a skyscraper severely damaged by projectiles from the <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/attack/wtc2.html" shape="rect">South Tower</a>. The report was commissioned, in part, to determine the nature and extent of contamination of the building, which is slated for demolition. </td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/sphericalIronParticles_lee.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/sphericalIronParticles_lee_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> Although it may be overlooked, the significance of these nearly microscopic iron-rich droplets is not difficult to grasp. Molten iron is one of the two principal products of the thermite reaction, the other being aluminum oxide, which tends to dissipate as an aerosol. The molten iron condenses and solidifies into particles whose size is a function of the thermite's reaction rate. Fast-acting super-thermites produce tiny droplets that become very nearly spherical due to surface tension. </p> <p> The inescapable fact is that these spheroidal droplets in the WTC dust look exactly like the products of the combustion of nano-thermite explosives, and their discovery in consistently substantial concentrations in diverse samples of dust from the day of the attack weighs heavily against theories that they were generated by something other than the Twin Towers' destruction. Elemental analysis of these droplets <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#residue_analysis" shape="rect">described below</a> would show that they are dead ringers for known aluminothermic residues. </p> <p> In a 2007 paper, Steven Jones described the importance of the iron-rich microspheres. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref21" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">21</a> </sup> </span> </p> <table class="smallfig" margin="14px" width="260" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/JonesDescribingMoltenMetal.png" width="260" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Dr. Steven E. Jones describing molten metal seen at Ground Zero. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <blockquote> As usual, we search for possible prosaic explanations for these metallic spherules in the WTC dust. The most obvious possible source is the melting of large quantities of steel in the buildings followed somehow by formation of tiny droplets of molten steel. As discussed above, however, steel melts at about 1538ºC (2800ºF) – and the temperatures in the buildings were no where near [sic] hot enough to melt steel, and certainly not in large quantities required for the amounts seen in the dust (and pouring out of the South Tower before collapse). Furthermore, we have looked at the chemical compositions of a number of iron-rich spherules as well as that of steel, and the compositions are not the same at all. It should not be surprising, however, as we analyze more spherules to find some that are steel-like in composition, assuming that thermite cutter-charges were in fact used to cut through steel. We should then find both steel- and thermite-residue spherules.<br /><br />Could these droplets be due to molten aluminum alloy (from the jets) striking rusty steel and/or other office materials to somehow generate the iron-rich spheres? We performed experiments with molten aluminum poured onto rusty steel, then onto crushed gypsum and concrete (on the rusty steel) – and observed no formation of iron-rich droplets at all nor any sign of vigorous chemical reactions. </blockquote> <p> After addressing arguments that the iron-rich droplets could have been produced by the rubble pile or clean-up operation -- the dust samples were collected too early and were too distant from the site to have been thus contaminated -- Jones makes a rough estimate of the total quantities of reactants involved in the attack based on the fraction of the dust comprising the iron-rich spheres. </p> <blockquote> One can estimate the implied amount of thermite needed to generate so many iron-rich spheres in the WTC dust. In a sample of 32.1 grams of WTC dust, I observed with the unaided eye two metallic-looking spheres, in addition to the micron-sized spherules collected using a magnet. The mm-size spheres proved to be iron-aluminum rich. The mass of these two larger spheres (0.012g) found in this sample can be used to provide a crude estimate of the fraction of iron-rich spheres in the dust: 0.012g/32.1g = 0.04%. If the mass of the WTC dust was about 30,000 tons, then the iron-rich spherule content would be of the order of ten tons. This is a very rough estimate based on one small sample, and is only provided to give an idea of the amount of thermite-type reactants and products which may be involved here. An investigation well beyond the scope of this paper would look for purchases of aluminum and iron-oxide powders (and sulfur) in multi-ton-quantities prior to 9/11/2001. </blockquote> <p> A paper published a year earlier than <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u> showed that metal-rich spheroids in WTC dust had iron-to-oxygen ratios indicating abundant elemental iron, such as found in thermite residues. It also pointed out several other features of WTC remains that indicated exposure to temperatures far above what could be produced by fires burning jet fuel and office contents, including: iron-rich and silicate spherules, volatilized lead, a molybdenum spherule, and materials with a "Swiss-cheese appearance". <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref22" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">22</a> </sup> </span> Molybdenum has a very high melting point of 2617ºC. </p> <a name="unignited"> </a><h3><a name="unignited">Unignited Aluminothermics: Bi-Layered Chips</a></h3> <p> <a name="unignited">If finding aluminothermic residues in the form of spheroidal micro-droplets was like finding fired bullets at a crime scene, then the discoveries presented in <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u> are like finding the gun loaded with several rounds of unspent ammunition that match the fired bullets. </a></p> <table class="smallfig" width="280" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/chip_photomicrographs.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/chip_photomicrographs_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Fig. 2 from <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u> showing chips from the four different dust samples. </td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/sample_locations.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/sample_locations_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Map of Lower Manhattan showing locations of the four samples (blue points) and the Twin Towers (red points). </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="unignited">First described by Steven Jones in late 2007, distinctive chips found in the dust samples had red and gray layers, were weakly attracted to a magnet, and were composed mostly of iron, oxygen, aluminum, silicon, and carbon. Jones and his colleagues subsequently subjected the chips to detailed analysis using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and published their results in the <em>Open Chemical Physics Journal</em>. </a></p> <a name="provenance"> </a><h4><a name="provenance">Provenance of the Samples</a></h4> <p> <a name="provenance">The paper's findings are based primarily on the analysis of particles derived from four separate samples of dust generated by the destruction of the Twin Towers, samples whose provenance the paper describes in detail. Each of the samples was collected by a different individual who has described the time, place, and methods of collecting and storing their sample. Each individual collected dust that had settled directly after the fall of one of the Twin Towers, with the one exception, Janette MacKinlay, who collected dust when allowed to re-enter her apartment a week after it was carpeted with shovel-fulls of dust and debris from the South Tower. </a></p> <a name="chip_structure"> </a><h4><a name="chip_structure">Physical Structure of the Chips</a></h4> <p> <a name="chip_structure">Chips having distinctive and similar physical features were found in all four of the dust samples, ranging in length from from about 0.2 to 3 mm. Each chip has stratified layers of two types: a red layer and a lighter gray layer, where each layer is between roughly 10 and 100 microns in thickness. Despite their small size, the chips are readily visible in the samples because of their flat shapes, distinctive color, and layered structure. The chips are tough despite being as thin as eggshells. </a></p> <table class="bigfig" cellpadding="8px"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/bilayered_chip.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/bilayered_chip_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/solgel_layer.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/solgel_layer_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="caption" rowspan="1"> Portions of Fig. 4 and Fig. 5: Two scanning electron microscope images of bi-layered chips. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="chip_structure">Magnification reveals that the gray layers are composed of an opaque homogeneous material, whereas the red layers have small particles embedded in a matrix of slightly translucent material. </a></p> <table class="littlefig" width="480" align="right" cellpadding="8px"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/fig9.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/fig9_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="caption" rowspan="1"> Fig. 9, showing a highly magnified view of the red layer. Note the hexagonal plate-like particles, and the smaller faceted particles, both lighter in color than the porous matrix. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="chip_structure">At magnification of 50,000 the structure of the two types of particles is clear: small bright particles having a faceted shape and measuring about 100 nm in diameter, and larger particles having a flat and often hexagonal shape and measuring about 1000 nm across and 40 nm thick. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_structure">The particles are held in place and in close proximity to each other by the porous matrix. Soaking the chips in methyl ethyl ketone, a solvent that dissolves paint, caused the red layer to swell while remaining intact. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_structure">Up to this point, I have reviewed only characteristics of the chips revealed by macro- and micro-scopic visual examination, but already the implications are stunning: the chips are clearly a nano-engineered material with two types of extremely small particles, each highly consistent in shape and size, held in close stable proximity by a durable matrix which is laminated to a hard homogeneous material. The student of energetic materials will appreciate that this description matches exactly that of a super-thermite in which the reactant particles are suspended in a sol-gel matrix applied to a substrate. </a></p> <a name="chip_composition"> </a><h4><a name="chip_composition">Chemical Composition of the Chips</a></h4> <p> <a name="chip_composition">Chemical analysis of the chips relied primarily on performing elemental analysis of the materials and their components using XEDS, and making inferences about the materials' molecular composition based on the distributions of elements in different structures. The paper first examines the gray and red layers, and then zooms in on the components of the red layers. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_composition">XEDS spectra of red and gray layers shows a remarkable similarity across the different samples. </a></p> <table class="bigfig" cellpadding="8px"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_gray.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_gray_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_red.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_red_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Fig. 7: "XEDS spectra obtained from the gray layers from each of the four WTC dust samples ..." </td> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Fig. 6: "XEDS spectra obtained from the red layers from each of the four WTC dust samples ..." </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="chip_composition">Whereas the gray layers contain mostly iron and oxygen, the red layers have abundant aluminum as well, and the three elements are in the ratio approximating that of Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> + Al thermite. Thus, the red layers could be active thermitic material, depending on their molecular composition. If active, the material will have much of its aluminum in a metallic state, unbound to oxygen or silicon. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_composition">The authors show that the aluminum is indeed mostly in a pure metallic form, and that much of the oxygen is bound to the iron. They ultimately show this conclusively through elemental analysis of the components of the red layers: the thin hexagonal plates, faceted grains, and embedding matrix revealed by microscopic inspection. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_composition">Performing accurate elemental analysis of the red layer components would require some ingenuity. Because the XEDS machine steers an electron beam over a sample's surface to gather information about its elemental composition, it can be used to generate maps of the abundance of different elements over the surface of the sample. However, the particles in the red layer are slightly smaller than what can be resolved by XEDS. <!-- Desite their limited resolution, XEDS maps of red layers show variations in the abundances of the elements, where the iron correlates more strongly to oxygen than aluminum. --> </a></p> <table class="smallfig" width="300" align="right" cellpadding="8px"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/unsoaked_XEDSmaps.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/unsoaked_XEDSmaps_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="caption" rowspan="1"> Fig. 10, showing the BSE image and accompanying XEDS maps for Fe, Al, O, Si, and C of a portion of an untreated red layer. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="chip_composition">Nonetheless, considering the XEDS maps in conjunction with the much higher-resolution SEM images of the corresponding portions of the sample makes clear that the faceted grains are abundant in iron and oxygen and the thin plates are abundant in aluminum. Also, although the distribution of particles in the matrix is precisely homogeneous overall, there are local clumps of grains and of plates, and when the electron beam is focused on these clumps the XEDS detector registers higher concentrations of the constituents of iron oxide and of elemental aluminum, respectively. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_composition">To obtain more precise measurements of the elemental compositions of the red layer components using XEDS, those components somehow had to be separated, so that the electron beam could be focused entirely on one component at a time. Perhaps the porous matrix could be dissolved, allowing the particles to be separated by centrifuging. Or better -- as the investigators discovered serendipitously in an earlier experiment to see if the chips dissolved in the paint-dissolving solvent methyl ethyl keytone (MEK) -- the matrix could be expanded by a factor of five while leaving the layer intact, allowing in-situ examination. When the chips were soaked in MEK with periodic agitation for 55 hours, the red layers swelled up but remained intact and attached to their respective gray layers, and the thin plates tended to migrate and aggregate. Because of these structural changes produced by the MEK soaking, it was possible to make much more accurate XEDS measurements of the elemental compositions of the red layers' components. </a></p> <table class="smallfig" width="422" align="right" cellpadding="8px"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/soaked_XEDSmaps.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/soaked_XEDSmaps_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="caption" rowspan="1"> Fig. 15, showing the BSE image and accompanying XEDS maps of Fe, Al, O, Si, and C for a red-layer sample soaked in MEK. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="chip_composition">XEDS maps of a soaked red layers show correlations much more clearly than the untreated material. In particular, oxygen is highly correlated, individually, to iron, silicon, and carbon. Aluminum is inversely correlated to the other elements. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_composition">Even more striking are the XEDS spectra found by zooming in on areas having high concentrations of particular elements. The three graphs below show the results of focusing the electron beam on areas with: first, high silicon; second, high aluminum; and third, high iron. The area of high silicon is composed almost entirely of silicon and oxygen, the area of high aluminum has aluminum far out of proportion with the other elements, and the area of high iron is rich in oxygen, where the oxygen and iron atoms are in the same 3-to-2 ratio as in the thermite oxidizer Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>. </a></p> <p> </p> <!-- Microscopic visual inspection of the red layers showed that they consisted of three components: thin hexagonal plates, smaller faceted grains, and an embedding matrix of porous semi-transparent material. Naturally, an investigator would want to learn the composition of these individual components. Perhaps the components could be separated and subjected to a tests to determine their composition. Or the components could be subjected to compositional analysis in-situ thanks to the XEDS and SEM. --> <table class="bigfig" margin="10px" align="center"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/componentXEDS_collage.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/componentXEDS_collage_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> A collage of Figs. 16, 17, and 18, whose captions read, in the order of the back- to front-most graphs: "XEDS spectrum from a silicon-rich region on the porous red matrix of the MEK-treated red material" "XEDS spectrum obtained at 10 kV from a probe of the region of high aluminum concentration on the MEK-soaked red chip", and "XEDS spectrum obtained from a probe of the region of high iron concentration on the MEK-soaked red chip acquired with a 15 kV beam", respectively. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="chip_composition">The authors draw the obvious conclusions from their elemental analysis of components of the red layers: the aluminum-rich particles are mostly elemental aluminum, with the relatively small quantities of oxygen being accounted for by an oxide layer on the particles' surfaces; the iron-rich particles are primarily oxygen and iron, probably in the form of the oxidizer Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> which matches the observed 3:2 ratio of oxygen to iron atoms; and the matrix is composed almost entirely of silicon, oxygen, and carbon, where most of the carbon was washed away by the MEK. The matrix also may contain hydrogen, which is not detected by XEDS analysis. </a></p> <p> <a name="chip_composition">Given the data in <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u> I summarize the composition of the chips as follows: </a></p> <div class="lbox" style="border: 2px solid gray; margin: 16px; padding: 6px;"> <style type="text/css" space="preserve"> .lbox li { margin-top:8px; margin-bottom:10px; } </style> <ul><li> <a name="chip_composition"><b>gray layer</b>: a hard homogeneous ceramic<br /><em>composition</em>: iron and oxygen </a></li><li> <a name="chip_composition"><b>red layer</b>: an engineered nano-composite substance, comprising: </a><ul><a name="chip_composition"> </a><li> <a name="chip_composition"><b>matrix</b>: a nano-structured semi-transparent porous material<br /> <em>composition</em>: silicon, oxygen, and carbon </a></li><a name="chip_composition"> </a><li> <a name="chip_composition"><b>particles</b>: homogeneously embedded in the matrix and consisting of: </a><ul><a name="chip_composition"> </a><li><a name="chip_composition">thin predominantly <b>hexagonal plates</b><br /> <em>dimensions</em>: ~40nm thickness, ~1000nm diameter<br /> <em>composition</em>: mostly aluminum, with small amounts of carbon and oxygen </a></li><a name="chip_composition"> </a><li><a name="chip_composition">rhombic <b>faceted grains</b><br /> <em>dimensions</em>: ~100nm diameter<br /> <em>composition</em>: mostly iron and oxygen, probably as Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>, with small amounts of silicon, sulfur, and carbon </a></li><a name="chip_composition"> </a></ul> <a name="chip_composition"> </a></li><a name="chip_composition"> </a></ul> </li></ul> </div> <a name="thermodynamics"> </a><h4><a name="thermodynamics">Thermal Behavior of the Chips</a></h4> <p> <a name="thermodynamics">The structural and chemical analysis of the chips shows that, in every relevant aspect, they fit the description of an engineered thermitic nanocomposite. This prompts the obvious question: do the chips have the thermal characteristics of an explosive aluminothermic material? </a></p> <p> <a name="thermodynamics">Although it might be difficult or impossible to measure the explosive power of the chips, given their minute size, it is possible to measure their exothermic behavior and thereby calculate their energy density using a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), a device that gradually increases the temperature of a sample and records the amount of heat it absorbs or emits as a function of temperature. </a></p> <table class="smallfig" margin="10px" width="400" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/sample_exotherms.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/sample_exotherms_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Fig. 19 compares the DSC traces of a chip from each of the four samples. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="thermodynamics">A DSC trace is an approximate graph of energy density with respect to temperature, the height of the trace indicating the rate at which the sample's material absorbs or emits thermal energy. DSC traces of energetic materials such as incendiaries and explosives have a characteristic shape that remains near zero up to a certain temperature range -- the ignition temperature -- and thereafter spikes sharply upward. The energy density of the material can be estimated by calculating the area under the curve. </a></p> <p> <a name="thermodynamics">Chips from each of the four samples, when subjected to thermal analysis using the DSC, clearly show the exothermic behavior of an energetic material. As seen in Fig. 19, the heights of the graphs vary significantly from one chip to the next. The authors attribute this variation to the fact that the chips had different ratios of active red material to inert gray material. </a></p> <p> <a name="thermodynamics">Based on the DSC analysis, the authors estimate the energy density of the four chips at 1.5, 3, 6, and 7.5 kJ/g, respectively. This compares with a maximum yield from conventional thermite of slightly less than 4 kJ/g. In a final section of the paper underscoring the need for further research into the red-gray chips, the authors suggest a possible explanation for the exceptional energy content of the red-layer material: perhaps elements in the porous matrix, such as oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen, contribute to the reaction. </a></p> <table class="bigfig" margin="10px" align="center"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/chips_xerogel_exotherm.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/chips_xerogel_exotherm_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> Fig. 29, labeled "DSC trace of sample 1 (blue line) compared with DSC of xerogel Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/UFG Al nanocomposite (from Tillotson et al. [28]). Both DSC traces show completion of reaction at temperatures below 560ºC". </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="thermodynamics">A comparison of DSC traces of the red-gray chips to a published DSC trace from an xerogel/nano-thermite energetic nanocomposite shows the chips to be more energetic and to have a lower ignition temperature. </a></p> <a name="residue_analysis"> </a><h4><a name="residue_analysis">Ignition Residue Analysis</a></h4> <p> <a name="residue_analysis">Because DSC processing causes the chips to ignite, the investigators studied the residues and found, not surprisingly, minute iron-rich spheroids, as well as silicon-rich spheroids. When subjected to XEDS analysis, the iron-rich spheroids showed iron far in excess of oxygen, as expected in an aluminothermic residue. </a></p> <p> <a name="residue_analysis">The paper contains the following micrographs and corresponding XEDS spectra of spheroids from three different sources: residue from the ignition of commercial thermite, residue from the ignition of the red-gray chips, and World Trade Center dust. </a></p> <table class="littlefig" margin="10px" width="680" align="center"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/spheres_commercial.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/spheres_commercial_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_commercial.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_commercial_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" colspan="2" rowspan="1"> Fig. 24: "Spheres formed during ignition of commercial thermite,<br />with corresponding typical XDS spectrum" </td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/spheres_chips.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/spheres_chips_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_chips.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_chips_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" colspan="2" rowspan="1"> Fig. 25: "Spheres formed during ignition of red/gray chip in DSC,<br />with corresponding typical XEDS spectrum ..." </td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/spheres_wtc.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/spheres_wtc_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_wtc.png"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/xeds_wtc_s.png" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" colspan="2" rowspan="1"> Fig. 27 and 28: "Spheres extracted from WTC dust" and<br />"XEDS spectrum from a sphere found in the WTC dust" </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <a name="conclusions"> </a><h4><a name="conclusions">Conclusions</a></h4> <p> <a name="conclusions">I hope that my review of <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u>, being summary and somewhat interpretive, will serve as encouragement to read the paper itself, which, as scientific papers go, is remarkably accessible. The paper's conclusions -- a clear and cogent summary of the results -- are reproduced here in their entirety: </a></p> <blockquote> <p><a name="conclusions">We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in significant numbers in dust associated with the World Trade Center destruction. We have applied SEM/XEDS and other methods to characterize the small-scale structure and chemical signature of these chips, especially of their red component. The red material is most interesting and has the following characteristics: </a></p> <ol type="1"><li><a name="conclusions">It is composed of intimately mixed aluminum, iron, oxygen, silicon and carbon. Lesser amounts of other potentially reactive elements are sometimes present, such as potassium, sulfur, barium, lead and copper. [4,6] </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">The primary elements (Al, Fe, O, Si, C) are typically all present in particles at the scale of tens to hundreds of nanometers, and detailed XEDS mapping shows intimate mixing. </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">On treatment with methyl-ethyl ketone solvent, some segregation of components was observed. Elemental aluminum became sufficiently concentrated to be clearly identified in the pre-ignition material. </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">Iron oxide appears in faceted grains roughly 100 nm across whereas the aluminum appears in plate-like structures. The small size of the iron oxide particles qualifies the material to be characterized as nano-thermite or super-thermite. Analysis shows that iron and oxygen are present in a ratio consistent with Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>. The red material in all four WTC dust samples was similar in this way. Iron oxide was found in the pre-ignition material whereas elemental iron was not. </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">From the presence of elemental aluminum and iron oxide in the red material, we conclude that it contains the ingredients of thermite. </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">As measured using DSC, the material ignites and reacts vigorously at a temperature of approximately 430ºC, with a rather narrow exotherm, matching fairly closely an independent observation on a known super-thermite sample. The low temperature of ignition and the presence of iron-oxide grains less than 120 nm show that the material is not conventional thermite (which ignites at temperatures above 900ºC) but very likely a form of super-thermite. </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">After igniting several red/gray chips in a differential scanning calorimeter run to 700ºC, we found numerous iron-rich spheres and spheroids in the residue, indicating that a very high-temperature reaction had occurred, since the iron-rich product clearly must have been molten to form these shapes. In several spheres, elemental iron was verified since the iron content significantly exceeded the oxygen content. We conclude that a high-temperature reduction-oxidation reaction has occurred in the heated chips, namely, the thermite reaction. </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">The spheroids produced by the DSC tests and by the flame test have an XEDS signature (Al, Fe, O, Si, C) which is depleted in carbon and aluminum relative to the original red material. This chemical signature strikingly matches the chemical signature of the spheroids produced by igniting commercial thermite, and of many of the micro-spheres found in the WTC dust. [5] </a></li><li><a name="conclusions">The presence of an organic substance in the red material is expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive. The nature of this organic material in these chips merits further exploration. We note that it is likely also an energetic material, in that the total energy release sometimes observed in DSC tests exceeds the theoretical maximum energy of the classic thermite reaction. </a></li></ol> </blockquote> <a name="discussion"> </a><h2><a name="discussion">Discussion</a></h2> <p> <a name="discussion">The implications of the discovery of unspent aluminothermic explosives and matching residues in World Trade Center dust are staggering. There is no conceivable reason for there to have been tons of high explosives in the Towers except to demolish them, and demolition is blatantly incompatible with the official 9/11 narrative that the skyscrapers collapsed as a result of the jetliner impacts and fires. </a></p> <p> <a name="discussion">The discovery of active thermitic materials adds to a vast body of evidence that the total destruction of the Towers were controlled demolitions, and to the subset of that evidence indicating the use of aluminothermic materials to implement those demolitions. </a></p> <p> <a name="discussion">That discovery also undermines the oft-heard claim that no explosives residues were found, a claim that was never compelling, given the apparent lack of evidence that any official agency looked for evidence of explosive residues of any kind. Worse, the public record shows that </a><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosives_evidence_timeline.html" shape="rect">NIST not only failed to look for such evidence, it repeatedly evaded requests by scientists and researchers to examine numerous facts indicating explosives and incendiaries </a>. </p> <!-- In debates about the cause of the Twin Towers' destruction, a common refrain by collapse theory defenders is that "no explosives residues were found". However, there appears to be no public evidence that any official agency looked for evidence of explosive residues of any kind, --> <p> I expect that collapse theory defenders will dismiss the discovery of active thermitic material in the same way that they dismissed the thermite residues: by claiming that the samples were contaminated and/or that there are other explanations for the origin of these artifacts than pyrotechnics in the WTC Towers. "Debunkers" have proposed that the <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#iron_spheres" shape="rect">iron-rich spheres</a> were fly ash residues embedded in the Towers' concrete, ignoring that the iron constituents in fly ash are oxides rather than elemental iron. How will they explain away the bi-layered chips, whose red layers have iron oxide and elemental aluminum in the ratio of Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> thermite as nano-sized particles of uniform shape? </p> <p> As the work of explaining away the direct evidence of explosives becomes more daunting, we will probably see even more reliance on the mainstay of arguments against controlled demolition: those alleging that insurmountable obstacles would face such a project. Three of the most salient such workability arguments are: </p> <ul><li>That the surreptitious preparation of the Twin Towers was too prone to exposure. </li><li>That setting up the demolitions to start from the Towers' crash zones was technically unfeasible. </li><li>That thermite is unsuitable as a tool of controlled demolition. </li></ul> <p> These arguments have taken on the appearance of straw men with their continued repetition -- including by NIST itself -- after being publicly shown to be based on false assumptions. The <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/faq/demolition.html" shape="rect">9-11Research FAQ on Demolition</a> addressed the first two starting in 2004, and Steven Jones and others addressed the third starting in 2006 by pointing out the existence of explosive variants of thermite. </p> <a name="faq"> </a><h3><a name="faq">FAQ: Controlled Demolition With Aluminothermics</a></h3> <p> <a name="faq">With the publication of <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u> it becomes even easier to imagine plausible scenarios that answer workability arguments. The characteristics of super-thermites and the features of the thermitic fragments described in the paper, combined with a survey of methods for the programmable wireless detonation of energetic materials available in 2001, provides straightforward answers to the most frequently-heard questions about the implementation of controlled demolition of the Twin Towers -- answers that thoroughly undermine assertions that controlled demolitions using aluminothermics was not feasible. </a></p> <p> <a name="faq">Following are the three arguments listed above re-phrased as questions. I start with the last argument, which is addressed in detail in the discussion section of <u>Active Thermitic Material Discovered</u>. </a></p> <a name="thermite_demolition"> </a><h4><a name="thermite_demolition">How Could Thermite, an Incendiary, Demolish the Towers, When Buildings Are Normally Demolished Using High-Explosive Cutter Charges?</a></h4> <p> <a name="thermite_demolition">As is obvious from a review of the literature on energetic materials, thermite-based pyrotechnics can be engineered to have explosive power similar to conventional high-explosives while providing greater energy density and much greater stability. Thus, aluminothermic cutter charges similar to the shaped charges used in commercial demolitions are entirely feasible. However, a variety of forms of thermite might be used to demolish a steel-framed skyscraper in a way that uses no cutter charges at all, as in this </a><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/blasting_scenario.html" shape="rect"> Hypothetical Blasting Scenario</a>, which posits three types of aluminothermic pyrotechnics: a thermate incendiary coating sprayed onto steelwork, nano-thermite kicker charges placed near steelwork, and thin-film nano-composite high-explosives distributed throughout the building. The strategically applied incendiary coatings, ignited several minutes before the building's take-down, weaken the structure; but obvious failures start only when the kicker charges break key supports, and the thin-film high-explosives begin pulverizing the building from the initial failure zone outward. </p> <a name="crashes_versus_charges"> </a><h4><a name="crashes_versus_charges">Why Weren't Demolition Charges Triggered by the Plane Crashes or the Subsequent Fires?</a></h4> <p> <a name="crashes_versus_charges">Perhaps the plane crashes did trigger some of the charges. If so, their blasts were lost in the jet-crash fireballs, and their damage was insufficient to budge the Towers' tops. Thermite incendiaries in the core ignited by the crash would not be visible over the fires, unless dislodged to the building's exterior, </a><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/orangespout.html" shape="rect"> as apparently happened in the South Tower</a>. However, this probably wasn't an issue because, in contrast to conventional explosives, thermite has a very high ignition temperature -- above 900ºC. Thus, thermitic incendiaries used around the crash zones could have been designed to survive the fires. As for thermitic explosives, they could have been designed to detonate only on exposure to the very extreme conditions of temperature and pressure provided by specialized detonators, and to deflagrate (merely burn) in response to the kinds of pressures and temperatures produced by the plane crashes and fires. As a fail-safe, the demolition sequence could have been programmed to be triggered by premature ignitions of pyrotechnics. </p> <a name="installation_feasibility"> </a><h4><a name="installation_feasibility">How Could the Demolition Equipment Have Been Installed in the Twin Towers Without Tenants Noticing?</a></h4> <p> <a name="installation_feasibility">The simple answer is by disguising the equipment as normal building components, so that not even the workers installing the components are aware of the concealed pyrotechnics. Three aspects of the Hypothetical Blasting Scenario that facilitate this are: the stability and specificity of ignition conditions achievable with aluminothermic pyrotechnics, minimization of the required access to steelwork, and the use of a completely wireless ignition control system. </a></p> <!-- <section1 label="context" title="Significance of Findings"> <ul> <li>That rigging the buildings for demolition without detection was unfeasible </li> <li>That no explosive residues were found </li> </ul> <h2> Official Denials </h2> <p> NIST claimed that it "found no evidence of explosives". </p> <ref date="" title="Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation" publication="nist.gov" href="http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html"> <ref date="" title="Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (August 30, 2006)" publication="nist.gov" href="http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm"> <ref date="9/19/2006" title="The Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories" publication="www.america.gov" href="http://www.america.gov/st/pubs-english/2006/September/20060828133846esnamfuaK0.2676355.html"> </section1> --> <hr /> <a name="glossary"> </a><h2><a name="glossary">Glossary of Analytical Methods</a></h2> <table class="smallfig" width="240" align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/SEM_EDAX_genesis.jpg" width="240" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> An electron microscope equipped with an EDAX GENESIS 2000 X-Ray Microanalysis System. </td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/EDS_spectrum_of_CdS_yellew_and_TiO2.jpg"> <img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/docs/EDS_spectrum_of_CdS_yellew_and_TiO2_s.jpg" border="0" /> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="caption" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> EDS spectrum of a yellow paint sample, from <a href="http://www.modernmicroscopy.com/main.asp?article=27&page=2" shape="rect"> ModernMicroscopy.com</a>. EDS spectra allow the easy identification of the most abundant elements in a sample, while requiring some analysis to estimate relative quantities. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p> <a name="glossary"><b>BSE</b>: <em>Backscattered Electron imaging</em><br />A method of SEM imaging based on the detection of scattering of the electron beam. </a></p> <p> <a name="glossary"><b>DSC</b>: <em>Differential Scanning Calorimetry</em><br />A technique that determines the difference in the amount of heat required to increase the temperature of an experimental sample and reference. A differential scanning calorimeter outputs a DSC trace which shows the relationship of heat flux to temperature, and thereby exothermic or endothermic behavior of the sample. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> </sup></span></a><span style="font-size:-3;"><sup><a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref23" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">23</a> </sup> </span> </p> <p> <b>SEM</b>: <em>Scanning Electron Microscopy</em><br />A type of electron microscopy in which a beam of high-energy electrons scans the surface to a sample to image its structure or composition. </p> <p> <b>XEDS</b>: <em>X-ray Energy-Dispersive Spectroscopy</em><br />A technique for determining the elemental composition of a sample using an instrument that analyzes the spectrum of emitted X-rays from a sample as a beam of high energy electrons is directed onto its surface. <span style="font-size:-3;"> <sup> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#ref24" style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);">24</a> </sup> </span> </p> <p> A single workstation may provide integrated BSE and XEDS capabilities using SEM equipment fitted with specialized BSE and XEDS detectors, where software controls the electron beam, sample positioning, and detector parameters. </p> <hr /> <a name="references"> </a><h2><a name="references">References</a></h2> <ul><li> <a name="references"><span style="color:#800000;">1. </span> </a><a name="ref1"> </a><a class="offsite" href="https://www.llnl.gov/str/RSimpson.html">Nanoscale Chemistry Yields Better Explosives, <em>llnl.gov</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/llnl_RSimpson.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">2. </span> <a name="ref2"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://undergradresearch.missouri.edu/featured-researchers/tappmeyer.php">Daniel Tappmeyer studies how nanoparticles can be used for quick ― but controlled ― energy release, <em>undergradresearch.missouri.edu</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/missouri_tappmeyer.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">3. </span> <a name="ref3"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.chem.agilent.com/Library/applications/5989-2449EN.pdf">Analysis of Trace Residues of Explosive Materials by Time-of-Flight LC/MS, <em>www.chem.agilent.com</em>, 3/16/2005</a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/agilent_5989_2449EN.pdf">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">4. </span> <a name="ref4"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10918&page=10">Advanced Energetic Materials: New Energetic Materials, <em>National Academic Press</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/nap_openbook_em.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">5. </span> <a name="ref5"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://911review.com/articles/ryan/nist_thermite_connection.html">The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermites, 7/2/2008</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">6. </span> <a name="ref6"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/tt/license/technologies/index.php?fuseaction=home.viewTechnology&id=314">Reactive Projectiles Comprised of Metastable Intermolecular Composites, <em>lanl.gov</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/lanl_reactiveProjectiles.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">7. </span> <a name="ref7"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.google.com/patents?id=MZoRAAAAEBAJ&dq=6679960">Energy dense explosives, <em>USPTO.gov</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/google_US6679960.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">8. </span> <a name="ref8"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.google.com/patents?id=F6kQAAAAEBAJ&q=6818081">Inorganic metal oxide/organic polymer nanocomposites and method thereof, <em>USPTO.gov</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/google_US6818081.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">9. </span> <a name="ref9"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.emrs-strasbourg.com/index.php?option=com_abstract&task=view&id=64&year=2009&Itemid=90">Nano-scale energetic materials fabrication, characterization and molecular modeling, <em>European Materials Research Society</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/emrs_nanoenergeticSystems.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">10. </span> <a name="ref10"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.asp?CID=2642&DID=115833&action=detail">Formation of Nanostructured Energetic Materials via Modified Sol-Gel Synthesis, <em>mrs.org</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/mrs_solGel.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">11. </span> <a name="ref11"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-thermites">Metastable intermolecular composite, <em>en.wikipedia.org</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/wikipedia_SuperThermites.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">12. </span> <a name="ref12"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.asp?CID=6226&DID=172134&action=detail">On-Chip Initiation and Burn Rate Measurements of Thermite Energetic Reactions, <em>mrs.org</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/mrs_onChipInitiation.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">13. </span> <a name="ref13"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071218105422.htm">Unique Porous Copper Structure Enables New Generation Of Military ..., <em>sciencedaily.com</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">14. </span> <a name="ref14"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.dodtechmatch.com/DOD/Patent/PatentView.aspx?id=7322294">Integrated thin film explosive micro-detonator, <em>www.dodtechmatch.com/</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">15. </span> <a name="ref15"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.pennwellblogs.com/mae/2007/12/military-eyes-mems-weapons-detonators.html">Military eyes MEMS weapons detonators that could be fabbed on IC lines, <em>pennwellblogs.com</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">16. </span> <a name="ref16"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=27KzAAAAEBAJ">MEMS microdetonator/initiator apparatus for a MEMS fuze, <em>USPTO.gov</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">17. </span> <a name="ref17"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=S0QGAAAAEBAJ">In-plane MEMS thermal actuator and associated fabrication methods, <em>USPTO.gov</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">18. </span> <a name="ref18"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=Br8fAAAAEBAJ">Method and system for making integrated solid-state fire-sets and detonators, <em>USPTO.gov</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">19. </span> <a name="ref19"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf">Damage Assessment 130 Liberty Street Property, <em>RJ LeeGroup, Inc.</em>, 12/2003</a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/nyenvirolaw_WTCDustSignatureCompositionAndMorphology.pdf">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">20. </span> <a name="ref20"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/table_1.html">Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust, <em>pubs.usgs.gov</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/usgs_ParticleAtlas_table_1.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">21. </span> <a name="ref21"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf">Revisiting 9/11/2001 -- Applying the Scientific Method, <em>JournalOf911Studies.com</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">22. </span> <a name="ref22"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf">Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction, <em>JournalOf911Studies.com</em>, </a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">23. </span> <a name="ref23"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://www.tainstruments.com/product.aspx?id=10&n=1&siteid=11">Differential Scanning Calorimeters, <em>tainstruments.com</em>, </a> <a href="http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/cache/tainstruments_DSC.html">[cached]</a> </li><li> <span style="color:#800000;">24. </span> <a name="ref24"> </a><a class="offsite" href="http://amazingrust.com/Experiments/background_knowledge/EDAX.html">Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDAX), <em>AmazingRust.com</em>, </a> </li></ul> <center> <span style="font-size:-1;color:green;"> Copyright (c) Jim Hoffman and 911Research.WTC7.net 2009 </span> </center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-60607769611951968032007-12-29T08:15:00.000-08:002008-12-10T11:48:35.874-08:00The Shell Game<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/Shell-Game-Steve-Alten/dp/1599550946"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/R3ZzkIX7w-I/AAAAAAAAACk/iLD2yQRaAY4/s320/ShellGamefinal.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149430288505095138" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shell-Game-Steve-Alten/dp/1599550946"></a><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"><blockquote><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span>We, the undersigned, urge everyone seeking truth, peace and justice, to not only purchase this new novel, "The Shell Game," but also to email out this appeal to all you know who seek truth, peace and justice in the form of 9/11 truth coming out. In turn, please urge them to do the same with all their contacts and urge them to do the same. We can break 9/11 truth open if we work together and focus on this project for the next 30 days.<br /><br />Yours in 9/11 truth, peace and justice,<br /><br />Bill Douglas, 911 Visibility Project<br />Co-Signatories:<br />Janice Matthews - 911Truth.org Executive Director<br />David Ray Griffin - 9/11 Researcher and Author<br />Kevin Ryan -former UL chemistry laboratory manager & NIST report whistle blower<br />Dr. Robert Bowman - Rtd. Colonel US Air Force, 9/11 truth leader; thepatriots.us/<br />Cosmos - TruthAction.org "The Eleventh Day of Every Month" Campaign<br />Carol Brouillet - Organizer of 1st National 9/11 Truth Conference in San Francisco<br />Mike Berger - "Improbable Collapse" Documentary Producer - 911Truth Spokesman<br />David Kubiak - 911Truth.org Board member<br />Kevin Barrett – Muslim/Christian/Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth</blockquote></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-20173889604548209082007-06-26T16:42:00.000-07:002008-12-10T11:48:36.806-08:00Could Barbara Olson Have Made Those Calls To Her Husband Ted?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/RoGqQ5mxx9I/AAAAAAAAACc/Q-CLAL-T_9E/s1600-h/Ted+%26+Barbara+Olson.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/RoGqQ5mxx9I/AAAAAAAAACc/Q-CLAL-T_9E/s320/Ted+%26+Barbara+Olson.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5080529061968725970" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center; font-family: courier new;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Here's the latest truth-telling from David Ray Griffin, co-wrote with Rob Balsamo, co-founder of </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://www.pilotsfor911truth.org/">Pilots for 9/11 Truth:</a></span></span><br /></div></div><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" ><br /><span style=";font-size:180%;" >Could Barbara Olson Have Made Those Calls?</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >An Analysis of New Evidence about Onboard Phones</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >David Ray Griffin & Bob Balsamo</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >{originally published online at </span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><a href="http://pilotsfor911truth.org/amrarticle.html">Pilots for 9/11 Truth</a></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" > on 6/26/07}</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><div style="text-align: left; font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Prefatory Note: When we, in this jointly authored article, need to refer to only one of us, the appropriate initials---DRG or RB--are used.</span><br /><br /></span></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >06/26/07 - Did American Airlines 77---the flight that, according to the official conspiracy theory about 9/11, struck the Pentagon---have onboard phones? This question is relevant to the possible truth of the official theory, because Ted Olson, who was then the US Solicitor General, claimed that his wife, Barbara Olson, called him twice from this flight using an onboard phone.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >He did, to be sure, waver on this point. CNN, which mentioned in a story posted just before midnight on 9/11 that Barbara Olson had used a cell phone to call her husband, reported in a more extensive treatment, posted at 2:06 AM (EDT) on September 12, that Ted Olson had told it that his wife “called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77.”1 But on September 14, Olson said on Hannity & Colmes (Fox News) that she had called collect and therefore must have been using the “airplane phone”---because, he surmised, “she somehow didn’t have access to her credit cards.”2 On CNN’s Larry King Show later that same day, however, Olson returned to his first version. After saying that the second call from her suddenly went dead, he surmised that this was perhaps “because the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don’t work that well.”3 On that same day, moreover, Tony Mauro, the Supreme Court correspondent for American Lawyer Media, published an account saying that Barbara Olson “was calling on her cell phone from aboard the jet.”4 Two months later, however, Ted Olson returned to the second version of his story. In the “Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture” delivered to the Federalist Society, he said that she used “a telephone in the airplane to [make] those two telephone [calls].”5 This second version was repeated in March 2002. “[C]alling collect,” he told the London Daily Telegraph, his wife “us[ed] the phone in the passengers’ seats.” She called collect, he again surmised, because “she didn’t have her purse” and hence her credit card.6</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >This revised version of his story has evidently gone virtually unnoticed in the American press. A year after 9/11, for example, CNN was still reporting that Barbara Olson used a cell phone.7 Nevertheless, Ted Olson’s statement to the Federalist Society and the Telegraph---that she called collect using a passenger-seat phone---was apparently his final word on the matter.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The claim that she must have called collect because she did not have her credit card, however, does not make any sense, because a credit card is needed in order to activate a passenger-seat phone.8 If she did not have a credit card, therefore, she could not have used a passenger-seat phone, whether to call collect or otherwise.9</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >By settling on this version of his story, nevertheless, Olson at least appeared to make defensible his claim that the calls occurred. We say this because of the extremely strong evidence that her reported calls could not have been made on a cell phone, given the cell phone technology in 2001. Cell phone calls from an airliner were, as DRG has argued extensively elsewhere, generally possible only if it was flying slowly and low,10 but Barbara Olson’s first call, according to the 9/11 Commission, occurred “[a]t some point between 9:16 and 9:26,”11 when the plane was flying too fast and too high for cell phone calls to have been possible. According to the Flight Data Recorder information released by the National Transportation Safety Board, the plane at 9:16 would have been over 25,000 feet, which is far too high (as well as too fast: 281 knots [324 mph]), while at 9:26 the plane would have been flying at 324 knots (370 mph), which is much too fast (as well as still too high: almost 14,000 feet).12 By settling on the claim that his wife used an onboard phone instead of a cell phone, Ted Olson avoided this problem.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >But was a call from an onboard phone even possible? In 2004, Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan, having asked American Airlines whether their “757s [are] fitted with phones that passengers can use,” received this reply from an AA spokesperson: “American Airlines 757s do not have onboard phones for passenger use.” To check on the possibility that Barbara Olson might have borrowed a phone intended for crew use, they then asked, “[A]re there any onboard phones at all on AA 757s, i.e., that could be used either by passengers or cabin crew?” The response was: “AA 757s do not have any onboard phones, either for passenger or crew use. Crew have other means of communication available.”13</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Henshall and Morgan then found this information corroborated on the AA website, which, while informing travelers that telephone calls are possible on AA’s Boeing 767 and 777, does not mention its 757.14 On the assumption that the AA spokesperson and this website were talking about AA 757s as they had been for several years, not simply as they were at the time of the query (2004), Henshall and Morgan concluded that, in the words of an essay written by Morgan, “Barbara Olson’s Call from Flight 77 Never Happened.”15</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >DRG, interpreting the information in the same way, wrote in the first edition of his book Debunking 9/11 Debunking: “[G]iven the evidence that Barbara Olson could not have called from Flight 77 using either a cell phone or an onboard phone, we have very good evidence that the calls to Ted Olson, like the call to [flight attendant] Renee May’s parents, were fabricated---unless, of course, he simply made up the story.”16</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Correcting an “Error”</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Later, however, DRG received two items suggesting that, although AA 757s did not have onboard phones in 2004, they probably did in 2001. One item was a 1998 photograph, said to show the inside of an AA 757, revealing that it had seat-back phones. The other was a news report from February 6, 2002, which said: “American Airlines will discontinue its AT&T in-flight phone service by March 31, a spokesman for the airline said Wednesday.”17 This report, DRG realized, did not specifically mention 757s, so this notice did not necessarily imply that AA 757s had had onboard phones up until that date. However, by taking into consideration this article, the photograph, and the realization that the letters from AA in 2004 were couched entirely in the present tense, DRG concluded that the claim that AA 77 had not had onboard phones was probably an error. He published an essay, “Barbara Olson’s Alleged Call from AA 77: A Correction About Onboard Phones,”18 which contained a section entitled “My Error.”</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >DRG made clear, to be sure, that even if AA 77 did have onboard phones, this did little to make Ted Olson’s story believable, because all the other problems remained. Five such problems were mentioned: (1) The incredible idea that although all the passengers and the crew were herded to the back of the plane, Barbara Olson was the only one to grab a phone from a passenger seat to make a call (an idea that was made even more incredible by the report that flight attendant Renee May was the only person on the flight to make a cell phone call19). (2) The equally incredible idea that three or four short, slight men armed with knives and box-cutters would not have been easily overpowered by these 60-some people---led perhaps by the pilot, Charles “Chic” Burlingame, a former Navy pilot whose brother said, “they would have had to incapacitate him or kill him because he would have done anything to prevent the kind of tragedy that befell that airplane," and whose sister said, "We want to tell his story so that people who had loved ones on that flight will know that he would have sacrificed himself to save them.”20 (3) Ted Olson’s oscillations on whether his wife had used a cell phone or an onboard phone. (4) Rowland Morgan’s point that, having settled on the claim that the calls were collect calls from a passenger-seat phone, “Ted Olson could . . . shut his critics up by simply producing the Department of Justice’s telephone accounts, showing a couple of hefty reverse-charges entries charged from Flight 77’s Airfone number at around about 9:20 AM on 11th September, 2001.”21 (5) Morgan and Henshall’s point that, if the Department of Justice had actually received these calls, the FBI, which is part of the DOJ, could have easily produced the records, and yet, according to The 9/11 Commission Report, the FBI’s report about this issue, which is entitled “American Airlines Airphone Usage,” makes no mention of any DOJ records.22</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >DRG concluded, however, that although the idea that the calls occurred was highly implausible, they could not be ruled out as strictly impossible, because the claim that AA 77 did not have onboard phones was erroneous in a twofold sense: not only in the sense of being based on inadequate evidence but also in the sense of simply being wrong, at least probably.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Correcting the Correction</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The publication of DRG’s retraction, however, set off a process that has led us to correct this correction, because we discovered three new pieces of evidence supporting the contention that AA 77 did not have onboard phones.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The Chad Kinder Email: One piece of evidence was brought to our attention by a member of the Pilots for 9/11 Truth forums who goes by the alias “Kesha.” Using one of these forums, “Kesha” reported that the following email exchange had been posted February 17, 2006, on a German political forum. A person using the alias “the Paradroid” had sent this email to American Airlines:</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><blockquote style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" ><span style="font-size:130%;"> Hello, on your website . . . there is mentioned that there are no seatback satellite phones on a Boeing 757. Is that info correct? Were there any such seatback satellite phones on any Boeing 757 before or on September 11, 2001 and if so, when were these phones ripped out?<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >This was the reply received by “the Paradroid” (except that his real name has been crossed out):</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><blockquote style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">Dear Mr. XXXXXXXX:<br /><br /><br />Thank you for contacting Customer Relations. I am pleased to have the opportunity to assist you.<br /><br /><br />That is correct we do not have phones on our Boeing 757. The passengers on flight 77 used their own personal cellular phones to make out calls during the terrorist attack. However, the pilots are able to stay in constant contact with the Air Traffic Control tower.<br /><br /><br />Mr. XXXXXXXX, I hope this information is helpful. It is a privilege to serve you.<br /><br /><br />Sincerely,<br />Chad W. Kinder<br />Customer Relations<br />American Airlines<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >This exchange, if authentic, would provide very strong evidence for the conclusion that Barbara Olson could not have called her husband, as he claimed, from a passenger-seat phone. But was the exchange, which came from a second-hand source, authentic? We received three types of confirmation that it was.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >In the first place, DRG, after obtaining from RB the email address of “Kesha,” asked the latter if he could “vouch for the authenticity of the letters” to and from Chad Kinder. In an email of June 2 (2007), “Kesha” replied: “I am able to vouch for the authenticity of the mentioned correspondence; the person who initiated it in February 2006 is reliable. I know ‘Paradroid’ from endless debates in our German 911 forum. His opinions are strictly based on facts.”</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >In the second place, after locating the correspondence between Kinder and “the Paradroid” on the German forum in question,23 DRG read several other contributions by “the Paradroid,” thereby seeing for himself that he is a serious, well-informed student of 9/11.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >In the third place, RB, after some difficulty in discovering whether American Airlines actually had an employee named “Chad Kinder,” was able to contact him by telephone on May 31 (2007). After reading the two letters to Kinder, RB asked if he had indeed written the reply. Kinder answered that he could not specifically recall having written it---he writes so many letters, he explained, and this one would have been written over a year earlier. But, he added: “That sounds like an accurate statement.” Kinder indicated, in other words, that it was a letter he might well have written, because what it said---that AA 757s in 2001 did not have onboard phones, so the passengers on AA 77 had to use cell phones---was, to the best of his present knowledge, accurate.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The 757 Aircraft Maintenance Manual: Besides learning about and confirming this letter from Kinder, we also obtained another piece of evidence supporting the conclusion that passengers on AA 77 could not have used onboard phones. One of RB’s colleagues sent him a page from the Boeing 757 Aircraft Maintenance Manual (757 AMM) dated January 28, 2001. This page states that the passenger phone system for the AA 757 fleet had (by that date) been deactivated.24 According to the 757 AMM, in other words, the onboard phones had been deactivated at least seven and a half months prior to 9/11.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >This information is relevant to the earlier-cited news report from February 6, 2002, which said: “American Airlines will discontinue its AT&T in-flight phone service by March 31.” As we pointed out earlier, that report did not mention 757s in particular, so it does not necessarily indicate that the 757 fleet had any in-flight phone service to be discontinued; the report may have referred only to other types of AA airplanes. But if American’s 757s did still have passenger-seat phones in September 2001, these phones, according to the information from the 757 AMM, would have been deactivated. If so, one of them could not have been used by Barbara Olson on 9/11 (even if she had a credit card).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >A USA Today Report: Henshall and Morgan’s conclusion, to recall, was that although AA 777s and 767s had onboard phones in September of 2001, AA 757s did not. That conclusion is given some support by a 2004 USA Today story that stated: “Several years ago, American installed seatback phones, which could be used with a credit card, on many of its planes but ripped them out except in some Boeing 777s and 767s on international routes.”25 This statement by itself would not show that Flight 77 had no onboard phones, because it does not indicate exactly when the phones were ripped out. But it does show that the previously cited photographic evidence, showing that there were seat-back phones in AA 757s in 1998, does not prove that these phones were still present on September 11, 2001.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >This report in USA Today appears, moreover, to have influenced the email sent by “the Paradroid” to American Airlines, which, as we saw, asked: “Were there any . . . seatback satellite phones on any Boeing 757 before or on September 11, 2001 and if so, when were these phones ripped out?” Kinder’s reply did not explicitly respond to the question as to when, if 757s had passenger-seat phones prior to 9/11, they were “ripped out.” Implicitly, however, Kinder’s reply said: With regard, at least, to the 757 that was AA 77, the seatback phones were ripped out prior to September 11, 2001.26</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >United States v. Ted Olson<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >In the course of doing research for this article, we learned, to our amazement, that even if, contrary to our evidence, Flight 77 did have functioning onboard phones, the US government has now said, implicitly, that Ted Olson’s claim about receiving two calls from his wife that morning is untrue.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >As we mentioned earlier, the FBI report on phone calls from AA planes on 9/11 does not cite records from the DOJ showing that any calls from AA 77 were received that morning. Instead, the FBI report refers merely to four “connected calls to unknown numbers.” The 9/11 Commission, putting the best possible spin on this report, commented: “The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of [these four calls] represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband’s office.”27 That is, it must be said, a very strange conclusion: If Ted Olson reported receiving only two calls, why would the Commission conclude that the DOJ had received four connected calls from his wife?</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >That conclusion is, in any case, starkly contradicted by evidence about phone calls from Flight 77 presented by the US government at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006.28 Far from attributing all four of the “connected calls to unknown numbers” to Barbara Olson, as the 9/11 Commission suggested, the government’s evidence here attributes none of them to her, saying instead that each of them was from an “unknown caller.” The only call attributed to Barbara Olson, moreover, is an “unconnected call” to the Department of Justice, which was said to have been attempted at “9:18:58” and to have lasted “0 seconds.” According to the US government in 2006, in other words, Barbara Olson attempted a call to the DOJ, but it did not go through.29 The government itself has presented evidence in a court of law, therefore, that implies that unless its former solicitor general was the victim of two faked phone calls, he was lying.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >It may seem beyond belief that the US government would have failed to support Ted Olson’s claim. We ourselves, as we indicated, were amazed at this development. However, it would not be the first time that the FBI---surely the agency that prepared this report about phone calls from the flights30---had failed to support the official story about 9/11. We refer to the fact that when Rex Tomb, the FBI’s chief of investigative publicity, was asked why the bureau’s website on “Usama bin Laden” does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which he is wanted, he replied: “[T]he FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”31</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >In any case, an interesting question about the government’s claim concerning the four “connected calls” from AA 77 is whether they were supposedly made from cell phones or passenger-seat phones. The government’s Moussaoui-trial evidence does not explicitly say. We can, however, make an inference based on its evidence for phone calls made from United Flight 93.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Although it had been generally believed that there had been approximately ten cell phone calls from UA 93---including the four widely publicized calls reported by Deena Burnett from her husband, Tom Burnett---the government’s document on this flight identifies only two calls as cell phone calls: those made at 9:58 by passenger Edward Felt and flight attendant CeeCee Lyles. One might conclude from this information, to be sure, that the government simply remained neutral on some of the other calls that had been thought to be cell phone calls, such as the Burnett calls, leaving open whether they were from cell or onboard phones. But that is not the case. A reporter at the Moussaoui trial wrote:</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><blockquote style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">In the back of the plane, 13 of the terrified passengers and crew members made 35 air phone calls and two cell phone calls to family members and airline dispatchers, a member of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force testified Tuesday.32<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The government explicitly said, therefore, that only two of the calls from UA 93---which were identified in the government’s report on this flight as being from Felt and Lyles33---were cell phone calls.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >We can infer, therefore, that because these calls from Felt and Lyles are the only two calls from all the flights that are identified as cell phone calls, all the calls from the other flights are now said by the government to have been made from onboard phones.34</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The distinctive thing about the calls from Felt and Lyles is that they reportedly occurred at 9:58, after United 93 had descended to about 5,000 feet. By limiting the cell phone calls from all four flights to these two from UA 93, the government is no longer, even implicitly, supporting the view that high-altitude cell phone calls from airliners are possible. The government has thereby implicitly overcome, by conceding the point, one of the 9/11 movement’s main arguments against the government’s conspiracy theory.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >This is a rather amazing development. Much of the official story about 9/11 has been based on the assumption that high-altitude cell phone calls were made. The film United 93, for example, portrayed five cell phone conversations. The 9/11 Commission Report, discussing UA 93, said: “Shortly [after 9:32], the passengers and flight crew began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones.”35</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Four cell phone calls from UA 93 were, as mentioned earlier, supposed to have been made by Tom Burnett.36 His wife, Deena Burnett, repeatedly said Tom used his cell phone. She knew this, she said, because the Caller ID identified his cell phone as the source.37 Her testimony has been repeated countless times in the media. For example, a special segment about her on CBS’s Early Show said: “Tom Burnett made four cell phone calls from Flight 93 to Deena Burnett at home, telling her he and some other passengers were going to ‘do something.’” In a letter published in the National Review, Tom’s father spoke of “Tom's four cell-phone calls from Flight 93 to his wife, Deena.”38</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The government’s evidence presented in 2006 at the Moussaoui trial, however, implies that she was mistaken, even though, given her statement that she saw her husband’s Caller ID number, the government’s new position means that she was either lying or, as we believe, the victim of a faked call using a device that, besides morphing her husband’s voice, faked his Caller ID number.39</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >However, although the government has undercut much of the basis for the official and popular accounts of 9/11 by denying the occurrence of any high-altitude cell phone calls, it has, by paying this price, protected itself from the 9/11 truth movement’s charge that the official story is falsified by the fact that such calls are impossible.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >We come now, in any case, to the implication of the government’s Moussaoui-trial evidence about phone calls for the government’s position on whether AA 77 had onboard phones. According to this evidence, there were five connected calls from AA 77: one from Renee May and four from “unknown callers.” Given what we have learned from the government’s evidence about calls from UA 93---that all calls not identified as cell phone calls are said to have been made from onboard phones---we can conclude that, by virtue of not identifying any of the five “connected calls” from this flight as cell phone calls, the government is implying that this plane did have onboard phones. It does not, therefore, support our view on this issue.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Nevertheless, whether one accepts our evidence, which indicates that there were not any onboard phones on AA 77 from which calls could have been made, or trusts the government’s evidence presented at the Moussaoui trial, the conclusion is the same: The two conversations reported by Ted Olson did not happen.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Final Reflections</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The implications of this conclusion for the credibility of the official narrative about 9/11 are enormous. Surely one of the most well-known elements of this narrative is that Barbara Olson, while on the plane that was soon to hit the Pentagon, called her husband. If people learn that this is a lie---whether because Ted Olson was a victim of faked phone calls or because he deliberately told a false story---most of them will probably be led to wonder if the whole official story is not a fabrication.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The strongest reason for considering false Ted Olson’s claim about two passenger-seat phone calls from his wife would be proof that such calls simply could not have occurred. It is important, therefore, for researchers to continue the quest to determine positively whether Boeing 757s in September 2001 had functioning onboard phones. Although we believe our evidence that they did not have such phones is very strong, we cannot yet claim to have proof; evidence to the contrary might still emerge. Finding proof one way or the other, however, should not be impossible, if others join in the task.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >If further investigation should reveal that Flight 77 did, after all, have onboard phones, Ted Olson’s story would still be extremely implausible, for many reasons. Five of those reasons, mentioned in DRG’s previous essay, were summarized above. Three more have been added in this article: the absurdity of Ted Olson’s claim that his wife called collect because she did not have a credit card, the US government’s apparent endorsement of the view that high-altitude cell phone calls from airliners are not possible (thereby foreclosing the possibility that Ted Olson could return to the claim that she called from a cell phone), and the US government’s implicit rejection of his claim that the DOJ received two calls from AA Flight 77 that morning.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >For those eight reasons alone, we would be justified in concluding, from simply this aspect of the official story, that the entire official story about 9/11 was a fabrication. This conclusion is greatly strengthened, however, by the almost definitive evidence that, besides the fact that Barbara Olson’s alleged calls could not have been made from a cell phone (which the US government now appears implicitly to have acknowledged), they also could not have been made from an onboard phone.40</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >---------------</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >David Ray Griffin is the author of five books about 9/11, most recently Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, a revised edition of which is appearing in July 2007.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" > </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Rob Balsamo is co-founder of Pilots for 9/11 Truth (www.pilotsfor911truth.org) and producer of Pandora’s Black Box (a DVD series).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >1 “FBI Targets Florida Sites in Terrorist Search,” CNN.com, September 11, 2001, 11:56 PM EDT (http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/america.under.attack); Tim O’Brien, “Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking from Plane,” CNN, September 12, 2001, 2:06 AM (http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >2 Hannity & Colmes, Fox News, September14, 2001.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >3 Larry King Live, CNN, September 14, 2001 (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/lkl.00.html).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >4 Mauro’s statement is quoted in Rowland Morgan, “Barbara Olson’s Call from Flight 77 Never Happened,” Global Echo, December 2, 2004 (http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/12/305124.shtml).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >5 Theodore B. Olson, “Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture,” November 16, 2001, Federalist Society, 15th Annual National Lawyers Convention (http://www.fed-soc.org/resources/id.63/default.asp).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >6 Toby Harnden, “She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane,” Daily Telegraph, March 5, 2002 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2002/telegraph030502.html).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >7 See “On September 11, Final Words of Love,” CNN, September 10, 2002 (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/09/03/ar911.phone.calls), which says: “Unbeknown to the hijackers, passenger and political commentator Barbara Olson, 45, was able to call her husband---Solicitor General Ted Olson---on her cellular phone.”</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >8 The American Airlines website entitled “Onboard Technology” says: “Slide your credit card through the side of the phone and then dial 00 + country code + area or city code + number followed by the # key” (http://www.aa.com/content/travelInformation/duringFlight/onboardTechnology.jhtml).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >9 Some defenders of the official story have, to be sure, suggested that she reversed the charges because she had borrowed someone else’s credit card. But in that situation, would anyone have been worrying about a few dollars?</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >10 See David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2007), 87-91, 292-97.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >11 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Authorized Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004) (available online at http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf), 9.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >12 See the National Transportation Safety Board’s flight path study for AA Flight 77 (http://www.ntsb.gov/info/AAL77_fdr.pdf). This study has been subjected to extensive analysis by Pilots for 9/11 Truth (http://pilotsfor911truth.org/pentagon.html). Our use of the information from this Flight Data Recorder (FDR) does not imply our acceptance of the NTSB’s claim that it is from AA Flight 77. Our scepticism is made clear in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, 372 n. 217, which quotes an email from RB saying, “The NTSB claims the Flight Data Recorder is from AA77, but it could really be from any type of aircraft.” Our reference to the data from this FDR is simply for the purpose of showing an internal contradiction within the official story.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >13 This exchange occurred on December 6, 2004; see Rowland Morgan and Ian Henshall, 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), 128-29. Although the letters themselves were not printed in that book or in Morgan’s Flight 93 Revealed: What Really Happened on the 9/11 ‘Let’s Roll’ Flight? (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006), in which they are also mentioned, they were published (with Henshall and Morgan’s permission) in Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, first edition, 267.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >14 American Airlines, “Onboard Technology” (https://www.aa.com/content/travelInformation/duringFlight/onboardTechnology.jhtml), quoted in Morgan, “Barbara Olson’s Call from Flight 77 Never Happened.”</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >15 See note 4.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >16 Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, first edition, 267.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >17 Sam Ames, “Airline Grounds In-flight Phone Service,” CNET News.com (http://news.com.com/2100-1033-831093.html). The photograph is at http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0020665/L. Both items were sent by Elias Davidsson of Iceland.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >18 David Ray Griffin, “Barbara Olson’s Alleged Call from AA 77: A Correction About Onboard Phones,” Information Clearing House, May 7, 2007 (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17659.htm).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >19 It has been widely accepted that the (alleged) call from Renee May was made on a cell phone, because this is what was stated in a story published in her mother’s home town. See Natalie Patton, “Flight Attendant Made Call on Cell Phone to Mom in Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, September 13, 2001 (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-13-Thu-2001/news/16989631.html). However, the government’s report on calls from this flight, which was presented as evidence at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006, did not indicate that the call was a cell phone call (see United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit Number P200054 [http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution.html]; this information is more readily accessible in “Detailed Account of Phone Calls From September 11th Flights” [http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/calldetail.html#ref1]). However, even if the government is now implying, as we discuss later, that the call from Renee May was from a passenger-seat phone, the idea that only two people availed themselves of these phones would be little more credible than the idea that only one did.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >20 “In Memoriam: Charles ‘Chic’ Burlingame, 1949-2001,” USS Saratoga Museum foundation (available at http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/analysis/chic_remembered.html).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >21 Morgan, “Barbara Olson’s Call from Flight 77 Never Happened.”</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >22 This FBI report on phone usage from AA 77 refers merely to four “connected calls to unknown numbers.” The 9/11 Commission commented: “The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of [these four calls] represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband’s office” (The 9/11 Commission Report, 455 n. 57). The fact that the Commission speaks merely about what the FBI and the DOJ “believe” indicates that they produced no records to prove the point.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >23 See the submission of February 17, 2006, by “the Paradroid” on the Politik Forum (http://www.politikforum.de/forum/archive/index.php/t-133356-p-24.html).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >24 This document is available at Pilots for 9/11 Truth (http://pilotsfor911truth.org/AA757AMM.html).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >25 “Cell Phones Test Positive on AA Flight,” USA Today, July 16, 2004 (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2004-07-16-jet-phones_x.htm).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >26 We believe, incidentally, that the statement by the 757 AMM that the phone system was “deactivated” and the statement by USA Today that the phones were “ripped out” refer to two different processes, so that within AA’s records there would be a work order for the phones to be physically removed from the 757 fleet at some point between the time at which they were deactivated, perhaps late in 2000, and September 11, 2001. Locating such a work order would provide the final confirmation of the claim that Flight 77 had no onboard phones.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >27 The 9/11 Commission Report, 455 n. 57.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >28 United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Exhibit Number P200054 (http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution.html). If unable to download this document, see “Detailed Account of Phone Calls From September 11th Flights” (http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/calldetail.html#ref1).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >29 How the government could have concluded that this call was attempted by Barbara Olson is not clear.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >30 It would appear that the FBI report referred to above, “American Airlines Airphone Usage,” is simply one portion of the complete report the FBI presented on telephone calls from all four flights at the Moussaoui trial. Note also, as mentioned in the text below, that it was a member of the FBI who stated at the Moussaoui trial that only two calls from UA 93 were cell phone calls.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >31 Federal Bureau of Investigation, Most Wanted Terrorists (http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm); Ed Haas, “FBI says, ‘No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11’” Muckraker Report, June 6, 2006 (http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >32 Greg Gordon, “Prosecutors Play Flight 93 Cockpit Recording,” KnoxNews.com, April 12, 2006 (http://www.knoxsingles.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=MOUSSAOUI-04-12-06&cat=WW); quoted in Morgan, Flight 93 Revealed, 182, n. 87.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >33 For graphics about the phone calls from Felt and Lyles, see “United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui: Prosecution Trial Exhibits,” Exhibit P200055 http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/flights/P200055.html).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >34 For the government’s summary of the phone calls from all four flights, see exhibit P200054 or P200055 (they are identical) under Phase 2 of the Prosecution Trial Exhibits, “United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui” (http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution.html) or “Detailed Account of Phone Calls From September 11th Flights” (http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/calldetail.html#ref1).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >35 The 9/11 Commission Report, 12. At that time, the plane was reportedly at about 35,000 feet.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >36 Surprisingly, however, the film United 93 portrayed Tom Burnett as using a seat-back phone.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >37 Greg Gordon, “Widow Tells of Poignant Last Calls,” Sacramento Bee, September 11, 2002 (http://holtz.org/Library/Social%20Science/History/Atomic%20Age/2000s/Sep11/Burnett%20widows%20story.htm). See also Deena L. Burnett (with Anthony F. Giombetti), Fighting Back: Living Beyond Ourselves (Longwood, Florida: Advantage Inspirational Books, 2006), 61.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >38 “Two Years Later...,” 10 September 2003 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/09/earlyshow/living/printable572380.shtml); for the National Review letter, which appeared May 20, 2002, see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_9_54/ai_85410322.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >39 As DRG reported in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, 297, there is an ad headed “FoneFaker--Call Recorder and Voice Changer Service with Caller ID Spoofing,” which says: “Record any call you make, fake your Caller ID and change your voice, all with one service you can use from any phone” (“Telephone Voice Changers,” Brickhouse Security [http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/telephone-voice-changers.html]).</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >40 We wish to thank Matthew Everett, Tod Fletcher, Ian Henshall, Rowland Morgan, Elizabeth Woodworth, and Aldo Marquis along with a couple of people who wish to remain anonymous, for help with this essay.</span><span style="font-family: courier new;font-family:courier new;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><br /></div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-84180510380310518072007-02-25T00:29:00.000-08:002008-12-10T11:48:37.116-08:00Precedents for 9/11: U.S. - Backed "Strategies of Tension"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0714685003/qid=1148046543/sr=12-1/002-6857909-5192833?s=books&v=glance&n=283155"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/ReFJvtp691I/AAAAAAAAAB4/ZiyFuWSC3Sk/s320/Ganser400-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5035386942435030866" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0714685003/qid=1148046543/sr=12-1/002-6857909-5192833?s=books&v=glance&n=283155"><br /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://http//www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GAN20070122&articleId=4549"><b style=""><span style="font-size:14;">The Strategy of Tension<o:p></o:p></span></b></a> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:14;"><a href="http://http//www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GAN20070122&articleId=4549">NATO’s Hidden Terrorism</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">by Silvia Cattori*<o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style=""><a href="http://www.danieleganser.ch/e/home/index.htm">Daniele Ganser,</a> professor of contemporary history at <st1:placename st="on">Bale</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype> (<st1:country-region st="on">France</st1:country-region>) and chairman of the ASPO - <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Switzerland</st1:place></st1:country-region>, published a landmark book about "NATO’s Secret Armies." According to him, during the last 50 years the United States have organized bombings in Western Europe that they have falsely attributed to the left and the extreme left with the purpose of discrediting them in the eyes of their voters. This strategy is still present today, inspiring fear for the Islam and justifying wars on oil.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">22 January 2007</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">From</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Zurich</st1:place></st1:city> (Suisse)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> Your book about NATO’s Secret Armies [1] explains that the strategy of tension [2] and the False Flag terrorism [3] imply great dangers. It teaches us how NATO - together with the intelligence services or the West European countries and the Pentagon - utilised secret armies during the Cold War, hired spies among the extreme right wing, and organized terrorist acts for which they blamed the left. Becoming aware of this, we can wonder about what is likely to happen today behind our back.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> It is extremely important to understand what the strategy of tension truly represents the way it works nowadays. This can help us clarify the present and to see more clearly to what extent it is still in action. Only a few people know what the expression ’strategy of tension’ means. It is very important to talk about it, to explain it. It is a tactic that involves carrying out criminal acts and attributing them to someone else. By the term ’tension’, we mean emotional tension, all that which creates a feeling of tension.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">By ’strategy’ we make reference to that which increases people’s fear in regard to a determined group. These secret structures of NATO had been equipped, financed and trained by the CIA, in coordination with the M16 (the British secret service), to fight against the Army of the Soviet Union in a case of war, but also according to the information to which he have access today, to commit terrorist acts in several countries [4]. That is how, since the 70s, the Italian secret services have been using these armies to foment terrorist attacks, with the purpose of causing fear among the population, and later, to accuse the communists of being the authors. The strategy of tension was designed to serve the purpose or discrediting, weakening and stopping communism from reaching executive power.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> To learn what it means is one thing. But it is still difficult to believe that our government could have let NATO, the West European intelligence agencies and the CIA act in such a way that could threaten their own citizens’ security!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> NATO was at the core of this clandestine network linked to terror; the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) and the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) were two substructures of the Atlantic Alliance, and they are clearly identified today. But, now that this has been established, it is still hard to know who was doing what. There are not any documents proving who was at the head, who organized the strategy of tension, how NATO, the West European intelligence services, the CIA, M16, and the hired terrorists among the extreme right, distributed each other’s roles. The only certainty that we have is that there was, inside these clandestine structures, some elements that used the strategy of tension. The terrorists from the extreme right have explained in their statements that it was NATO’s secret services that had supported them in this clandestine war. But when we ask for explanations from some members of the CIA or NATO - which I have done for many years - they limit themselves to say that it could be possible that a few criminal elements might have managed to avoid control.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> Were these secret armies active in every Western European country?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> In my research, I put forward evidence that these secret armies not only existed in <st1:country-region st="on">Italy</st1:country-region>, but also in all Western Europe: in <st1:country-region st="on">France</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Belgium</st1:country-region>, The Netherlands, <st1:country-region st="on">Norway</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Denmark</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Sweden</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Finland</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Turkey</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Spain</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Portugal</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Austria</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Switzerland</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Greece</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Luxembourg</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>. In the beginning, we thought that there existed only one guerrilla-structured organization, and therefore, that all these secret armies had participated in the strategy of tension, and therefore, in terrorist acts. However, it is important to know that not all these secret armies have been involved in attacks, and to understand what differentiated them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What appears to be clear today, is that NATO’s clandestine structures, usually called ’Stay Behind groups’ [5], were created in the beginning to act as a guerrilla in case of an occupation of Western Europe by the Soviet Union. The <st1:country-region st="on">United States</st1:country-region> stated that the guerrilla networks were necessary to overcome the lack of preparedness of the countries attacked by <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Germany</st1:country-region></st1:place>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Several of the countries that were occupied by the Germans, like Norway, wanted to learn the lessons of their incapacity to resist the occupier, and they said to themselves that, in case of a new occupation, they had to be better prepared, to have another option at hand and to count with a secret army in case that the official one were to be defeated. Inside these secret armies, there were honest people, sincere patriots, who only wanted to defend their countries from an occupation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> If I understand well, these Stay Behind groups, whose original goal was to be prepared in case of a Soviet invasion, have been deviated from that goal and were reorganised to defeat the left. From that, it is difficult to understand why the left parties have not investigated this or denounced this earlier.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Daniele Ganser: When we take the case of Italy, it appears that, every time that the communist party has interviewed the government to find an explanation about the secret army that was operating in this country under the coded name of Gladio [6], there was never any answer, under the pretext that it was a ’state secret’. It wasn’t until 1990 that Giulio Andreotti [7] recognised the existence of Gladio and its direct links with NATO, the CIA, and M16 [8]. _ It is also during that time that the judge Felice Casson was able to prove that the true author of the bombing in Peteano in 1972, that had shocked Italy, and that had been attributed up to that moment to the extreme left militants, was Vincenzo Vinciguerra, linked to ’Ordine Nuovo’, a group of the extreme right wing. Vinciguerra avoided blame for the bombing in Peteano with the help of the Italian secret services. Vinciguerra also spoke about the existence of this secret army, Gladio. He explained that, during the Cold War, these clandestine acts had caused the death of women and children [9]. He stated as well that this secret army controlled by NATO, had branches all around <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place>. When this information was released, there was a political crisis in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region>. And it is thanks to the investigations of the judge Felice Casson that we got to know about NATO’s secret armies.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>, when in 1990 the SPDs (German Social Democrat Partisans) became aware that in their country - as well as in all the other European countries - there was a secret army, and that this structure was linked to the German secret services, they loudly denounced it as a scandal and accused the Christian democratic Party (CDU). This party reacted by saying: "If you accuse us, we are going to say that, you too, together with Willy Brandt, you have been involved in this conspiracy". This happened at the same time as the first elections of the reunified <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>, which the SPD hoped to win. The leaders of the SPD understood that that was not a good electoral subject; in the end, the story was twisted in such a way as to make the existence of these secret armies seem justified.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the European Parliament, in November 1990, many members exclaimed that the existence of such clandestine armies could not be tolerated and that the European people needed to know the true origin of terrorist acts and that an inquiry was needed. Therefore, the European Parliament wrote a complaint to NATO and to president George Bush Senior. But nothing was done. It is only in <st1:country-region st="on">Italy</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Belgium</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Switzerland</st1:place></st1:country-region> that there have been public queries. And they are the only three countries that have set some order in this subject, and that have published a report about their secret armies.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> What about today ? Are these secret armies still active? Is it possible that there exist secret national structures which escape the control of each State?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Daniele Ganser: For a historian, it is difficult to answer that question. We haven’t got an official report of each country. In my books, I analyse some facts that I can prove. Concerning <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region>, there is a report stating that the secret army Gladio has been destroyed. About the existence of the secret army P26 in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Switzerland</st1:place></st1:country-region>, a report was also issued by the Parliament, in November 1990. Therefore, these clandestine armies, which had stocked explosives in hidden places everywhere in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Switzerland</st1:country-region></st1:place>, have been dissolved.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But in the other countries, nothing was done. In France, while president François Mitterrand stated that all that belonged to the past, we discovered later that these secret structures had always been present when Giulio Andreotti suggested that the French president was lying: "You say that the secret armies do not exist anymore; but, during 1990’s secret meeting in the autumn, you, the French, were also present; don’t say that this doesn’t exist anymore." Mitterrand became quite angry with this Andreotti because, after this revelation, he was forced to rectify his statement. Later, the head of the French secret services, admiral Pierre Lacoste, confirmed that these secret armies existed in <st1:country-region st="on">France</st1:country-region> as well, and that <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region> had also been involved in terrorist attacks. [10]. It is therefore difficult to say whether all this has been solved or not. And, even if the Gladio structures have been dissolved, new armies might have been created, still utilizing this technique of the strategy of tension and the False flags.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> Can we speculate that, after the fall of the <st1:country-region st="on">USSR</st1:country-region>, the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> and NATO have continued developing the strategy of tension and of the false flags in other fronts?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> My research is based in the period of the Cold War in <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place>. But it is known that there have also been false flags in other places, where the States’ responsibility was proved. For example: the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region> bombings in 1953, for which the communist Iranians were blamed at first. So it happened that the CIA and the Mi6 had used some agents provocateurs to orchestrate the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh’s administration, within the framework of the war, to control the oil. Another example: the bombings in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Egypt</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in 1954, for which the Muslims were accused first. It was proved later that, in what was called the Lavon affair [11], it was the agents of Mossad who had been the perpetrators. This time, it was for <st1:country-region st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> to stop the British troops from leaving <st1:country-region st="on">Egypt</st1:country-region>, to make them stay there, and also to ensure the protection of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Therefore, we have examples in history showing that the strategy of tension and the false flags have been used by the <st1:country-region st="on">US</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Great Britain</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Given that throughout their history other countries have also used the same strategy, the research must continue in these fields.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> These clandestine structures of NATO, created after the Second World War, to supply the European countries with a guerrilla capable of resisting the Soviet invasion, ended up serving nothing but to build criminal operations against the European Citizens? Everything leads to the thought that the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> have another purpose!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> You are right in raising this question. The United States were interested in the political control. This political control is an essential element of <st1:state st="on">Washington</st1:state> and <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>’s strategy. General Geraldo Serravalle, at the head of Gladio, the Italian network Stay-behind, gives an example of this in his book. He tells us that he understood that the United States were not interested in the preparation of the guerrillas against an eventual Soviet invasion, when he saw that, what interested the CIA agents who went to the training exercises of the secret army that he was leading, was to make sure that the army worked, could control the communist militants. Their fear was that the communists took the power in countries such a <st1:country-region st="on">Greece</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Italy</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Therefore, the strategy of tension was meant to serve that purpose: to orient and influence the politics of certain countries of <st1:place st="on">Western Europe</st1:place>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> You have talked about an important emotional factor in the strategy of tension. Therefore, the terror, whose origin is vague, uncertain, the fear that it causes, all that helps to manipulate the public opinion. Are we not assisting today to the same kind of procedure? Yesterday, we fuelled the fear of communism, today aren’t we fuelling the fear of Islam?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> Yes, there is a very clear parallel. During the planning of the war in <st1:country-region st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>, it was said that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons in his possession, that there was a link between <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the Al-Qaeda terrorists. But none of that turned out to be true. By means of these lies, it was intended to make people believe that Muslims wanted to spread terrorism all around, and that this war was necessary to fight against terror. However, the true reason for this war is the control of energy resources. This is due to the fact that the geology, the richness in gas and oil, are concentrated in the Muslim countries. He who wants to monopolize them, must hide behind this type of manipulations.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We cannot say that there is not a lot of oil left because the global production - the ’peak oil’ [12] - is going to arrive probably before 2020, and that therefore oil must be taken from Iraq, because people would say that children must not be killed to obtain oil. And they are right. They can’t be told, either, that in the Caspian Sea there are huge reserves and that there is a plan to create a pipeline that would go to the Indian Ocean but, given that it’s is not allowed to go through the South of Iran or the North of Russia, it must pass through the East, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and therefore, this country must be under control. That is why Muslims are labelled as "terrorists". It is all a big lie, but if it is repeated a thousand times that Muslims are "terrorists", people will end up believing it and thinking that the wars against Muslims are useful; and to forget that there are several types of terrorism, that violence is not necessarily a feature of Islam.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> So, these clandestine structures might have well been dissolved, but the strategy of tension continues?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> Exactly. The structures might have been dissolved, and other ones could have been formed. It is important to explain how, in the strategy of tension, the tactic and manipulation work. None of that is legal. But, for the governments, it is easier to manipulate people than to tell them that they are trying to get hold of somebody else’s oil. Nevertheless, not all these attacks arise from the strategy of tension. But it is difficult to know which ones are the manipulated attacks. Even those who know the amount of attacks that have been manipulated by the governments to discredit a political enemy, can be confronted by a psychological obstacle. After every bombing, people are afraid, they feel confused. It is very difficult to accept the idea that the strategy of tension, the strategy of false flag, is a reality. It is easier to accept the manipulation and to say: "I have kept informed for 30 years, and I have never heard about these criminal armies. The Muslims are attacking us; this is why we fight against them."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Silvia Cattori: Since 2001, the European Union has created anti-terrorist measures. Later, is has been seen that these measures have allowed the CIA to kidnap people, to move them to secrete places and torture them. Have the European States become a sort of hostages to their submission to the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> The European countries have had quite a weak attitude concerning the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> after the attacks on September 11th, 2001. After having confirmed that the secret prisons were illegal, they let them continue. The same happened with the prisoners in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Guantanamo</st1:place></st1:city>. Many voices stood up in <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place> to say: "The prisoners cannot be deprived of a lawyer or defence." When Mrs. Angela Merkel mentioned this question, the <st1:country-region st="on">United States</st1:country-region> clearly suggested that <st1:country-region st="on">Germany</st1:country-region> was a little bit involved in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, that its secret services had contributed to prepare this war, and therefore they must shut up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> Within this context, where there are still many unclear areas, what type of security can NATO give to the peoples it is supposed to protect if it allows the secret services to manipulate in this way?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> Concerning the terrorist attacks carried out by the secret armies of the network Gladio during the Cold War, it is important that we are able to determine clearly which is the real implication of NATO in this, to know what really happened. Is this about isolated acts secretly organised by NATO? Until this day, NATO refuses to talk about the strategy of tension and terrorism during the Cold War. NATO refuses all questions related to Gladio.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Today, NATO is used as an offensive army, even though this organization was not created to play that role. It was activated in that sense on September 12th 2001, immediately after the attacks in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>. NATO’s leaders affirm that the reason for their involvement in the war against the Afghans is to fight against terrorism. However, NATO is in danger of losing that war. Therefore, when that happens they will be a big crisis, a debate. And this will allow us to know whether NATO is really fighting a war against terrorism, or if it is trying to create an analogous situation to that of the Cold War with the secret army Gladio, where she had a link to terror. The next few years will tell us if NATO has acted outside the mission that was accorded to it: to defend the European countries and the Unites States in case of Soviet invasion, an event that has never occurred. NATO was not funded to take over the oil and gas of the Muslim countries.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> We could understand that <st1:country-region st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>, who is interested in widening the conflicts in the Arabic and Muslim countries, encourages the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> in that direction. But, we cannot see what it is that interests the European countries and that makes them engage their troops in the wars decided by the Pentagon, as was the case in Afghanistan.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> I think that <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place> is confused. The United States are in a strong position, and the Europeans have a tendency to think that the best thing is to collaborate with the strongest one. But we would have to think about this more thoroughly. The European politicians give in easily to the pressure put by the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>, who is always asking for more troops in this or that front. The more the European countries give in, the more they subordinate, and the more they will find themselves confronted to bigger and bigger problems. In <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region> the Germans and the British are under the command of the American army. Strategically, it is not an interesting position for these countries. Now, the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> has asked the Germans to engage their soldiers in the South of Afghanistan as well, in the areas were the battle is the hardest. If the Germans accept, they take the risk of being massacred by the Afghan forces which refuse the presence of any king of occupier. _ <st1:country-region st="on">Germany</st1:country-region> should ask itself seriously whether she should not rather withdraw their 3000 soldiers from <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>. But, for the Germans, to disobey the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>’ orders, to which they are a bit like lieges, it is a very hard step to make.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> How much do our current government know today about the strategy of tension ? Can they just let the war-doers foment coups d’état, kidnap and torture people without reacting? Have they any means to stop these criminal activities?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> I do not know. As an historian, I observe and take notes. As a political adviser, I always say that one must never give in to the manipulations that try to induce fear and to make people believe that the "terrorists" are always the Muslims; I say that this is about a struggle for controlling the energy resources; that some means of surviving the lack of energy must be found without needing to go to a militarization. Problems cannot be solved in this way; they only become worse.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> When we observe the demonisation of the Arabs and Muslims in the conflict between <st1:country-region st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> and <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>, we might think that this does not have anything to do with the oil.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> No. In this case not. But, in the US perspective, it is definitely about taking control of the energy reserves of the Eurasian block that is situated in a ’strategic ellipse’ that goes from Azerbaijan to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, passing through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It is precisely over there, in that region where this false war ’against terrorism’ is taking place, that the biggest oil and gas reserves are concentrated. In my opinion, it is not about anything else but a geo-strategic game inside which the European Union can do nothing but lose. Because, if the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> takes hold of the resources, and the energy crisis becomes worse, it will tell them: "You want gas, you want oil. Very well, in exchange we want this and that." The <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> is not going to give the oil and gas for free to the European countries. A few people know that the "peak oil", the maximum production of oil in Europe - the production to <st1:country-region st="on">Norway</st1:country-region> and <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Great Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place> - is declining.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The day when people will realise that these wars ’against terrorism’ are manipulated, and that the accusations against the Muslims are, among other things, propaganda, they are going to be surprised. The European countries must wake up and understand once and for all how the strategy of tension works. And they must also learn to say "no" to the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Moreover, in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> also, there are many people who do not want this militarizing of the international relationships.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> You have also done some research on the attacks that took place in September 11th 2001 and you have signed a book [13] jointly with other intellectuals who worry about the inconsistencies and contradictions of the official version of these events, as well as the conclusions of the commission of survey ordered by Mr. Bush. Do you not fear being accused of being a "conspiracy theorist"?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> My students and other people have always asked me : if this "war against terrorism" concerns indeed the oil and gas, the 911 attacks have also been manipulated, haven’t they? Or is it a coincidence that Osama Ben Laden’s Muslims have struck exactly at the precise moment that the occidental countries were starting to understand that an oil crisis was announcing itself?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Therefore, I became interested in what had been written about September 11th and I also studied the official report that was presented in 2004. When we dig into this subject, we realize from the start that there is a big worldwide debate around what really happened on 911. The information that we have is not very precise. What makes one question this 600 page report is that the third tower that collapsed on that day is not even mentioned. The commission only talks about the collapsing of two towers, the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place>. But there is a third 170 meters high tower that collapsed too; the WTC 7 tower. A small fire is mentioned concerning it. I have talked to professors who know very well the building structures; they say that a small fire cannot destroy such a big structure. The official story of 911 and the commission’s conclusions, are not reliable. This lack of clarity puts the researchers in a difficult situation. The confusion predominated as well about what really happened at the Pentagon. In the pictures that we have, it is very difficult to see a plane. We cannot see how a plane would have fallen there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> The Venezuelan Government has asked the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> for further explanations to clarify the origin of the attacks. Would this not be the example to follow?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> There are many uncertainties about September 11th. Politicians, members of the academia and citizens can all claim to explain what really happened. I think that it is important to continue asking questions. It is an event that no one can forget; everybody remembers where he/she was at that precise moment. It is unbelievable that five years later, we still cannot see clearly what happened.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> It is almost as if none of the structures created wanted to doubt the official version. Is it possible that they let themselves be manipulated by the lack of information organized by the ones who organize the strategy of the tension and the False flags?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> We are prone to manipulation if we are afraid. Afraid of losing the respect from the people that we love. We cannot go out of this spiral of violence and terror if we let the fear take over. It is normal to be afraid, but we must overtly talk about this fear and about the manipulations that generate it. Nobody can escape their consequences. This is even more serious when the politicians in charge react often under the effect of fear. One must find the strength to say: "Yes, I am afraid to know that these lies make people suffer; yes, I am afraid to think that there is less oil left; yes, I am afraid to think that this terrorism they talk about is the consequence of manipulations, but I will not let myself become intimidated."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> Up to what extent do countries like <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Switzerland</st1:place></st1:country-region> participate, right now, in this strategy of tension?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> I do not think there is any strategy of tension in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Switzerland</st1:place></st1:country-region>. This country does not know any terrorist attacks. But, it is true that, in <st1:country-region st="on">Switzerland</st1:country-region> as everywhere else, the politicians are afraid of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> and its strong position, and they have a tendency to say to themselves: "They are good friends, we’d better not fight against them."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> Doesn’t this way of thinking and of covering up the lies that arise from the strategy of tension make everyone an accomplice of the crimes that it causes? To start with the journalists and the political parties?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> I personally think that everyone - journalists, professors, politicians - must think about the implications of the strategy if tension and the false flag. Here we are, indeed, in presence of phenomena that escape from every kind of agreement. That is why, every time that there are terrorist attacks, we must ask questions and try to understand what that implies. It is only on the day that we officially admit that the false flags are a reality, that it will be possible for us to create a list of the false flags that took place in history and to agree upon what should be done.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The subject that interests me is how to achieve peace. It is important to open a debate on the strategy of tension and to take cognizance of the fact that this is a very real phenomenon. Since as long as we do not recognize its existence, we cannot act. That is why it is important to explain what the strategy of tension truly means. And, once we have understood, we must not let fear and hatred against one group win. We must say to ourselves that it is not only one country that is involved in this; that it is not only the <st1:country-region st="on">United States</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Italy</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> or the Iranians, but that it occurs everywhere. Even if certain countries participate in a more intensive way than others. We must understand, without blaming one country or one person. Fear and hatred do not help us to advance, they paralyse the debate. I see many accusations against the Unites States, against <st1:country-region st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> and against <st1:country-region st="on">great Britain</st1:country-region>, or alternatively against <st1:country-region st="on">Iran</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>. But the search for peace teaches us that one must not get lost in accusations based on nationalism, and that neither hatred nor fear are needed; that the most important thing is to explain the reality. And this comprehension will be beneficial for everybody.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Silvia Cattori:</span> Why is your book about NATO’s secret armies published in English, translated into English, Turk, Slovenian and soon Greek, but it is not published in French?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Daniele Ganser:</span> I haven’t found any publisher in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region>, yet. If any publisher happens to be interested in publishing my book, I will be very pleased to see it being issued in French.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[1] Nato’s secret Armies: Terrorism in <st1:place st="on">Western Europe</st1:place> par Daniele Ganser, preface by John Prados. Frank Cass ed., 2005. ISBN 07146850032005</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[2] It is after the attack in Piazza Fontana in Milano in 1969 that the term strategy of tension was heard for the first time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[3] False flag operations is the expression used to talk about terrorist acts, conducted secretly by governments or organizations, and which are made to be seen as having been conducted by somebody else.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[4] « Stay-behind : les réseaux d’ingérence américains » (« the American interfering networks ») par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, August 20th, 2001.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[5] Stay behind is the name given to the clandestine structures trained to conduct a partisans’ war.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[6] Gladio designates the group of European secret armies that were under the guidance of the CIA.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[7] President of the Council of Ministers, member of the Christian Democracy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[8] « Rapport Andreotti sur l’Opération Gladio » ("Andreotti Report about the Gladio Operation") February 26th, 1991, Réseau Voltaire’s library.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[9] « 1980 : carnage à Bologne, 85 morts » (« 1980 :bloodshed in Bologne, 85 deaths ») Réseau Voltaire, March 12th, 2004.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[10] « La <st1:country-region st="on">France</st1:country-region> autorise l’action des services <st1:country-region st="on">US</st1:country-region> sur son territoire » (<st1:country-region st="on">France</st1:country-region> authorises the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> services to act on its territory ») by Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 8 mars 2004.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[11] LavonAffair, from the name of the Israeli minister of Defense who had to quit his work when Mossad was found to have been involved in these criminal acts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[12] See : « Odeurs de pétrole à la Maison-Blanche » (Smell of oil in the White House), Réseau Voltaire, Dec. 14 , 2001. « Les ombres du rapport Cheney » (the shadows of the Cheney rapport) by Arthur Lepic, March 30, 2004. « Le déplacement du pouvoir pétrolier » (the transfer of the power of oil) by Arthur Lepic, may 10th, 2004. « Dick Cheney, le pic pétrolier et le compte à rebours final » (Dick Cheney, the iol peak and the final downcount") by Kjell Aleklett, March 9, 2005.« L’adaptation économique à la raréfaction du pétrole » ( the economic adaptation to the rarefaction of oil) by Thierry Meyssan, June 9th, 2005.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[13] 9/11 American Empire : Intellectual speaks out, under the direction of David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press, 2006</p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-47102361287876848052007-01-28T10:33:00.000-08:002007-01-28T11:31:48.497-08:00Theologian David Ray Griffin: 9/11: The Myth & The Reality<span style="font-style: italic;">Here's the text of Theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin's lecture he gave at the Grand Lake Theater, March 30th 2006.<br /></span><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Wednesday, April 5 2006<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">9/11: The Myth and the Reality<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">by David Ray Griffin<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">(Authorized Version)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060405143535564">9/11 Truth.org<o:p></o:p></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">This lecture was delivered March 30, 2006, at Grand Lake Theater in </span><st1:city style="font-style: italic;" st="on">Oakland</st1:city><span style="font-style: italic;"> for Progressive Democrats of the </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:placename st="on">East</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Bay</st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-style: italic;">. Abbreviated versions of it were given in </span><st1:city style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:place st="on">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-style: italic;"> for the Democratic World Federalists on April 2 and the Commonwealth Club on April 3.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Although I am a philosopher of religion and theologian, I have spent most of my time during the past three years on 9/11---studying it, writing about it, and speaking about it. In this lecture, I will try to make clear why I believe this issue worthy of so much time and energy. I will do this in terms of the distinction between myth and reality.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am here using the term "myth" in two senses. In one sense, a myth is an idea that, while widely believed, is false, failing to correspond with reality.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a deeper sense, which is employed by students of religion, a myth serves as an orienting and mobilizing story for a people, a story that reminds them who they are and why they do what they do. When a story is called as a myth in this sense---which we can call Myth with a capital M---the focus is not on the story's relation to reality but on its function. This orienting and mobilizing function is possible, moreover, only because Myths with a capital M have religious overtones. Such a Myth is a Sacred Story.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">However, although to note that a story functions as a Myth in the religious sense is not necessarily to deny its truth, a story cannot function as a Sacred Myth within a community or nation unless it is believed to be true. In most cases, moreover, the truth of the Myth is taken on faith. It is not a matter of debate. If some people have the bad taste to question the truth of the Sacred Story, the keepers of the faith do not enter into debate with them. Rather, they ignore them or denounce them as blasphemers.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">According to the official story about 9/11, <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>, because of its goodness, was attacked by fanatical Arab Muslims who hate our freedoms. This story has functioned as a Sacred Myth for the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> since that fateful day. And this function appears to have been carefully orchestrated. The very next day, President Bush announced his intention to lead "a monumental struggle of Good versus Evil."1 Then on September 13, he declared that the following day would be a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks. And on that next day, the president himself, surrounded by Billy Graham, a cardinal, a rabbi, and an imam, delivered a sermon in the national cathedral, saying:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of Evil. War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. . . . In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>, because we are freedom's home and defender. And the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time. . . . [W]e ask almighty God to watch over our nation, and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. . . . And may He always guide our country. God bless America.2 <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Through this unprecedented event, in which the president of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> issued a declaration of war from a cathedral, French author Thierry Meyssan observed in 2002, "the American government consecrated . . . its version of events. From then on, any questioning of the official truth would be seen as sacrilege."3<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That attitude has remained dominant in the public sphere until this day, as the official account has continued to serve as a Sacred Story. When people raise questions about this story, they are either ignored, ridiculed as conspiracy theorists, or---as Charlie Sheen has recently experienced---attacked personally. When anyone asks what right the administration has to invade and occupy other countries, to imprison people indefinitely without due process, or even to ignore various laws, the answer is always the same: "9/11." Those who believe that <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> law and international law should be respected are dismissed as having "a pre-9/11 mind-set."<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Given the role the official account of 9/11 has played and continues to play, the most important question before our country today is whether this account, besides being a Myth in the religious sense, is also a myth in the pejorative sense---that is, whether it is simply false.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As a philosopher of religion, I would emphasize that the fact that a story has served as a Myth in the religious sense does not necessarily mean that it fails to correspond with reality. Many religious accounts contain at least a kernel of truth that can be defended in terms of a rational examination of the relevant evidence.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In many cases, however, stories that have served as religious Myths cannot stand up to rational scrutiny. When such a story is stripped of its halo and treated simply as a theory, rather than an unquestionable dogma, it cannot be defended as the best theory to account for the relevant facts. The official account of 9/11 is such a theory. When challenges to it are not treated as blasphemy, it can easily be seen to be composed of a number of ideas that are myths in the sense of not corresponding with reality. Using the word "myth" from now on only in this pejorative sense, I will discuss nine of the major myths contained in the official story about 9/11. I will thereby show that the official account of 9/11 cannot be defended, in light of the relevant evidence, against the main alternative account, according to which 9/11 was an inside job, orchestrated by people within our own government. I will begin with a few myths that prevent many people from even looking at the evidence for this alternative account.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 1: Our political and military leaders simply would not do such a thing.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This idea is widely believed. But it is undermined by much evidence. The United States, like many other countries, has often used deceit to begin wars---for example, the Mexican-American war, with its false claim that Mexico had "shed American blood on the American soil,"4 the Spanish-American war, with its "Remember the Maine" hoax,5 the war in the Philippines, with its false claim that the Filipinos fired first,6 and the Vietnam war, with its Tonkin Gulf hoax.7 The United States has also sometimes organized false flag terrorist attacks---killing innocent civilians, then blaming the attacks on an enemy country or group, often by planting evidence. We have even done this in allied countries. As Daniele Ganser has shown in his recent book NATO's Secret Armies, NATO, guided by the CIA and the Pentagon, arranged many such attacks in Western European countries during the Cold War. These attacks were successfully blamed on Communists and other leftists to discredit them in the eyes of the voting public.8<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Finally, in case it be thought that US military leaders would not orchestrate such attacks against US citizens, one needs only to read the plan known as Operations Northwoods, which the Joint Chiefs of Staff worked up in 1962, shortly after Fidel Castro had overthrown the pro-American dictator Batista. This plan contained various "pretexts which would provide justification for <st1:country-region st="on">US</st1:country-region> military intervention in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cuba</st1:place></st1:country-region>." American citizens would have been killed in some of them, such as a "Remember the <st1:state st="on">Maine</st1:state>" incident, in which: "We could blow up a <st1:country-region st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> ship in <st1:placename st="on">Guantánamo</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Bay</st1:placetype> and blame <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Cuba</st1:place></st1:country-region>."9<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At this point, some people, having seen evidence that US leaders would be morally capable of orchestrating 9/11, might avoid looking at the evidence by appeal to<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 2: Our political and military leaders would have had no motive for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This myth was reinforced by The 9/11 Commission Report. While explaining why al-Qaeda had ample motives for carrying out the attacks, this report mentions no motives that US leaders might have had. But the alleged motive of al-Qaeda---that it hated Americans and their freedoms---is dwarfed by a motive held by many members of the Bush-Cheney administration: the dream of establishing a global Pax Americana, the first all-inclusive empire in history.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This dream had been articulated by many neoconservatives, or neocons, throughout the 1990s, after the disintegration of the <st1:place st="on">Soviet Union</st1:place> made it seem possible. It was first officially articulated in the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, drafted by Paul Wolfowitz on behalf of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney---a document that has been called "a blueprint for permanent American global hegemony"10 and Cheney's "Plan . . . to rule the world."11<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Achieving this goal would require four things. One of these was getting control of the world's oil, especially in Central Asia and the Middle East, and the Bush-Cheney administration came to power with plans already made to attack <st1:country-region st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>. A second requirement was a technological transformation of the military, in which fighting from space would become central. A third requirement was an enormous increase in military spending, to pay for these new wars and for weaponizing space. A fourth need was to modify the doctrine of preemptive attack, so that <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> would be able to attack other countries even if they posed no imminent threat.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">These four elements would, moreover, require a fifth: an event that would make the American people ready to accept these imperialistic policies. As Zbigniew Brzezinski explained in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, the American people, with their democratic instincts, are reluctant to authorize the money and human sacrifices necessary for "imperial mobilization," and this refusal "limits . . . <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s . . . capacity for military intimidation."12 But this impediment could be overcome if there were "a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat"13 ---just as the American people were willing to enter World War II only after "the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."15 This same idea was suggested in 2000 in a document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses, which was put out by a neocon think tank called the Project for the New American Century, many members of which---including Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz---became central members of the Bush administration. This document, referring to the goal of transforming the military, said that this "process of transformation . . . is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event---like a new <st1:place st="on">Pearl Harbor</st1:place>."15<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When the attacks of 9/11 occurred, they were treated like a new <st1:place st="on">Pearl Harbor</st1:place>. Several members of the Bush administration spoke of 9/11 as providing opportunities. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that 9/11 created "the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world."16 It created, in particular, the opportunity to attack <st1:country-region st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>; to increase the military budget enormously; to go forward with military transformation; and to turn the new idea of preemptive warfare into official doctrine. This doctrinal change was announced in the 2002 version of the National Security Strategy, which said that <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> will "act against . . . emerging threats before they are fully formed."17<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, not only did the Bush administration reap huge benefits from 9/11. These were benefits that it had desired in advance. The idea that it would have had no motives for orchestrating 9/11 is a myth. But there is one more myth that keeps many people from looking at the evidence. This is<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 3: Such a big operation, involving so many people, could not have been kept a secret, because someone involved in it would have talked by now.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This claim is based on a more general myth, which is that is impossible for secret government operations to be kept secret very long, because someone always talks. But how could we know this? If some big operations have remained secret until now, we by definition do not know about them. Moreover, we do know of big some operations that were kept secret as long as necessary, such as the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb, and the war in Indonesia in 1957, which the United States government provoked, participated in, and was able to keep secret from its own people until a book about it appeared in 1995.18 Many more examples could be given.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We can understand, moreover, why those with inside knowledge of 9/11 would not talk. At least most of them would have been people with the proven ability to keep secrets. Those who were directly complicit would also be highly motivated to avoid public disgrace and the gas chamber. Those people who had knowledge without being complicit could be induced to keep quiet by means of more or less subtle threats---such as: "Joe, if you go forward with your plans to talk to the press about this, I don't know who is going to protect your wife and kids from some nutcase angered by your statement." Still another fact is that neither the government nor the mainstream press has, to say the least, shown any signs of wanting anyone to come forward.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I come now to<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 4: The 9/11 Commission, which has endorsed the official account, was an independent, impartial commission and hence can be believed.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One needs only to look at the reviews of The 9/11 Commission Report on Amazon.com to see that this assumption is widely accepted. Perhaps this is partly because in the Preface, the Commission's chairman and vice chairman tell us that the Commission sought "to be independent, impartial, thorough, and nonpartisan." But these terms do not describe the reality. The Commission's lack of impartiality can be partly explained by the fact that Chairman Thomas Kean, most of the other commissioners, and at least half of the members of the staff had conflicts of interest.19<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The most serious problem, however, is that the executive director, Philip Zelikow, was essentially a member of the Bush-Cheney administration. He had worked with Condoleezza Rice on the National Security Council in the administration of the first President Bush. When the Republicans were out of office during the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:city> administration, Zelikow and Rice wrote a book together. Rice then, as National Security Advisor for the second President Bush, had Zelikow help make the transition to the new National Security Council. After that, Zelikow was appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Zelikow was, therefore, the White House's man inside the 9/11 Commission.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And yet, as executive director, he guided the staff, which did virtually all the work of the Commission.20 Zelikow was in position, therefore, to decide which topics would be investigated and which ones not. One disgruntled member reportedly said at the time, "Zelikow is calling the shots. He's skewing the investigation and running it his own way."21<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Accordingly, insofar as the Commission was supposed to be investigating the failure of the Bush administration to prevent the attacks, the Commission was no more independent and impartial than if Dick Cheney had been running it. (The only difference is that no one got shot.)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Zelikow's ideological and personal closeness to the Bush administration is shown by one more fact that has until now not been widely known, even within the 9/11 truth movement. I mentioned earlier the Bush administration's National Security Strategy statement of 2002, in which the new doctrine of preemptive warfare was articulated. The primary author of this document, reports James Mann in Rise of the Vulcans, was none other than Philip Zelikow. According to Mann, after Rice saw a first draft, which had been written by Richard Haass in the State Department, she, wanting "something bolder," brought in Zelikow to completely rewrite it.22 The result was a very bellicose document that used 9/11 to justify the administration's so-called war on terror. Max Boot described it as a "quintessentially neo-conservative document."23<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We can understand, therefore, why the Commission, under Zelikow's leadership, would have ignored all evidence that would point to the truth: that 9/11 was a false flag operation intended to authorize the doctrines and funds needed for a new level of imperial mobilization.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The suggestion that 9/11 was a false flag operation brings us to:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 5: The Bush administration provided proof that the attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists under the direction of Osama bin Laden.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One of the main pieces of alleged proof involved the claim that the baggage of Mohamed Atta, called the ringleader of the hijackers, was discovered at the <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Boston</st1:place></st1:city> airport, from which Flight 11 departed. This baggage, besides containing Atta's passport and driver's license, also contained various types of incriminating evidence, such as flight simulator manuals, videotapes about Boeing airliners, and a letter to other hijackers about preparing for the mission. But the bags also contained Atta's will. Why would Atta have intended to take his will on a plane that he planned to fly into the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>? There are also many other problems in this story.24 We appear to have planted evidence.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Another element of the official story about the alleged hijackers is that they were very devout Muslims. The 9/11 Commission Report said that Atta had become very religious, even "fanatically so."25 The public was thereby led to believe that these men would have had no problem going on this suicide mission, because they were ready to meet their maker. Investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker, however, discovered that Atta loved cocaine, alcohol, gambling, pork, and lap dances.26 Several of the other alleged hijackers, the Wall Street Journal reported, had similar tastes.27 The Commission pretends, however, that none of this information was available. While admitting that Atta met other members of al-Qaeda in <st1:city st="on">Las Vegas</st1:city> shortly before 9/11, it says that it saw "no credible evidence explaining why, on this occasion and others, the operatives flew to or met in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Las Vegas</st1:place></st1:city>."28<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Another problem in the official account is that, although we are told that four or five of the alleged hijackers were on each of the four flights, no proof of this claim has been provided. The story, of course, is that they did not force their way onto the planes but were regular, ticketed passengers. If so, their names should be on the flight manifests. But the flight manifests that have been released contain neither the names of the alleged hijackers nor any other Arab names.29 We have also been given no proof that the remains of any of these men were found at any of the crash sites.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One final little problem is that several of these 19 men, according to stories published by the BBC and British newspapers, are still alive. For example, The 9/11 Commission Report named Waleed al-Shehri as one of the hijackers and reproduced the FBI's photograph of him. It even suggested that al-Shehri stabbed one of the flight attendants shortly before Flight 11 crashed into the north tower.30 But as BBC News had reported 11 days after 9/11, al-Shehri, having seen his photograph in newspapers and TV programs, notified authorities and journalists in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Morocco</st1:place></st1:country-region>, where he works as a pilot, that he is still alive.31<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But if there are various problems with the government's story about the hijackers, surely it presented proof that Osama bin Laden was behind the operation? Insofar as this belief is widely held, it also is a myth. Secretary of State Colin Powell promised to provide a white paper providing proof that the attacks had been planned by bin Laden, but this paper was never produced. British Prime Minister Tony Blair did provide such a paper, which was entitled "Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>." But it begins with the admission that it "does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Usama Bin Laden in a court of law."32 (So, evidence good enough to go to war, but not good enough to go to court.) And although the Taliban said that it would hand bin Laden over if the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> presented evidence of his involvement in 9/11, Bush refused.33<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This failure to provide proof was later said to be unnecessary because bin Laden, in a video allegedly found in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>, admitted responsibility for the attacks. This "confession" is now widely cited as proof. However, the man in this video has darker skin, fuller cheeks, and a broader nose than the Osama bin Laden of all the other videos.34 We again seem to have planted evidence.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There are, moreover, other problems in the official account of Osama bin Laden. For one thing, in June of 2001, when he was already America's "most wanted" criminal, he reportedly spent two weeks in the American Hospital in Dubai, at which he was treated by an American doctor and visited by the local CIA agent.35<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Also, after 9/11, when <st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region> was reportedly trying to get bin Laden "dead or alive," the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> military evidently allowed him to escape on at least four occasions, the last one being the "battle of Tora Bora," which the London Telegraph labeled "a grand charade."36 Shortly thereafter, Bush said: "I don't know where he [bin Laden] is. . . . I just don't spend that much time on him. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him."37 (Sometimes the truth slips out.)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In any case, the idea that the Bush administration has provided proof for its claims about Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda hijackers is a myth. I turn now to:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 6: The 9/11 attacks came as a surprise to the Bush administration.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Nothing is more essential to the official story than this idea. About 10 months after 9/11, for example, FBI Director Robert Mueller said: "To this day we have found no one in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> except the actual hijackers who knew of the plot."38 There is much evidence, however, that counts against this claim.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Put Options: One type of evidence involves an extraordinarily high volume of "put options" purchased in the three days prior to 9/11. To buy put options for a particular company is to bet that its stock price will go down. These extraordinary purchases included two, and only two, airlines--United and American--the two airlines used in the attacks. They also included Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which occupied 22 stories of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>. The price of these shares did, of course, plummet after 9/11, resulting in enormous profits for the purchasers. These unusual purchases, as the San Francisco Chronicle said, raise "suspicions that the investors . . . had advance knowledge of the strikes."39 It would appear, in other words, that those who made the purchases knew that United and American airliners were going to be used in attacks on the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The 9/11 Commission tried to show these suspicions to be unfounded. It claimed, for example, that the purchases for United Airlines do not show that anyone other than al-Qaeda had foreknowledge of the attacks, because 95 percent of these options were purchased by "[a] single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda."40 But the Commission thereby simply begged the question at issue, which is whether some organization other than al-Qaeda was involved in the planning.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Also, the Commission ignored the other crucial point, which is that US intelligence agencies closely monitor the stock market, looking for any anomalies that might provide clues about untoward events in the works.41 Therefore, regardless of who orchestrated the attacks, the US government would have had intelligence suggesting that United and American airliners were to be used for attacks on the World Trade Center.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bush and the Secret Service: Further evidence of advance knowledge is shown by the behavior of President Bush and his secret service agents during the photo-op at the school in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Florida</st1:place></st1:state> that morning. According to the official story, when Bush was first told that a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers, he dismissed the incident as merely a "horrible accident," which meant that they could go ahead with the photo-op.42 News of the second strike, however, would have indicated---assuming that the strikes were unexpected---that terrorists were using planes to attack high-value targets. And what could have been a higher-value target than the president of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">His location at the school had been highly publicized. The Secret Service agents should have feared, therefore, that a hijacked airliner might have been bearing down on the school at that very minute, ready to crash into it. It is standard procedure for the Secret Service to rush the president to a safe location when there is any sign that he may be in danger. And yet these agents allowed the president to remain another half hour, even permitting him to deliver an address on television, thereby announcing to the world that he was still at the school.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Would not this behavior be explainable only if the head of the Secret Service detail knew that the planned attacks did not include an attack on the president?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The 9/11 Commission, of course, did not ask this question. It was content to report that "[t]he Secret Service told us they . . . did not think it imperative for [the president] to run out the door."43 Maintaining decorum, in other words, was more important than protecting the president's life. Can anyone seriously believe that highly trained Secret Service agents would act this way in a situation of genuine danger?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mineta's Report about Cheney: The attack on the Pentagon, as well as the attack on the <st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype>, was said to be a surprise, even though it occurred over a half hour after the second strike on the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place>. A Pentagon spokesperson, in explaining why the Pentagon was not evacuated before it was struck, claimed that "[t]he Pentagon was simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way."44 The 9/11 Commission claimed that there was no warning about an unidentified aircraft heading towards <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> until 9:36 and hence only "one or two minutes" before the Pentagon was struck at 9:38.45<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But this claim is contradicted by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony about an episode that occurred in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the White House. In open testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Mineta gave this account:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, "The plane is 50 miles out." "The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to "the plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the Vice President, "Do the orders still stand?" And the Vice President . . . said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"46 <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mineta said that that this final exchange occurred at about 9:25 or 9:26.47 According to Mineta's account, therefore, Cheney knew about an approaching aircraft more than 12 minutes before 9:38, when the Pentagon was struck. Assuming that Cheney would not have kept this information from his good friend Donald Rumsfeld, Mineta's testimony contradicts the claim of the Pentagon and the 9/11 Commission that there was no advance knowledge, at least not sufficient advance knowledge to have evacuated the Pentagon, which would have saved 125 lives.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This example gives us one of the clearest examples of the fact that the Zelikow-led 9/11 Commission cannot be trusted. Having claimed that there was no knowledge that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon until the last minute or so, it simply omitted Mineta's testimony to the contrary, which had been given in open testimony to the Commission itself, from its final report. Then, to rule out even the possibility that the episode reported by Mineta could have occurred, it claimed that Cheney did not even arrive in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center until almost 10:00 o'clock, hence about 20 minutes after the Pentagon was struck.48 But this claim, besides contradicting Mineta's eyewitness testimony that Cheney was already there when Mineta arrived at 9:20, also contradicts all other reports as to when Cheney had arrived there, including a report by Cheney himself.49<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In light of this information about the put options, the Secret Service, and Mineta's testimony, we can reject as a myth the idea that the attacks were unexpected. However, even if the attacks had been unexpected, should they not have been intercepted? This brings us to:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 7: US officials have explained why the hijacked airliners were not intercepted.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Actually, there is a sense in which this statement is true. <st1:country-region st="on">US</st1:country-region> officials have explained why the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> military did not prevent the attacks. The problem, however, is that they have given three explanations, each of which is contradicted by the others and none of which is a satisfactory explanation. I will explain.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">According to standard operating procedures, if an FAA flight controller notices anything that suggests a possible hijacking, the controller is to contact a superior. If the problem cannot be fixed quickly (within about a minute), the superior is to ask NORAD---the North American Aerospace Defense Command---to send up, or "scramble," jet fighters to find out what is going on. NORAD then issues a scramble order to the nearest air force base with fighters on alert.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The jet fighters at NORAD's disposal could respond very quickly: According to the US Air Force website, F-15s can go from "scramble order" to 29,000 feet in only 2.5 minutes, after which they can fly over 1800 miles per hour.50 Therefore--according to General Ralph Eberhart, the head of NORAD---after the FAA senses that something is wrong, "it takes about one minute" for it to contact NORAD, after which, according to a spokesperson, NORAD can scramble fighter jets "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States."51 These statements were, to be sure, made after 9/11, so we might suspect that they reflect a post-9/11 speed-up in procedures. But an Air Traffic Control document put out in 1998 warned pilots that any airplanes persisting in unusual behavior "will likely find two [jet fighters] on their tail within 10 or so minutes."52<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If these procedures had been carried out on the morning of 9/11, AA Flight 11 and UA Flight 175 would have been intercepted before they could have reached <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Manhattan</st1:place></st1:city>, and AA Flight 77 would have been intercepted long before it could have reached the Pentagon.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Such interceptions are routine, being carried out about 100 times a year. A month after 9/11, the Calgary Herald reported that in the year 2000, NORAD had scrambled fighters 129 times. Do these scrambles regularly result in interceptions? Just a few days after 9/11, Major Mike Snyder, a NORAD spokesperson, told the Boston Globe that "[NORAD's] fighters routinely intercept aircraft."53 Why did such interceptions not occur on 9/11?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">During the first few days, the public was told that no fighter jets were sent up until after the strike on the Pentagon at 9:38. However, it was also reported that signs of Flight 11's hijacking had been observed at 8:15. That would mean that although interceptions usually occur within "10 or so" minutes after signs of trouble are observed, in this case 80 or so minutes had elapsed before fighters were even airborne. This story suggested that a "stand-down" order had been issued.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Within a few days, however, a second story was put out, according to which NORAD had sent up fighters but, because notification from the FAA had been very slow in coming, the fighters arrived too late. On September 18, NORAD made this second story official, embodying it in a timeline, which indicated when NORAD had been notified by the FAA about each airplane and when it had scrambled fighters in response.54<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Critics showed, however, that even if the FAA notifications had come as late as NORAD's timeline indicated, NORAD's jets would have had time to make the interceptions.55 This second story did not, therefore, remove the suspicion that a stand-down order had been given.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hoping to overcome this problem, The 9/11 Commission Report provided a third account, according to which, contrary to NORAD's timeline of September 18, 2001, the FAA did not notify NORAD about Flight 175 until after it had struck the south tower or about Flight 77 until after it had struck the Pentagon. But there are serious problems with this third story.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One problem is the very fact that it is the third story. Normally, when a suspect in a criminal investigation keeps changing his story, we get suspicious. Let's say that the police ask Charlie Jones where he was Saturday night. He says he was at the movie theater, but they say, "No, the movie theater has been closed all week." Then Charlie says, "Oh, that's right, I was with my girl friend." But, the police say, "No, we checked with her and she was home with her husband." If at that point Charlie says, "Oh, now I remember, I was home reading my Bible," you are probably not going to believe him. And yet that's what we have here. The military told one story right after 9/11, another story a week later, and a third story through The 9/11 Commission Report in 2004.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A second problem with this third story is that it contradicts several features of the second story, which had served as the official story for almost three years.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For example, NORAD's timeline of September 18, 2001, had indicated that the FAA had notified it about Flight 175 exactly 20 minutes before it hit its target and about Flight 77 some 14 minutes before the Pentagon was struck. The 9/11 Commission maintains that both of these statements were "incorrect"---that, really, there had been no notification about these flights until after they hit their targets. This, it claims, is why the military had failed to intercept them.56 But if NORAD's timeline was false, as the Commission now claims, NORAD must have been either lying or confused. But it is hard to believe that it could have been confused one week after 9/11. So it must have been lying. But if the military's second story was a lie, why should we believe this third one?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Further scepticism about this third story arises from the fact that it is contradicted by considerable evidence. For example, the Commission's claim that the military did not know about Flight 175 until it crashed is contradicted by a report involving Captain Michael Jellinek, a Canadian who on 9/11 was overseeing NORAD's headquarters in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Colorado</st1:place></st1:state>. According to a story in the Toronto Star, Jellinek was on the phone with NORAD as he watched Flight 175 crash into the south tower. He then asked NORAD: "Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?"--to which NORAD said "yes."57<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The 9/11 Commission's claims about Flights 175 and 77 are also contradicted by a memo sent to the Commission by Laura Brown of the FAA. Her memo stated that at about 8:50 the FAA had set up a teleconference, in which it started sharing information with the military about all flights. She specifically mentioned Flight 77, indicating that the FAA had been sharing information about it even before the formal notification time of 9:24. Her memo, which is available on the Web,58 was discussed by the 9/11 Commission and read into its record on May 23, 2003.59 But Zelikow's 9/11 Commission Report fails to mention this memo.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Because of these and still more problems, which I have discussed in my book on the 9/11 Commission's report and also in a lecture called "Flights of Fancy",60 this third story does not remove the grounds for suspicion that a stand-down order had been issued.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There is, moreover, ear-witness testimony for this suspicion. An upper management official at LAX, who needs to remain anonymous, has told me that he overheard members of LAX Security--including officers from the FBI and LAPD---interacting on their walkie-talkies shortly after the attacks. In some cases, he could hear both sides of the conversation. At first, the LAX officials were told that the airplanes that attacked <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> and the Pentagon had not been intercepted because the FAA had not notified NORAD about the hijackings. But later, he reports, they were told that NORAD had been notified but did not respond because it had been "ordered to stand down." When LAX security officials asked who had issued that order, they were told that it had come "from the highest level of the White House."61<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Accordingly, the idea that the attacks could not have been prevented is a myth. I turn now to:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 8: Official Reports have explained why the <st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype> and Building 7 of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> collapsed.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This claim suffers from the same problem as the previous one: We have had three explanations, each of which contradicts the others and none of which is anywhere close to adequate. The first explanation, widely disseminated through television specials, was that the buildings collapsed because their steel columns were melted by the jet-fuel-fed fires. But this explanation contained many problems, the most obvious of which is that steel does not begin to melt until about 2800 degrees F, while open fires based on hydrocarbons such as kerosene---which is what jet fuel is---cannot under the most ideal circumstances rise above 1700 degrees.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A second explanation, endorsed by The 9/11 Commission Report, is a "pancake" theory, according to which the fires, while not melting the steel, heated it up sufficiently to cause the floors weakened by the airplane strikes to break loose from the steel columns---both those in the core of the building and those around the outside. All the floors above the strike zone hence fell down on the floor below the strike zone, causing it to break free, and this started a chain reaction, so the floors pancaked all the way down. But this explanation also suffered from many problems, the most obvious of which was that it could not explain why the buildings collapsed into a pile of rubble only a few stories high. The core of each of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place> consisted of 47 massive steel columns. If the floors had broken loose from them, these columns would have still been sticking up a thousand feet in the air. The 9/11 Commission Report tried to cover up this problem by claiming that the core of each tower consisted of "a hollow steel shaft."62 But those massive steel columns could not be wished away.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The definitive explanation was supposed to be the third one, issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, often simply called NIST. The NIST Report claimed that when the floors collapsed, they, rather than breaking free from the columns, pulled on them, causing the perimeter columns to become unstable. This instability then increased the gravity load on the core columns, which had been weakened by tremendously hot fires in the core, which, NIST claims, reached 1832?F, and this combination of factors resulted in "global collapse."63<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But, as physicists Jim Hoffman and Steven Jones have shown, this account is riddled with problems. One of these is that NIST's claim about tremendously hot fires in the core is completely unsupported by evidence. NIST's own studies found no evidence that any of the core columns had reached temperatures of even 482?F (250?C).64 A second problem is that, even if this sequence of events had occurred, NIST provided no explanation as to why it would have produced global---that is, total---collapse. The NIST Report asserts that "column failure" occurred in the core as well as the perimeter columns. But this remains a bare assertion. There is no plausible explanation of why the core columns would have broken, or even buckled, so as to produce global collapse.65<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And this is only to begin to enumerate the problems in NIST's theory, all of which follow from the fact that it, like the previous two theories, is essentially a fire theory, according to which the buildings were brought down primarily by fire. In the case of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place>, of course, the impact of the airplanes is said to have played a role. But most experts who support the official theory attribute the collapses primarily to the fires. NIST, for example, says that the main contribution of the airplanes, aside from providing jet fuel, was to dislodge a lot of the fire-proofing from the steel, thereby making it vulnerable to the fires.66 But these fire-theories face several formidable problems.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">First, the fires in these three buildings were not very hot, very big, or very long-lasting, compared with fires in some steel-frame high-rises that did not collapse. A 1991 fire in <st1:city st="on">Philadelphia</st1:city> burned 18 hours, and a 2004 fire in <st1:city st="on">Caracas</st1:city> burned 17 hours, without causing even a partial collapse.67 By contrast, the fires in the north and south towers burned only 102 and 56 minutes, respectively, before they collapsed, and neither fire, unlike the <st1:city st="on">Philadelphia</st1:city> and <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Caracas</st1:place></st1:city> fires, was hot enough to break windows.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Second, total collapses of steel-frame high-rise buildings have never---either before or after 9/11---been brought about by fire alone, or fire combined with externally produced structural damage. The collapse of Building 7 has been recognized as especially difficult to explain. It was not hit by a plane, so the explanation has to rely on fire alone, and yet, because there was no jet fuel to get a big fire started, this building had fires on only two or three floors, according to several witnesses68 and all the photographic evidence.69 FEMA admitted that the best explanation it could come up with it had "only a low probability of occurrence."70 The 9/11 Commission Report implicitly admitted that it could not explain the collapse of Building 7 by not even mentioning it. The NIST Report, which could not claim that the fire-proofing had gotten knocked off the steel of this building, has yet to offer an explanation as to why it collapsed.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And NIST, like the 9/11 Commission, evidently did not want citizens asking why Building 7 collapsed even though it was not hit by a plane. On its Website, it says that one of its objectives is to determine "why and how World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, and 7 collapsed after the initial impact of the aircraft"---thereby implying that building 7, like the Twin Towers, was hit by a plane.71<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In any case, a third problem with the official account of the collapse of these three buildings is that all prior and subsequent total collapses of steel-frame high-rises have been caused by explosives in the procedure known as "controlled demolition." This problem is made even more severe by the fact that the collapses of these three buildings manifested many standard features of the most difficult type of controlled demolition, known as implosion. I will mention seven such features.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">First, the collapses began suddenly. Steel, if weakened by fire, would gradually begin to sag. But as one can see from videos available on the Web,72 all three buildings are completely motionless up to the moment they begin to collapse.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Second, if these huge buildings had toppled over, they would have caused enormous death and destruction. But they came straight down. This straight-down collapse is the whole point of the type of controlled demolition called implosion, which only a few companies in the world can perform.73<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Third, these buildings collapsed at virtually free-fall speed, which means that the lower floors, with all their steel and concrete, were offering no resistance to the upper floors.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fourth, as mentioned earlier, the collapses were total collapses, resulting in piles of rubble only a few stories high. This means that the enormous steel columns in the core of each building had to be broken into rather short segments---which is what explosives do.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fifth, great quantities of molten steel were produced, which means that the steel had been heated up to several thousand degrees. Witnesses during the clean-up reported, moreover, that sometimes when a piece of steel was lifted out of the rubble, molten metal would be dripping from the end.74<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sixth, according to many fire fighters, medical workers, journalists, and <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> employees, many explosions went off before and after the collapses. For example, Fire Captain Dennis Tardio, speaking of the south tower, said: "I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom."75 Firefighter Richard Banaciski said: "It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions."76 Thanks to the release in August of 2005 of the oral histories recorded by the Fire Department of New York shortly after 9/11, dozens of testimonies of this type are now available. I have published an essay on them, which will be included---along with an essay on "The Destruction of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>," which I am here summarizing---in a forthcoming book on 9/11 and Christian faith.77<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A seventh feature of controlled implosions is the production of large quantities of dust. In the case of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place>, virtually everything except the steel---all the concrete, desks, computers---was pulverized into very tiny dust particles.78<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The official theory cannot explain one, let alone all seven, of these features---at least, as Jim Hoffman and Steven Jones have pointed out, without violating several basic laws of physics.79 But the theory of controlled demolition easily explains all these features.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">These facts are inconsistent with the idea that al-Qaeda terrorists were responsible. Foreign terrorists could not have obtained access to the buildings for the hours needed to plant the explosives. Terrorists working for the Bush-Cheney administration, by contrast, could have gotten such access, given the fact that Marvin Bush and Wirt Walker III---the president's brother and cousin, respectively---were principals of the company in charge of security for the World Trade Center.80 Al-Qaeda terrorists would also probably not have had the courtesy to ensure that these huge buildings came straight down, rather than falling over onto other buildings. They also would not have had the necessary expertise.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Another relevant fact is that evidence was destroyed. An examination of the buildings' steel beams and columns could have shown whether explosives had been used to slice them. But virtually all of the steel was removed before it could be properly examined,81 then put on ships to <st1:place st="on">Asia</st1:place> to be melted down.82 It is usually a federal offense to remove anything from a crime scene. But here the removal of over 100 tons of steel, the biggest destruction of evidence in history, was carried out under the supervision of federal officials.83<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Evidence was also apparently planted. The passport of one of the hijackers on Flight 11 was allegedly found in the rubble, having survived the fire caused by the crash into the north tower and also whatever caused everything else in this building except the steel to be pulverized.84 As a story in the Guardian said, "the idea that [this] passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged would [test] the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism."85<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To sum up: The idea that US officials have given a satisfactory, or even close to satisfactory, explanation of the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings is a myth. And they have implicitly admitted this by refusing to engage in rational debate about it. For example, Michael Newman, a spokesman for NIST, reportedly said during a recent interview that "none of the NIST scientists would participate in any public debate" with scientists who reject their report. When Newman was asked why NIST would avoid public debate if it had confidence in its report, Newman replied: "Because there is no winning in such debates."85 In that same interview, Newman had compared people who reject the government's account of the collapses with people who believe in Bigfoot and a flat earth.86 And yet he fears that his scientists would not be able to show up these fools in a public debate!<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In any case, I come now to the final myth, which is:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Myth Number 9: There is no doubt that Flight 77, under the control of al-Qaeda hijacker Hani Hanjour, struck the Pentagon.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There are, in fact, many reasons to doubt this claim.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We have, in the first place, reasons to doubt that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon was under the control of Hani Hanjour. For one thing, the aircraft, before striking the Pentagon, reportedly executed a 270-degree downward spiral, and yet Hani Hanjour was known as a terrible pilot, who could not safely fly even a small plane.87 Russ Wittenberg, who flew large commercial airliners for 35 years after serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, says that it would have been "totally impossible for an amateur who couldn't even fly a Cessna to maneuver the jetliner in such a highly professional manner."88<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Moreover, as a result of that very difficult maneuver, the Pentagon's west wing was struck, but terrorists brilliant enough to get through the US military's defense system would have known that this was the worst place to strike, for several reasons: The west wing had been reinforced, so the damage was less severe than a strike anywhere else would have been. This wing was still being renovated, so relatively few people were there; a strike anywhere else would have killed thousands of people, rather than 125. And the secretary of defense and all the top brass, whom terrorists would presumably have wanted to kill, were in the east wing. Why would an al-Qaeda pilot have executed a very difficult maneuver to hit the west wing when he could have simply crashed into the roof of the east wing?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A second major problem with the official story: There are reasons to believe that the Pentagon was struck only because officials at the Pentagon wanted it to be struck. For one thing, Flight 77 allegedly, after making a U-turn in the mid-west, flew back to <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:state> undetected for 40 minutes. And yet the US military, which by then clearly knew that hijacked airliners were being used as weapons, has the best radar systems in the world, one of which, it brags, "does not miss anything occurring in North American airspace."89 The idea that a large airliner could have slipped through, especially during a time of heightened alert, is absurd.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Also, the Pentagon is surely the best defended building on the planet.90 It is not only within the P-56-A restricted air space that extends 17 miles in all directions from the Washington Monument, but also within P-56-B, the three-mile ultra-restricted zone above the White House, the Capitol, and the Pentagon. The Pentagon is only a few miles from Andrews Air Force Base, which has at least three squadrons with fighter jets on alert at all times. (The claim by The 9/11 Commission Report that no fighters were on alert the morning of 9/11 is wholly implausible, as I have explained in my critique of this report.91) The Pentagon, moreover, is reportedly protected by batteries of surface-to-air missiles, so if any aircraft without a US military transponder were to enter the Pentagon's airspace, it would be shot down.92 Even if the aircraft that hit the Pentagon had been Flight 77, therefore, it could have succeeded only because officials in the Pentagon turned off its missiles as well as ordering the fighters from Andrews to stand down.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A third major problem with the official story is that there is considerable evidence that it could not have been Flight 77 because it was not a Boeing 757. For one thing, the strike on the Pentagon, unlike the strikes on the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place>, reportedly did not create a detectable seismic signal.93<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Also, according to several witnesses and many people who have studied the available photographs, both the damage and the debris were inconsistent with a strike by a large airliner. That issue, however, is too complex to discuss here, as is the issue of the what should be inferred from the conflicting eyewitness testimony.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Deferring those topics to another time, I will conclude by pointing out that the suspicion that the Pentagon was not struck by a 757, as the government claims, is supported by the fact that evidence was destroyed. Shortly after the strike, government agents picked up debris and carried it off.94 Then the entire lawn was covered with dirt and gravel, so that any remaining forensic evidence was literally covered up.95<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Also, the videos from security cameras on the nearby Citgo gas station and Sheraton Hotel, which would show what really hit the Pentagon, were immediately confiscated by agents of the FBI, and the Department of Justice has to this day refused to release them.96 If these videos would prove that the Pentagon was really hit by a 757, most of us would assume, the government would release them.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It would seem, for many reasons, that the official story of 9/11, which has served as a religious Myth in the intervening years, is a myth in the pejorative sense of a story that does not correspond to reality. One sign of a story that is a myth in this sense, I have pointed out, is that it cannot be rationally defended, and the official story has never been publicly defended against informed criticism by any member of NIST, the 9/11 Commission, or the Bush administration. An illustration: After Charlie Sheen had made public his skepticism about the official story, CNN's "Showbiz Tonight" wanted to have a debate, about the points he had raised, between a representative of the government and a representative of 9/11Truth.org. But the producers reportedly could find no member of the government willing to appear on the show. In this unwillingness of the government to appear on an entertainment show to answer questions raised by an actor, we would seem to have the clearest possible sign that the government's story is myth, not reality.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If so, we must demand that the government immediately cease implementing the policies that have been justified by this myth.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When charges were brought against some members of <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Duke</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>'s lacrosse team in March of 2006, the president of the university immediately cancelled all future games until the truth of the charges could be decided. But surely, as serious as the charges were in that case, the charges against the official story of 9/11 are far more serious, for this story, serving as a national religious Myth, has been used to justify two wars, which have caused many tens of thousands of deaths; to start a more general war on Islam, in which Muslims are considered guilty until proven innocent; to annul and violate civil rights; and to increase our military spending, which was already greater than that of the rest of the world combined, by hundreds of billions of dollars, partly so that weapons can be put into space.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Congress needs to put the implementation of these policies on hold until there is a truly independent investigation, carried out by qualified individuals who are not members of the very circles that, if 9/11 truly was a false flag operation, planned it, carried it out, and then covered it up.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">NOTES<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">1. "Remarks by the President in Photo Opportunity with the National Security Team" (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010912-4.html), quoted in Thierry Meyssan, 9:11: The Big Lie (<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>: Carnot, 2002), 77.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">2. "President's Remarks at National Day of Prayer and Remembrance" (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010914-2.html), quoted in Meyssan, 9/11: The Big Lie, 76-77.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">3. Meyssan, 9/11: The Big Lie, 79.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">4. Howard Zinn, A People's History of the <st1:country-region st="on">United States</st1:country-region> (1980; <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: HarperPerennial, 1990), 150. Richard Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (1960; <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>, Norton, 1974), 143.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">5. Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Philippines</st1:place></st1:country-region>, 1899-1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 11.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">6. Ibid., 57-62.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">7. George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How American Became Involved in <st1:country-region st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region> (Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1987), 220; Marilyn B. Young, The <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region> Wars 1945-1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 119.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">8. Daniele Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (<st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Frank Cass, 2005).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">9. This memorandum can be found at the National Security Archive, April 30, 2001 (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430). It was revealed to US readers by James Bamford in Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-secret National Security Agency (2001: <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Anchor Books, 2002), 82-91.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">10. Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of <st1:country-region st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> Diplomacy (<st1:city st="on">Cambridge</st1:city>: <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Harvard</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place> Press, 2002), 44.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">11. David Armstrong, "Dick Cheney's Song of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>," Harper's, October, 2002.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">12. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 35-36.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">13. Ibid., 212.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">14. Ibid., 212, 24-25.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">15. Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September 2000 (www.newamericancentury.org), 51.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">16. "Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with the New York Times," New York Times, October 12, 2001. Similar sentiments were expressed by Condoleezza Rice and President Bush. On Rice, see Nicholas Lemann, "The Next World Order: The Bush Administration May Have a Brand-New Doctrine of Power," New Yorker, April 1, 2002 (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/020401fa_FACT1), and Rice, "Remarks by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Terrorism and Foreign Policy," April 29, 2002 (www.whitehouse.gov); on Bush, see "Bush Vows to ?Whip Terrorism,'" Reuters, Sept. 14, 2001, and Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 32.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">17. The National Security Strategy of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States of America</st1:place></st1:country-region>, September 2002 (www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html), cover letter.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">18. Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Indonesia</st1:place></st1:country-region> (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">19. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the <st1:country-region st="on">United States</st1:country-region>, Authorized Edition [<st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: W. W. Norton, 2004], xv. David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Northampton</st1:place></st1:city>: Interlink Books, 2005), 285-95.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">20. Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, in their Preface, say: "The professional staff, headed by Philip Zelikow, . . . conducted the exacting investigative work upon which the Commission has built" (The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Authorized Edition [New York: W. W. Norton, 2004], xvi-xvii).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">21. These statements are quoted in Peter Lance, Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding about the War on Terror (<st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Harper-Collins/ReganBooks, 2004), 139-40.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">22. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (<st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Viking, 2004), 316, 331.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">23. Max Boot, "Think Again: Neocons," Foreign Policy, January/February 2004, 18 (http://www.cfr.org/publication/7592/think_again.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">24. See Rowland Morgan and Ian Henshall, 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions (<st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Carroll & Graf, 2005), 180-83.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">25. The 9/11 Commission Report, 116.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">26. Daniel Hopsicker, Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta and the 9/11 Cover-up in <st1:state st="on">Florida</st1:state> (<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Eugene</st1:place></st1:city>: MacCowPress, 2004). These details from Hopsicker's book are summarized in his "Top Ten things You Never Knew about Mohamed Atta," Mad Cow Morning News, June 7, 2004 (www.madcowprod.com/index60.html), and in an interview in the Guerrilla News Forum, June 17, 2004 (www.guerrillanews.com/intelligence/doc4660.html), summarized in NPH, 2nd ed., 243n1.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">27. "Terrorist Stag Parties," Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2001 (http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95001298).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">28. The 9/11 Commission Report, 248.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">29. The flight manifest for AA 11 that was published by CNN can be seen at www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html. The manifests for the other flights can be located by simply changing that part of the URL. The manifest for UA 93, for example, is at www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/ua93.victims.html.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">30. The 9/11 Commission Report, 19-20.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">31. David Bamford, "Hijack ?Suspect' Alive in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Morocco</st1:place></st1:country-region>," BBC News, Sept. 22, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1558669.stm). Several other alleged hijackers were reported to be alive in David Harrison, "Revealed: The Men with Stolen Identities," Telegraph, September 23, 2001 (www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/23/widen23.xml). At least one of these claims, that involving Ahmed al-Nami, was based on a confusion. The al-Nami contacted by Harrison was 33, whereas the man of that name who was supposedly on Flight 93, which supposedly crashed in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:place></st1:state>, was only 21. See Christine Lamb, "The Six Sons of Asir," Telegraph, September 15, 2002 (http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/09/15/wdoss215.xml). But no such explanation seems possible with Waleed al-Shehri, since the FBI photograph is clearly of a still-living man of that name.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">32. Francis A. Boyle, "Bush, Jr., September 11th and the Rule of Law," which can be found in The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence: Could The US War On Terrorism Go Nuclear? (<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:city>: Clarity Press, 2002) or at http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/CrimNukDetSI.html.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">33. "White House Warns Taliban: ?We Will Defeat You'" (CNN.com, Sept. 21, 2001). Four weeks after the attacks began, a Taliban spokesman said: "We are not a province of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, to be issued orders to. We have asked for proof of Osama's involvement, but they have refused. Why?" (Kathy Gannon, AP, "Taliban Willing To Talk, But Wants U.S. Respect" [http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/focus/terrorism/archives/1001/w01taliban.html]).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">34. See "The Fake bin Laden Video" (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osamatape.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">35. Richard Labeviere, "CIA Agent Allegedly Met Bin Laden in July," Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001. This story was also reported in Anthony Sampson, "CIA Agent Alleged to Have Met Bin Laden in July," Guardian, Nov. 1, and Adam Sage, "Ailing bin Laden ?Treated for Kidney Disease,'" London Times, Nov. 1.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">36. Telegraph, Feb. 23, 2002; <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 60.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">37. President George W. Bush, Conference, March 13, 2002 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">38. Philip Shenon, "FBI Gave Secret Files to Terrorist Suspect," <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state> Times, Sept. 28, 2002, citing Mueller's testimony to Congress on June 18, 2002.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">39. <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city> Chronicle, Sept. 29, 2001.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">40. The 9/11 Commission Report, 499 n. 130.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">41. Investigative journalist Michael Ruppert, a former detective for the Los Angeles Police Department, has written: "It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades--in real time--as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests" ("Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA's Highest Ranks," From the Wilderness Publications (www.fromthewilderness.com or www.copvcia.com), Oct. 9, 2001. Nafeez Ahmed, besides quoting Ruppert's remark, points out that "UPI reported that the U.S.-sponsored ECHELON intelligence network closely monitors stock trading," citing United Press International, Feb. 13, 2001. See Nafeez Ahmed, The War on Freedom: How and Why <st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region> Was Attacked September 11, 2001 (<st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Joshua Tree</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Calif.</st1:state></st1:place>: Tree of Life Publications, 2002), 120.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">42. CNN, Dec. 4, 2001, The Daily Mail, Sept. 8, 2002, and ABC News, Sept. 11, 2002.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">43. The 9/11 Commission Report, 39.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">44. "Air Attack on Pentagon Indicates Weaknesses," Newsday, September 23, 2001.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">45. The 9/11 Commission Report, 34.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">46. "Statement of Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, May 23, 2003" (available at www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/commissiontestimony052303.htm).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">47. Ibid.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">48. The 9/11 Commission Report, 40.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">49. See the summary of evidence in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 241-44, which includes discussion of the fact that the Commission cited no evidence for its revisionist timeline.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">50. Cited in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 140.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">51. Ibid.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">52. Ibid., 141.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">53. See the Calgary Herald, Oct. 13, 2001, and Glen Johnson, "Otis Fighter Jets Scrambled Too Late to Halt the Attacks," Boston Globe, Sept. 15, 2001 [http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=print]). At an average of 100 scrambles a year, fighters would have been scrambled about 1000 times in the decade prior to 9/11. One of the many falsehoods in a essay entitled "9/11: Debunking Myths," which was published by Popular Mechanics (March 2005), is its claim that in the decade before 9/11, there had been only one interception, that of golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet. This essay's "senior researcher," 25-year old Benjamin Chertoff, has (on a radio show) tried to reconcile this claim with the fact that fighters are scrambled about 100 times per year by saying that these statements speak only of scrambles, not interceptions. But Chertoff's position would require the claim that only one of the 1000 scrambles in that period resulted in interceptions---that the other 999 fighters were called back before they actually made the interception. Besides being highly improbable, this interpretation contradicts Major Snyder's statement that interceptions are carried out routinely.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">54. <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 141-43.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">55. Ibid., 139-48.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">56. Ibid., 192.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">57. Ibid., 176.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">58. Laura Brown, "FAA Communications with NORAD on September 11, 2001," available at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2004081200421797.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">59. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, May 23, 2003 (http://www.911commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm). Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, who read the memo into the record, reported that he had been told that it had been authored by two "high level individuals at FAA, Mr. Asmus and Ms. Schuessler." However, I was told by Laura Brown during a telephone conversation on August 15, 2004, that she had written the memo.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">60. <st1:city st="on">Griffin</st1:city>, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 155-226; "Flights of Fancy: The 9/11 Commission's Incredible Tales of Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93," Global Outlook, 12 (Fall-Winter 2006), and in Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11 (<st1:city st="on">Louisville</st1:city>: <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Westminster</st1:place></st1:city> John Knox Press, 2006).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">61. "My Observation of LAX Security Events on 9/11," by an Upper Management LAX Official. Although this official needs to remain anonymous, he has said that he would be willing to take a polygraph test if his anonymity could be protected.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">62. The 9/11 Commission Report, 541 note 1.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">63. Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place> (Draft), June, 2005, usually called the NIST Report, 28, 143.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">64. And, as Jim Hoffman says, NIST's claim about these tremendously hot fires in the core is especially absurd given the fact that the core "had very little fuel; was far from any source of fresh air; had huge steel columns to wick away the heat; [and] does not show evidence of fires in any of the photographs or videos." All the evidence, in other words, suggests that none of the core columns would have reached the temperatures of some of the perimeter columns ("Building a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century," 911 Research, Dec. 8, 2005 (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">65. See Hoffman, ibid., and Stephen E. Jones, "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink, 2006); also available at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">66. The NIST Report (xliii and 171) says: "the towers withstood the impacts and would have remained standing were it not for the dislodged insulation (fireproofing) and the subsequent multifloor fires."<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">67. "High-Rise Office Building Fire One Meridian Plaza Philadelphia, Pennsylvania," FEMA (http://usfa.fema.gov/fire-service/techreports/tr049.shtm); "Fire Practically Destroys <st1:country-region st="on">Venezuela</st1:country-region>'s <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Tallest</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Building</st1:placetype></st1:place>" (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/venezuela_fire.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">68. Chief Thomas McCarthy of the FDNY said that while the firefighters "were waiting for 7 World Trade to come down," there was "fire on three separate floors" (Oral History of Thomas McCarthy, 10-11). Emergency medical technician Decosta Wright said: "I think the fourth floor was on fire. . . . [W]e were like, are you guys going to put that fire out?" (Oral History of Decosta Wright, 11). These quotations are from the 9/11 oral histories recorded by the New York Fire Department at the end of 2001 but released to the public (after a court battle) only in August 2005, at which time they were made available on a New York Times website (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">69. A photograph taken by Terry Schmidt can be seen on page 63 of Eric Hufschmid's Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (<st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Goleta</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">Calif.</st1:state></st1:place>: Endpoint Software, 2002) or on Schmidt's website (http://www.nycwireless.net/Images/wtc2/). According to Schmidt, this photo was taken between 3:09 and 3:16 PM, hence only a little over two hours before Building 7 collapsed. It shows that on the north side of the building, fires were visible only on floors 7 and 12. Therefore, if there were more fires on the south side, which faced the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype></st1:place>, they were not big enough to be seen from the north side.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">70. FEMA Report #403, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002 (www.fema.gov/library/wtcstudy.shtm), Ch. 5, Sect. 6.2, "Probable Collapse Sequence."<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">71. Reported in Ed Haas, "Government spokesman says, ?I Don't Understand the Public's Fascination with World Trade Center Building Seven,'" Muckraker Report, March 21, 200 (http://www.teamliberty.net/id235.html), referring to NIST's "Investigation of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center Disaster" (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs.htm), as accessed on March 20, 2006.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">72. See Jim Hoffman's website (http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html) and Jeff King's website (http://home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.king2/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html), especially "The World Trade Center Collapse: How Strong is the Evidence for a Controlled Demolition?"<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">73. Implosion World (http://www.implosionworld.com/dyk2.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">74. Professor Allison Geyh of Johns Hopkins, who was part of a team of public health investigators who visited the site shortly after 9/11, wrote: "In some pockets now being uncovered they are finding molten steel," Magazine of Johns Hopkins Public Health, Late Fall, 2001. Dr. Keith Eaton, who somewhat later toured the site with an engineer, said that he was shown slides of "molten metal, which was still red hot weeks after the event" (The Structural Engineer, Sept. 3, 2002: 6). On the dripping steel, see Trudy Walsh, "Handheld APP Eased Recovery Tasks," Government Computer News, 21/27a, Sept 11, 2002 (http://www.gcn.com/21_27a/news/19930-1.html) and Jennifer Lin, "Recovery Worker Reflects on Months Spent at Ground Zero," Knight Ridder, May 29, 2002 (http://www.messenger-inquirer.com/news/attacks/4522011.htm).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">75. Quoted in Dennis Smith, Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the <st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype> (<st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Penguin, 2002), 18.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">76. Oral History of Richard Banaciski, 3-4. See next note.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">"Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the <st1:placename st="on">Twin</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Towers</st1:placetype> in the 9/11 Oral Histories," in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11. It is also available at 911Truth.org (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060118104223192). The oral histories of 9/11 recorded by the Fire Department of New York are available at a NYT website (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">78. Jim Hoffman, "The North Tower's Dust Cloud: Analysis of Energy Requirements for the Expansion of the Dust Cloud Following the Collapse of 1 World Trade Center," Version 3, 9-11 Research.wtc7.net, Oct. 16, 2003 (http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/volume.html). The available evidence, Hoffman says, suggests that the dust particles were very small indeed---on the order of 10 microns. Also Colonel John O'Dowd of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said: "At the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> sites, it seemed like everything was pulverized" ("The World Trade Center: Rise and Fall of an American Icon," The History Channel, September 8, 2002).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">79. Jones, "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" See also David Ray Griffin, "The Destruction of the <st1:placename st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Trade</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Center</st1:placetype>: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True," in Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 (<st1:city st="on">Amsterdam</st1:city>: Elsevier, March, 2006), and in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11. This essay is also available at 911Review.com, December 9, 2005 [http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html]). For Hoffman's analyses, see http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html. For videos of the WTC collapses, see in particular "9/11/01 WTC Videos" (http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">80. See <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 31-32.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">81. The official investigators found that they had less authority than the clean-up crews, a fact that led the Science Committee of the House of Representatives to report that "the lack of authority of investigators to impound pieces of steel for examination before they were recycled led to the loss of important pieces of evidence" (see the report at http://www.house.gov/science/hot/wtc/charter.htm).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">82. "Baosteel Will Recycle World Trade Center Debris," Eastday.com, January 24, 2002 (http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Jan/25776.htm).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">83. This removal was, moreover, carried out with the utmost care. Each truck was equipped with a Vehicle Location Device, connected to GPS. "The software recorded every trip and location, sending out alerts if the vehicle traveled off course, arrived late at its destination, or deviated from expectations in any other way" (Jacqueline Emigh, "GPS on the Job in Massive World Trade Center Clean-Up," July 1, 2002 [http://securitysolutions.com/ar/security_gps_job_massive]).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">84. Another problem with this story is that there were at least two versions of it. One said that the passport was found in the rubble the day after 9/11, the other that it was found minutes after the attack (see Morgan and Henshall, 9/11 Revealed, 68).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">85. Anne Karpf, "Uncle Sam's Lucky Finds," Guardian, March 19, 2002 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,669961,00.html).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">86. Haas, "Government spokesman says, ?I Don't Understand the Public's Fascination with World Trade Center Building Seven.'"<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">87. New York Times, May 4, 2002, and CBS News, May 10, 2002, quoted under "Was Hani Hanjour Even on Flight 77 and Could He Have Really Flown It to Its Doom?" in Killtown's "Did Flight 77 Really Crash into the Pentagon?" (thewebfairy.com/killtown/flight77), Oct. 19, 2003. Even The 9/11 Report acknowledge that Hanjour was "a terrible pilot" in some passages (225-26, 242, 520n56).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">88. Greg Szymanski, "Former Vietnam Combat and Commercial Pilot Firm Believer 9/11 Was Inside Government Job," Lewis News, Sunday, January 8, 2006 [http://www.lewisnews.com/article.asp?ID=106623]).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">89. "PAVE PAWS, Watching North America's Skies, 24 Hours a Day" (www.pavepaws.org).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">90. Besides the fact that this is what we would expect, this is evidently what Pentagon officials tell their employees. April Gallop, who was working in the Pentagon on 9/11, has reportedly said that during her classified tour when she was first assigned to the Pentagon, she was told that it was the best-defended building in the world (John Judge, "Pentagon and P-56 Preparations and Defenses and the Stand-Down on 9/11," Ratville Times, Jan. 11, 2006 [www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/P56A.html]).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">91. See the evidence in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:city>, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 159-64.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">92. Thierry Meyssan, who has referred to these anti-missile batteries (Pentagate [<st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>: Carnot, 2002], 112, 116), has said with regard to his source of information: "The presence of these anti-missile batteries was testified to me by French officers to whom they were shown during an official visit to the Pentagon. This was later confirmed to me by a Saudi officer."<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">John Judge, co-founder of 9-11 Citizens Watch, has reported that he learned about the missiles from his father, John Joseph Judge, a WWII Army Air Corps veteran who worked at the Pentagon after the war until his death in 1965. Young John Judge, whose mother also worked at the Pentagon, spent much time there. In the late 1950s, he says, his father pointed out the location of an air-to-surface missile.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Judge also reports that in 1998, he was given a tour of the Pentagon by Colonel Robinson, the long-time director of security. While they were outside talking about threats from terrorists, Robinson pointed to the roof and said, "we have cameras and radar up there to make sure they don't try to run a plane into the building." Since cameras and radars by themselves would not stop anything, Judge concluded, Robinson's statement implicitly referred to anti-aircraft missiles (John Judge, "Pentagon and P-56 Preparations and Defenses and the Stand-Down on 9/11," Ratville Times, Jan. 11, 2006 [www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/P56A.html].<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Pentagon, to be sure, has denied that it had any anti-aircraft batteries at that time, saying that they had thought them "too costly and too dangerous to surrounding residential areas" (Paul Sperry, "Why the Pentagon Was So Vulnerable," WorldNetDaily, Sept. 11, 2001 [http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24426]). But can anyone believe that Pentagon officials would have let such considerations prevent them from protecting themselves?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">93. Won-Young Kim and Gerald R. Baum, "Seismic Observations during September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attack" (http://www.mgs.md.gov/esic/publications/download/911pentagon.pdf).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">94. Karen Kwiatkowski, who was working at the Pentagon that morning, reports that "any physical remains of the aircraft that hit the Pentagon were quickly carted away to some unknown location, so we have no physical evidence that the aircraft really was Flight 77 or even a Boeing 757" ("Assessing the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory," in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink, 2006). Photographic evidence of this removal can be seen on Eric Hufschmid's video, "Painful Deceptions" (available at www.EricHufschmid.Net).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">95. A photograph showing this literal cover-up can be seen in Ralph Omholt, "9-11 and the Impossible: Part One of an Online Journal of 9-11" (http://www.physics911.net/omholt.htm).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">96. On the confiscation of the film from the Citgo gas station and the Sheraton Hotel, respectively, see Bill McKelway "Three Months On, Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon," Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dec. 11, 2001 (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1211_wirepentagon.html), and Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, "Inside the Ring," Washington Times, Sept. 21, 2001. Scott Bingham, who has tried to get videos of the Pentagon strike released under the Freedom of Information Act, has his lawsuit and the official response posted on his website (http://www.flight77.info). See also "Government Responds to Flight 77 FOAI Request," 911Truth.org, Aug. 2005 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050824131004151).<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The views expressed in articles posted at 911Truth.org reflect the opinion of the individual writer, and are not necessarily those of 911Truth.org or the steering committee.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">(c) David Ray Griffin.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">911truth.org hereby grants to all readers of this website permission to link to any and all articles found in the public areas of the website, www.911truth.org, so long as the full source URL http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060405143535564, in this case) is posted with the article.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-49640349375158440402007-01-28T08:53:00.000-08:002007-01-28T10:29:43.871-08:009/11 AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE: INTELLECTUALS SPEAK OUT, A Review By Carolyn Baker<o:p></o:p><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">Here's an excellent review of "9/11 & The American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out", by historian and former psychotherapist <a href="http://http://carolynbaker.org/archives/911-and-american-empire-intellectuals-speak-out-a-review-by-carolyn-baker?print=yes">Carolyn Baker, PhD.</a> This was published on her website, <a href="http://http://carolynbaker.org/archives/911-and-american-empire-intellectuals-speak-out-a-review-by-carolyn-baker?print=yes">www.carolynbaker.org</a>. Will the best and the brightest have the courage to begin to look squarely at the realities of US imperialism? Will the best and the brightest take the responsibility afforded them by their privelege to protect, defend and strengthen our flagging democracy, if not for themselves then at least for their children and grandchildren? 9/11 & The American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out is an excellent way to begin to learn about the 9/11 wars and American Imperialism. <br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">gh</span><br /><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">"Surely there can be no higher duty for academics and other intellectuals at this time than to expose the big lie of 9/11, thereby undermining the primary pretext for the global domination project," says Morgan Reynolds, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Texas A& M University (P. 115 of 9/11 And American Empire)<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Professors David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott have edited a masterpiece of critical thinking and scholarly analysis in this collection of articles by intellectuals who have broken silence on the atrocities of September 11, 2001. I have revered Peter Dale Scott for many years, having used his books and articles in my college history classes. This wise elder, professor emeritus of English, is one of few in academia who have addressed the United States government’s half-century role in drug trafficking and money laundering, and he has offered us the concept of deep politics, which “posits that in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so. Like all other observers, I too have involuntarily suppressed facts and even memories about the drug traffic that were too provocative to be retained with equanimity.”[1] Scott’s co-editing of this volume is particularly significant because if ever the issue of deep politics were germane, it is in relation to 9/11<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">David Ray Griffin, professor emeritus of religion, theology, and philosophy is the critical thinker’s thinker, having authored two previous masterpieces, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About The Bush Administration and 9/11 and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions. If you have been privileged to watch <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Griffin</st1:place></st1:City> on video or DVD, you must confess that his demeanor, as well as his research on 9/11, adds a human dimension to his analysis that conveys both compassion and objectivity.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As a member of academia myself, I am buoyed by the caliber of scholars included in the Griffin-Scott volume, particularly in the light of what I consider higher education’s abject paranoia regarding skepticism of the official story of 9/11. As I stated when recently interviewed by Jason Miller at Civil Libertarian Blogspot, [2]professors at the end of their academic preparation often emerge with rigid concepts of how they “should” think or how they “should” teach, to such an extent that they become almost terrified of being viewed as conspiracy theorists and develop what I call “conspiracy phobia” in which case, they become as intellectually stilted and irrelevant as the tormenters of Galileo during the Spanish Inquisition. At one time in history the notion that microscopic organisms called bacteria even exist, let alone foster and spread disease, was considered an outlandish violation of reason and logic, as was the theory that the earth was not flat or that human beings would someday travel around the globe in “flying machines.” Academics of those eras took enormous pride in their ability to think critically and not engage in fallacies of logic, but history has proven that for these individuals, things were anything but what they seemed.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Currently in so-called progressive discourse about 9/11, there appear to be two perspectives regarding the political, economic, geopolitical, Constitutional, and social significance of the event. The first group believes that 9/11 was used opportunistically by the Bush administration to extend its global domination project and that the administration knew the attacks were coming but allowed them to happen; the second group believes that more than having foreknowledge, the Bush administration, in fact, orchestrated the event. Within these two perspectives, there exist myriad theories regarding the evidence for either allowing the event or orchestrating it.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Some individuals believe that physical evidence is important to analyze, while others do not. Still others believe that some other object besides a plane hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, while other individuals are virulently opposed to that notion. I personally believe that a consideration of the physical evidence, although it has virtually all been destroyed and removed from any possibility of examination, is relevant, and I disagree with those who assert that debates regarding the physical evidence are a distraction from the analysis of motive, means, and opportunity. For me, it is not either/or but both/and. Critical thinking demands an inclusive examination of all facets of any crime.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Although I’ve used the term critical thinking, I have done so without defining it. Here is one comprehensive definition:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.[3] <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of critical thinking is asking questions which is due, in part, to my preference for questions rather than answers written in stone. This is the paramount reason for my enthusiastic support for the 9/11 truth movement. As long as a community of thinkers, and indeed, the citizenry at large, continue to question the events of September 11, there is at least a spark of hope that at some point, with the proper conditions and at the right time, that spark might be fanned into a flame of revolution. And of course, as our Founding Fathers incessantly reminded us, there are many ways to make revolution besides the use of bombs and bullets, and if we are not willing to do so once a democratic republic has become antithetical to its principles, then we do not deserve to live in a democratic republic. Citizenry in a democratic republic, the Constitutional framers told us, is attended by momentous responsibilities, including the willingness to “alter and abolish” it should it cease to be a democratic republic.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Or as Professor and Ret. Lt.Colonel, Karen Kwiatkowski, states in her article in 9/11 American Empire, entitled “Assessing The Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory” :<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To question the official 9/11 story is simply, and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Two chapters in the book are devoted to physical evidence, one by Physics Professor, Steven Jones of <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Brigham</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placename st="on">Young</st1:PlaceName> <st1:placetype st="on">University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> and engineer, Kevin Ryan. For those who insist that physical evidence is not important in the discourse regarding 9/11, I would simply ask: Why have Jones and Ryan been so harassed by their superiors for their assertions? If discussion of physical evidence is irrelevant, why would there be any backlash against the “peripheral distraction” of analyzing it?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Swiss history professor, Daniele Ganser, in his article, “The ‘Strategy Of Tension’ In The Cold War Period” makes one of the most profound statements in the book when he says that “It is important to stress that all of the theories about 9/11 are conspiracy theories,” adding that a conspiracy is merely a secret agreement between two or more persons to engage in a criminal act—nothing new or unusual in the field of historical research. Therefore, says Ganser, “Once we realize that none of the theories can be dismissed on the grounds that it is a ‘conspiracy theory’, the real question becomes: Which conspiracy theory correctly describes the 9/11 conspiracy?”(P. 80)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The “strategy of tension” is essentially psychological warfare which targets the emotions of humans and aims to spread maximum fear. Not only are political opponents discredited through incessant terrorist attacks, but most importantly the innocent are kept in a state of tension, which serves the purposes of those benefiting from the attacks.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ganser takes on two very common arguments of those who insist that the U.S. government could not have been involved in orchestrating the attacks, namely, the assertion that our government would “never do such a thing” and the premise that if the U.S. government had helped carry out the attacks, the planning and execution of that could not have remained secret for long. Ganser emphasizes that both are a priori arguments—a priori simply meaning reasoning from a general law to a particular instance or a phenomenon that is valid independently of observation.(P.99)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of Law at Princeton University, in his article “Global Ambitions and Geopolitical Wars: The Domestic Challenge”, notes that many extraordinarily suspicious events have occurred in the United States in the last century—events which bear on the legitimacy of the process of governance, and these have been repeatedly shielded from mainstream inquiry by being re-inscribed as the wild fantasies of conspiracy theorists. Thus, “the issue never gets resolved and lingers in the domain of limbo, beclouded by suspicion, but unresolved so far as opinion-makers are concerned—and thus ignored.” (P.120) Certainly, individuals of my generation are all-too familiar with the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King as stellar examples of suspicious events that have never gotten resolved.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Canadian philosophy professor, John McMurtry in “9/11 And The 9/11 Wars: Understanding The Supreme Crimes” examines denial among U.S. citizenry, including the so-called progressive media, which has ignored the Project For The New American Century (PNAC) and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s infamous The Grand Chessboard book of 1997, both of which clearly elucidated the ruling elite’s agenda for global domination on behalf of acquiring resources such as petroleum, gold, and water. McMurtry reminds us of the “staggering payoffs” that accrued to a plethora of beneficiaries of 9/11, but concludes that “With or without 9/11 as a pretext for ‘war without end’, the post-1991 global capitalist experiment has failed as a form of economic organization that serves human life and conditions on our planet.” (P. 148)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The grand conclusion to 9/11 American Empire is its final chapter, “Parameters Of Power In The Global Dominance Group: 9/11 And Election Irregularities In Context”, by Peter Phillips, with Bridget Thornton, and Celeste Vogler, a frightening termination to a collection of exceedingly thoughtful articles about September 11<span style=""> </span>in which the authors analyze very succinctly and incisively the principal players in the global dominance project, individuals as well as organizations and financial systems, and raise disturbing questions about the role of these in the 2000 election fraud and 9/11. The scope and power of these entities is nothing less than jaw-dropping, thus preparing the reader for the article’s and the book’s final paragraph:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We are past the brink of totalitarian fascist-corporatism. Challenging the neocons and the GDG (Global Dominance Group) agenda is only the beginning of reversing the long-term conservative reactions to the gains of the 1960s. Re-addressing poverty, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and our own weapons of mass destruction is a long-term agenda for progressive scholars and citizen democrats. (P.188)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I strongly recommend 9/11 And American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out not just for members of academia, but for anyone interested in moving beyond the red herring of “conspiracy theory”. Even if one has already analyzed many of the unanswered questions of 9/11, one is certain to discover more in this book and experience further intellectual validation from these remarkable thinkers.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_politics <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[2] http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[3] http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.shtml<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> All contents © Carolyn Baker unless otherwise noted.<o:p></o:p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-85770389820645907132007-01-06T01:11:00.000-08:002008-12-10T11:48:37.278-08:00Justice<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/RZ9o0d-H05I/AAAAAAAAABs/eLiEznCKbY4/s1600-h/Fire.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5016843760521696146" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/RZ9o0d-H05I/AAAAAAAAABs/eLiEznCKbY4/s320/Fire.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-70716744581885179562007-01-01T00:50:00.000-08:002007-01-01T01:05:13.722-08:00Criminals Lynching a CriminalHere's a link to a <a href="http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/">post by Riverbend </a>following the murder of Hussein at the beginning of a major Muslim holy period. She lives in Baghdad, she's an excellent writer, and has been blogging about the frightful conditions in Iraq, thanks in large part to the US invasion.<br /><br />gphUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-41947059165378278122006-12-23T22:18:00.000-08:002006-12-23T22:40:29.455-08:00Into the Ring With Counterpunch<em>This piece by Michael Keefer is an intelligent retort to A. Cockburn and certain others whose intellectual integrity seems to take a nosedive when it comes to 9/11. I found it at 911truth.org gph</em><br /><em></em><br /><br /><div align="center"><em></em> </div><div align="center"><strong><a href="http://www.911truth.org/article_for_printing.php?story=20061206104001101">Into the Ring with Counterpunch on 9/11: How Alexander Cockburn, Otherwise So Bright, Blanks Out on 9/11 Evidence</a></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center">by Michael Keefer</div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left">December 4, 2006<br /><br /><br />The first thing to say by way of preliminaries—and I’d better get it in quickly before someone suggests that I’ve turned up late or over-weight for a pre-match weighing-in—is that I’m not overjoyed with the pugilistic metaphor of my title.<br /><br />But some sort of response to the volley of attacks on 9/11 researchers and activists with which the Counterpunch website marked the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 seems called for.<br /><br />Counterpunch co-editor Alexander Cockburn set the tone of these pieces with an article describing theologian and ethicist David Ray Griffin, the author of The New Pearl Harbor (2004) and of The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2005), as a “high priest” of the “conspiracy nuts”—whom Cockburn denounces as cultists who “disdain all answers but their own,” who “seize on coincidences and force them into sequences they deem to be logical and significant,” and who “pounce on imagined clues in documents and photos, [….] contemptuously brush[ing] aside” evidence that contradicts their own “whimsical” treatment of “eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence.”<br /><br />It’s a characteristically forceful performance, if at times slipshod. (One small sign of carelessness may be the manner in which Cockburn slides from calling 9/11 skeptics a “coven” to comparing them, a few sentences later, to “mad Inquisitors […] torturing the data—as the old joke goes about economists—until the data confess.” Readers brought up to think that the victims and perpetrators of witch-crazes have not customarily been the same people may find this unintentionally amusing.)<br /><br />Despite the sometimes distinctly nasty tone of this polemic, the idea of exchanging even metaphorical blows with Cockburn and his colleagues is unappealing. The overall quality of the essays that he and Jeffrey St. Clair publish in Counterpunch makes it easy on most days of the week to agree with Out of Bounds Magazine’s description of it—trumpeted on Counterpunch’s masthead—as “America’s best political newsletter.” And I’ve admired Cockburn’s own political essays for many years: he’s written movingly, sometimes brilliantly, on a wide range of subjects1 —even if his flashes of brilliance sometimes alternate with breathtaking pratfalls: among them his dismissal, as recently as March 2001, of the evidence for global warming; his scoffing, in November 2004, at the rapidly gathering indications that the US presidential election of 2004 had been stolen; and a year later, his mockery of the well-established theory of peak oil and his adherence to the genuinely daft notion that the earth produces limitless quantities of abiotic oil.2 One can forgive a journalist’s slender grasp of the rudiments of scientific understanding. But given his self-appointed role as defender of the progressive left against a horde of fools, it’s dismaying to find him sliding as frequently as he does into positions that seem not just quirky but—dare I say it—unprogressive.<br /><br />Figurative punch-ups? Frankly, I’m not over-fond of boxing, either in itself3 or as a source of metaphors. A sport whose fullest measure of success is an opponent stretched out senseless on the canvas doesn’t provide any very adequate model for the processes of rational argument and persuasion I’d like to envisage—which might ideally lead, not to oblivion and brain damage, but rather, given a modicum of interpretive clarity, to at least the possibility of mental expansion, illumination, and a change of mind. And if I’m right in thinking that Alexander Cockburn’s understanding of the events of 9/11 and the current state of research into those events is both one-eyed and befuddled, it would hardly seem sporting to ‘enter the ring’ against so disadvantaged an opponent.<br /><br />Yet if one wants to take exception to serious deficiencies in Counterpunch’s treatment of 9/11 evidence and interpretations, the website’s own metaphor seems hard to avoid.<br /><br />What of my subtitle, then—which I’m afraid is wordy as well as impolite? It sets out to parody the scarcely less elephantine subtitles of two of the three recent Counterpunch articles that I’m going to be commenting on here (read ’em yourself, and weep):<br />Alexander Cockburn, "The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts: How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Slip Off the Hook," Counterpunch (9-10 September 2006), <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09092006.html">www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09092006.html</a><br /><br />Joshua Frank, "Proving Nothing: How the 9/11 Truth Movement Helps Bush & Cheney," Counterpunch (11 September 2006), <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/frank09112006.html">www.counterpunch.org/frank09112006.html</a><br />.<br />The subtitle of Cockburn’s diatribe is no doubt meant to be inflammatory—though if I’ve understood him rightly, he’s not literally arguing that the perpetrators of 9/11 would all be behind bars if it weren’t for those 9/11 wackos. Frank’s subtitle might also border on the category of fighting words, were it not that his essay, as he himself predicts, proves nothing. (Students of political rhetoric will note, in passing, how precisely Cockburn’s and Frank’s subtitles exemplify the trope of unintended consequences that Albert Hirschman in his classic study of The Rhetoric of Reaction calls “the perversity thesis,” which “reactive” or reactionary thinkers since Joseph de Maistre at the time of the French Revolution have deployed to argue that the actions of their deluded opponents “will produce, via a chain of unintended consequences, the exact contrary of the objective being proclaimed and pursued.”)4<br /><br />After the appearance of these two pieces on successive days, honoured a familiar boxing rhythm (quick left and right, pause, sucker-punch) by leaving a gap of several days before releasing a third broadside against 9/11 researchers:<br /><br />Diana Johnstone, “In Defense of Conspiracy: 9/11: In Theory and Fact,” Counterpunch (15 September 2006), <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone09152006.html">www.counterpunch.org/johnstone09152006.html</a><br /><br />Johnstone’s essay is more substantial than the preceding two. But any reader lured by its title into thinking that Counterpunch was actually permitting real debate on the subject of 9/11 would indeed be suckered. And there is again a problem with subtitles. As I intend to show, this piece offers little in the way of facts, and is defective—though instructively so—in its theorizing.<br /><br />1. Alexander Cockburn: beyond table-thumping to the evidence Alexander Cockburn’s attack on “The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts,” though rhetorically skillful, is vacuous in substance. It is in large part devoted to arguing that a “devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency” is the “fundamental idiocy” which leads “conspiracy nuts” to think that there must be something suspicious about the massive failures of the US air defense system on 9/11. Anyone even remotely acquainted with military history, Cockburn asserts, would know “that minutely planned operations—let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency—screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality, weather and all the other whims of providence.”<br /><br />I’m not interested in defending the efficiency of the American military—or of anyone else’s military, for that matter. (In fact, I could supplement the little catalogue of military ineptitudes that Cockburn presents with some choice additional ones drawn from the period of my own brief spell decades ago with the Canadian navy—among them an incident in which an American destroyer contrived to get itself cut in half by the Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne.) Yet if we attend for a moment not to Cockburn’s overheated rhetorical questions and table-thumping repetition of the capitalized word “CONSPIRACY,” but rather to the established and uncontroversial evidence, it is at once obvious that what is at issue is not primarily, as Cockburn thinks, the gap between his own expectations of bungling incompetence and David Ray Griffin’s understanding of what a normal air defense response should have been.<br /><br />As anyone who presumes to hold forth on this aspect of the 9/11 evidence should know, what is really incriminating about the failure to intercept the aircraft which were flown on that day into the Twin Towers and (by the official account) into the Pentagon is not the simple absence of fighter-interceptors over New York and Washington, but rather the fact that that absence was ensured by a series of concurrent military exercises which had transferred most of the available interceptors out of the northeastern region, and which for a crucial period that morning left the military air traffic controllers responsible for vectoring the remaining fighters into position unable to determine which of the many blips appearing on their radar screens represented actual as opposed to simulated threats.5 We can add to this what seems the no less incriminating testimony of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to the 9/11 Commission, which suggests very strongly that Vice President Cheney had ordered a stand-down of missile defenses protecting Washington DC.6<br /><br />Cockburn’s failure to mention this important and well-known evidence tells us one of two things. Either he is unaware of it, in which case one must ask why he thinks it appropriate to hold forth angrily on subjects about which he has not bothered to inform himself; or else he does know about it—in which case he ought to be asking himself what standard of intellectual integrity governed his decision to refrain from mentioning this crucial evidence to his readers.<br /><br />Midway through his essay, Cockburn offers a curious little detour into the complexities of the JFK assassination, telling us that in his view,<br /><br />the Warren Commission, as confirmed in almost all essentials by the House Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, had it right and Oswald fired the fatal shots from the Schoolbook Depository. The evidentiary chain for his guilt is persuasive, and the cumulative scenarios of the conspiracy nuts entirely unconvincing. But of course—as the years roll by, and even though no death bed confession has ever buttressed those vast, CIA-related scenarios—the nuts keep on toiling away, their obsessions as unflagging as ever.<br /><br />These sentences are a close rhetorical analogue to that fighter’s tactic—more in use among half-crocked bar-room brawlers than boxers, it must be said—known as leading with one’s chin. The “conspiracy nuts” Cockburn sneers at include D. B. Thomas of the USDA Subtropical Agriculture Research Laboratory in Texas, who after analyzing the acoustical evidence of gunshots preserved on a Dallas police department recording from Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination, concluded in a peer-reviewed study published in 2001 by the journal Science & Justice that the recording “contains five impulsive sounds that have the acoustic waveform of Dealey Plaza gunfire,” and that “One of the sounds matches the echo pattern of a test shot fired from the Grassy Knoll.”7 So much for the Warren Commission’s three (and no more) shots fired by Oswald from the Texas Book Depository: more than three shoots, and more than one shooter, means a conspiracy. And by the way, it’s not strictly true that the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations Report confirmed the Warren Commission Report “in almost all essentials,” since the HSCA Report did in fact conclude that the assassination was probably organized by a conspiracy. 8<br /><br />Cockburn is welcome to cling, if he wants, to what I’d term the Lone Ranger theory of the Kennedy assassination—but on condition that he devote a short meditation to the name of the Lone Ranger’s native sidekick.9<br /><br />There is more in Cockburn’s essay on the 9/11 evidence: he has a brief fling at the people who doubt that a Boeing 757 could have hit the Pentagon,10 and exercises his ironic wit for several paragraphs at the expense of the reality-disdaining nuts who think that the towers of the World Trade Center were brought down by planned demolitions. Cockburn scoffs at the paranoid folly of those who believe that the WTC towers didn’t fall down because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption, incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority, and because they were struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, they fell because Dick Cheney’s agents methodically planted demolition charges in the preceding days. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom—party to mass murder—have held their tongues ever since.<br /><br />Perhaps (although he doesn’t share it with us) Cockburn has evidence that the Twin Towers were so incompetently built as to be especially liable to explosive disintegration into showers of cut steel and pyroclastic clouds of fine-particle dust. But like the 9/11 Commission, he manages quietly to forget about the collapse of WTC 7 late in the afternoon of 9/11: this 47-story steel-framed tower, which was damaged by debris from the North Tower but not struck by any aircraft, collapsed at free-fall speed into its own footprint in what half a dozen different videos show to have been a classic implosion demolition. Significantly, FEMA and NIST have failed to offer any plausible alternative explanation of this collapse.<br /><br />As to the questions of how, when, or by whom demolition charges may have been planted: there is evidence, though Cockburn may not be interested in exploring it, of activity on unoccupied floors of the Twin Towers just prior to 9/11 that is consistent with the placing of such charges.11 Why don’t we try replacing the gag orders that have silenced 9/11 whistleblowers like Sibel Edmonds with an independent criminal investigation, and see what crawls out of the woodwork?<br /><br />But refuting this rhetoric at length would be tedious. I would prefer instead to quote Paul Craig Roberts’ magisterial rebuke:<br /><br />The explanation that the three WTC buildings collapsed as a result of damage and fire is a mere assertion. The assertion is not backed up with scientific calculation to demonstrate that the energy from the airliners, fire and gravity was sufficient to collapse the buildings. A number of independent authorities believe that there is a very large energy deficit in the official account of the collapse of the buildings. Until this issue is resolved, the official explanation is merely an assertion no matter who believes it.<br />The Canadian scientist Frank R. Greening has made the only independent scientific attempt of which I am aware to show that a gravity driven collapse of one of the buildings, WTC 1, was sustainable. His paper is published in The Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 2 (August 2006) and is available online. It is a reply to earlier calculations by Gordon Ross, who concluded otherwise, and is answered in the same issue by Ross, who shows that Greening’s work actually demonstrates the existence of an energy deficit.<br /><br />It is instructive to read this exchange between competent authorities. Few readers will be able to follow the application of scientific principles and the calculations of the required and available energy. However, it will be clear that the issue is a scientific matter that is over the heads of members of a political commission, pundits, and bloggers, and that it is inappropriate for a pundit, who himself is incapable of following such a discussion, to call those participating in it “conspiracy nuts.”12<br /><br />Elsewhere in the same essay, Roberts notes that Ross is far from being the only scientist to criticize and reject the official explanation of the WTC towers’ collapses. This is indeed the case. Evidence—to my mind conclusive—that the official accounts are physically impossible, and that the three towers of the World Trade Center (the 47-storey WTC 7 as well as the 110-storey Twin Towers) were destroyed by controlled demolitions, has been assembled by physicists, mechanical engineers and other scientifically qualified researchers in a series of recent studies, some of them published in the peer-reviewed Journal of 9/11 Studies13. These analyses are supported by the testimony of fire department personnel to secondary explosions in the Twin Towers,14 by video and photographic evidence that structural steel in the South Tower was being cut and melted (probably by thermate charges) during the final minutes before its collapse,15 by videos and photographs of the collapses in which “squibs” (explosive horizontal ejections of dust and debris) are visible well below the lines of collapse,16 by numerous reports of molten steel under the ruins of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 weeks after their destruction,17 and by laboratory analyses of structural steel from the towers which reveal chemical transformations that could not have been caused by gravitational collapse or fire, but may well be effects of thermate cutting charges.18<br /><br />2. Joshua Frank: a litany of complaints and rhetorical questions<br /><br />Insofar as anything resembling an argument is to be found in Joshua Frank’s short article, it appears in the following litany of complaints and rhetorical questions:<br /><br />While some BYU physicist rattles his brain over the intricacies of WTC #7’s collapse, our government is dropping toxic gas on poor peasants in Colombia in attempts to eradicate coca production. While David Ray Griffin pens his next best seller, forests in Alaska and Appalachia are being obliterated in the name of corporate profit. While so many truth seekers attempt to convince us […] that the Jews who worked in the WTC were told ahead of time not to come to work on 9/11, Lebanon is being invaded and destroyed by Israel.<br />What’s the Truth Movement doing about the hundreds of thousands of poor non-violent drug offenders who are rotting in US prisons, or the thousands more who are decaying on death row? What are they doing for the teenage girls who slave away in sweatshops piecing together our clothes and sneakers? What have conspiracy theories ever proven, anyway?<br /><br />Though a powerful sense of his own political virtue pervades these paragraphs, Frank’s stance seems to me ethically wanting as well as logically weak. In saying this, I’m not referring primarily to his shabbily abusive references to Steven Jones and David Ray Griffin. Frank takes 9/11 activists to task for their putative failure to occupy themselves with US crimes in Colombia, ecological issues, the invasion of Lebanon, third-world sweatshops, and the appalling injustices of America’s courts and its domestic gulag. But the same objections could be raised (for example) against the movement of solidarity with Haitian democracy.19 What have the people who labour in that movement done in support of any of these other issues? Or, as one might with equal force (or feebleness) inquire: How have activists against US crimes in Colombia and Israeli crimes in Lebanon contributed to alleviating the horrors inflicted on Haiti’s poor, most particularly since the 2004 coup and the ensuing UN occupation?<br /><br />Frank’s complaints are clearly both inane and divisive. For most of us, it is not humanly possible to be doing A, B, and C, if at a given moment we are fully occupied in doing D. Of course, if this is a rule, there have been exceptions to it: St. Thomas Aquinas is reported to have made a practice of composing three distinct texts simultaneously, dictating sections of each in turn to three amanuenses. Perhaps Frank is similarly versatile and efficient, and is able to make significant parallel contributions to all of the important causes he names. But by his own logic, one could still assemble a list of other important causes that he has done nothing to further, and then reproach him for the fact. (It’s an excellent recipe for producing disunity and mutual suspicion on the left, if that’s your goal.)<br /><br />Are 9/11 researchers and activists in fact the one-string Johnnies that Frank takes them for? My own limited experience would lead me to conclude otherwise. I am personally acquainted with only a handful of people who have been active on 9/11—all of whom however have worked, sometimes for decades and with distinction, on a wide range of social justice, anti-war and ecological issues, both domestic and international.<br /><br />Yet of course what Frank means is that other kinds of activism are worthy and admirable, while inquiries into the truth of what happened on 9/11 and into the implications of that truth are simply idiotic. People who engage in such inquiries are mere zealots and pretenders: “how they can seek the truth when they already think they have all the answers is beyond me,” Frank says piously.<br /><br />But not too far beyond him, it would seem. Frank himself concedes “that there are a lot of questions yet to be answered about that dark day five years ago. But of all the inquiries, none, in my opinion, if answered, would ever indicate the US government was behind the bloody affair.” So there it is: the questions may be unanswered, but they don’t need to be, because Frank knows already what the only possible answers add up to.<br /><br />If the illogic of this short piece seems tawdry, the mental laziness Frank’s position authorizes is no less so. I don’t mean to suggest that any activity labeling itself “9/11 research” is intrinsically virtuous. Anyone who has observed neo-Gnostic prophet David Icke gliding happily between assessments of 9/11 evidence and pronouncements about the “Illuminati conspiracy” and “reptilian entities in the positions of power [that] manipulate the peoples of the world to fight each other in the five-sense prison,”20 or who has taken note of the vicious email blitzing inflicted by Nico Haupt, Gerard Holmgren and Rosalee Grable (alias ‘Webfairy’) on what they call “plane-huggers” (people naive enough to believe that actual aircraft struck the Twin Towers on 9/11),21 will know that some of what passes as “9/11 research” is silly, inept, and malicious. But only by an act of transparent bad faith can this be used to dismiss out of hand research that adheres to the principles of critical scholarship and the methods of scientific inquiry.<br /><br />3. Diana Johnstone: problems of method<br /><br />Diana Johnstone deserves credit for her abstention from the overheated rhetoric of Cockburn and Frank, and for her attempt to analyze the subject methodically. But it is precisely in her interpretive methodology that she goes astray.<br /><br />Johnstone’s basic error is a repeated assumption that suppositious interpretations of intention should be treated as the primary form of evidence. Thus she proposes, near the beginning of her article, that we attend to “the symbolism of the attacks.” She then uses suppositions about intention to undermine what she calls “the Bushite conspiracy hypothesis”:<br /><br />Now, let us suppose that Bushite plotters designed the attacks so that Bush could use them to claim that “they want to destroy us because of our freedom”. The choice of targets should support that claim. Suppose one of the planes had crashed into the Statue of Liberty; that would really carry the message that “they want to destroy our freedom”. For ordinary Americans, it would be just as shocking as the World Trade Center, while costing a lot less to American capitalism (an old gift from France would hardly be missed). For good measure, to show that the terrorists want to kill as many people as possible, they could have crashed into a couple of packed football stadiums.<br />This approach is peculiar in two respects. First, although I don’t object on principle to speculations about intention, I think they’re more likely to be plausible when they have a more serious anchorage in considerations of political and economic advantage than Johnstone provides. Without dismissing her suppositions out of hand, I would note that she ignores other more material possibilities: for example, that intentions behind the WTC attacks could have included a desire to dispose of functionally obsolete and uneconomical buildings while making it possible to collect massively on their insurance, to generate large put-option stock market windfalls, and to dispose of evidence held by the SEC in WTC 7 relating to the Enron and WorldCom scandals (all of which the attacks very definitely did).<br /><br />More significantly, Johnstone’s approach inverts any properly analytical ordering of evidence. Unless there is other material, testimonial, photographic or documentary evidence that makes a “Bushite conspiracy hypothesis” or an “al Qaeda hypothesis” plausible, speculations about intentions that would support one or the other hypothesis are a pure waste of time. As I have already noted, there is strong material, testimonial, and photographic evidence that the World Trade Center towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions—which in turn indicates that people with privileged access to the buildings (whose security was contracted to a company with close Bush family connections) knew in advance that the planes which reached their targets with the help of what appears to have been a planned disabling of the American air defense system would in fact get through. This evidence is supported by analyses of many incriminating details of government foreknowledge, of the attacks themselves, and of the ensuing cover-up that have been published by Michel Chossudovsky and other researchers.22 Their work has been lucidly summarized in a series of books and articles by David Ray Griffin.23 Only on a tertiary and supplemental level do questions of intention—among them the stated geopolitical aims expounded by senior members of the Bush administration in the documents published by the Project for the New American Century, and also, if you like, Diana Johnstone’s more suppositious or novelistic speculations—become relevant.<br /><br />Johnstone remarks that “the layman cannot easily judge” between “conflicting physical interpretations” of what happened at the Pentagon, “but can quite well use common sense to question motives and plausibility.” She treats the question of what caused the collapses of the WTC towers in the same manner:<br /><br />The layman has no way to judge between these expert explanations—but neither do experts, since (as physicist Jean Bricmont points out) scientists cannot be sure of the cause of a single event that cannot be repeated experimentally. So we are back to the question of plausibility and motivation.<br />This is an openly irrationalist rhetorical move. Laymen can’t do science, so we’ll have to get along with common sense—but then scientists can’t do science either, so common sense (untouched, it would seem, by any serious study of the evidence, since that might give it some whiff of the scientific) magically becomes the only set of wheels that anyone has.<br /><br />One must hope, for Jean Bricmont’s sake, that Johnstone is misquoting or misunderstanding him. In a strict sense, as he perhaps meant to say, every physical event in the universe is a singularity that can never be precisely reiterated. But that does not make iterability absurd, or science impossible—for scientific experiments and modellings do not aspire to precisely repeat (or anticipate) the physical interactions and structural relations they are designed to give us insight into; rather, they provide measurable controlled analogues to those processes. To claim that the collapses of the WTC towers cannot be physically and mechanically modeled, or that the remaining samples of the toxic dust and the structural steel cannot be chemically and structurally analyzed, is irrationalism of a low order.<br /><br />It might seem surprising that a literary scholar and textual theorist like myself should object to Johnstone’s proceedings—which after all amount to putting novelists and literary critics into the driver’s seat. But I’m afraid bad science also makes bad hermeneutics—and bad hermeneutics results in feeble handling of the textual evidence.<br /><br />4. Looking away from the 9/11 evidence<br /><br />Why have otherwise admirable leftist journalists like Cockburn, Frank, and Johnstone been so strangely averse to attending to the evidence about 9/11 alluded to above? One reason may be that even the hypothesis of state complicity in the events of 9/11 entails confronting the possibility that we are living through a moment of major historical transformation and discontinuity.<br /><br />It is one thing to accept, as an abstract proposition, that the United States may have moved from the end of its republican period into a state of imperial autocracy. Chalmers Johnson’s diagnosis in The Sorrows of Empire is, after all, both scrupulous and unambiguous—as is his conclusion that the American people might conceivably<br /><br />retake control of Congress, reform it along with the corrupted election laws that have made it a forum for special interests, turn it into a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies [….] At this late date, however, it is difficult to imagine how Congress, much like the Roman senate in the last days of the republic, could be brought back to life and cleansed of its endemic corruption.<br />24 Johnson’s analysis may well arouse in us a Virgilian sense of lacrimae rerum, of the grief of temporality, and the sadness of “states doomed to ruin,” perituraque regna.25<br />But it is another thing altogether to confront in detail the manner in which the transition from republic to autocracy is being orchestrated—not just through the out-of-control militarism that Johnson so finely documents, but also through what Peter Dale Scott has called the “deep politics” of a ruling elite which is thoroughly habituated to reliance on covert agencies that are in no way answerable to democratic governance.26 Yet if we’re going to deal in historical parallels, perhaps we ought to strive for consistency. Rome’s imperial-autocrats-in-the-making never hesitated to shed blood, whether of their compatriots or other nations: why should we imagine our own to be more fastidious, or less Machiavellian?<br /><br />Another motive for aversion may also be involved: the fear of being mocked as a “conspiracy theorist” or “tinfoil hat wearer,” with a consequent loss of public credibility and professional respect. If such a fear were no more than what it seems, one might well ask what value there could be to markers of professional standing which block inquiry into historical truths and material realities—or what claims to courage or integrity could be made by public intellectuals who fold their tents at the mere threat of scurrilous handling by opponents. But something more profound may be at work. Peter Dale Scott, who like Chalmers Johnson indulges in what he calls the “clichéd analogy” of a comparison between the contemporary United States and Rome in the period of its transition from republic to imperial autocracy, remarks on the refusal of the Roman senatorial class to accept that “real power had migrated out of” the civic institutions in which they continued to participate, and had passed into the hands of “an imperial regime, the armies and the courts of the army commanders.” Their motive, though unacknowledged, was quite simple: “The self-respect of the senatorial classes depended on this denial.”27<br /><br />An analogous motive may be in play among our own class of academics and public intellectuals, for whom a migration of power into military, deep-political, and corporate-media hands may for similar reasons be difficult to acknowledge. István Meszáros has proposed that we are currently facing not merely a “conjunctural crisis” of the kind that occurred at intervals over the past century, but rather an all-embracing “structural crisis”—one which “affects the totality of a social complex” because it throws into question “capital’s mode of social metabolic reproduction” up to the ultimate limits of “the established global structure.”28 It would be no novelty to argue that the Bush regime’s military aggressions, together with its evident contempt for the constraints of republican governance (the Bill of Rights and habeas corpus among them) and its ever-increasing reliance on deep-political manipulations, are part of the corporatist ruling elite’s response to this structural crisis. Understandably enough, public intellectuals who are habituated to conjunctural crises in which their oppositional function was understood by all concerned, and who have in addition made a lifelong habit of ignoring or belittling political analyses which incorporate deep-political factors, have resisted the gathering evidence that these very factors have been decisive in the political transformations pushed through since 9/11.<br /><br />And yet counter-forces are arguably at work against what Scott calls “the social function of denial in masking political change.”29 One of them, intellectual integrity, though it might seem a quaint abstraction to invoke in this context, has yet impelled conservative academics and public intellectuals like Paul Craig Roberts and Morgan Reynolds (who in addition to their university careers held senior positions in the Reagan and first George W. Bush administrations, respectively) into vehement opposition to the crimes of the present regime. Both have written powerful analyses of the present administration’s folly and criminality, and both recognize the events of 9/11 as a key element of that criminality.<br /><br />Another counter-force may be a growing recognition of the delegitimizing power of the 9/11 evidence.<br /><br />5. Delegitimizing the Bush regime<br /><br />When Joshua Frank says of the Bush regime that “this administration, like so many before it, needs to be stopped at once,” I agree whole-heartedly with the sentiment (although the modifying phrase seems unfortunate: stopping the crimes of previous administrations is now something only time-travellers can hope to do).30 Let’s pause, then, to think about how the current US administration is to be stopped.<br /><br />I would suggest that the concept of delegitimation should figure importantly in our reflections. People who have acquiesced in the actions of a government may be persuaded to withdraw their support and even to move into active opposition by evidence that those actions have been ill-judged, rash, or unprincipled. But evidence that a government has acted in ways that unambiguously violate the state’s foundational covenant—in this case the US Constitution and Bill of Rights—and that unambiguously sunder the ruling elite’s claims on the consent and loyalty of citizens and the obedience of state employees, whether civilian or military, cuts much deeper. What is at stake in this case is the legitimacy of the governing elite—and also, to the extent that people can recognize that elite’s declinations from the nation’s foundational democratic principles as systemic in nature, the legitimacy of the system of corporatized governance that has made it possible for such people to acquire and exercise power.<br /><br />Since regular visitors to websites like Globalresearch.ca, ColdType.net, or Counterpunch scarcely need to be told of the many ways, from electoral fraud to the abolition of habeas corpus, from unconstrained mendacity to military aggression, in which the administration of George W. Bush has demonstrated its illegitimacy, I’m not going to rehearse them all here. But the evidence that on every key aspect of the events of 9/11 the Bush administration has lied, and that the official version of what happened on 9/11 cannot stand up to critical inquiry, does not simply necessitate the development of alternative hypotheses: it also provides what must be one of the strongest and most inescapable arguments against this regime’s legitimacy.<br /><br />For if the emerging evidence of what happened on 9/11 is cogent enough to stand up in the face of the most rigorous critical examination—and a large part of it demonstrably is—the consequences for the legitimacy of the Bush government are quite literally shattering. If the government merely facilitated this terrorist atrocity through neglect or incompetence, then it abdicated its primary responsibility to protect the lives and property of its citizens. But if the evidence drives Americans to suspect that senior government officials may have been active parties in the catastrophic events of 9/11, and quite possibly their primary organizers as well as their most obvious beneficiaries, then the truly appalling possibility is raised of a treasonous perversion of state power resulting in mass murder. One might well argue that only an independent and bona fide criminal investigation could determine whether the evidence supports such a hypothesis. But it should be evident that officials whose actions are believed by large numbers of people to merit criminal investigation are well on their way to losing political legitimacy.<br /><br />Rather than arguing in the abstract for the delegitimizing power of the 9/11 evidence, let me give a concrete example of it. Robert Bowman, a retired USAF Lt. Colonel who holds a Ph.D. in physics, was director of Advanced Space Program Development for the USAF in the Ford and Carter administrations. Here’s a part of what he had to say as a speaker at the DC Emergency Truth Convergence organized by the 9/11 Truth Movement in Washington, DC in July, 2005:<br /><br />You know, our freedoms are not under attack from the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist party. They’re under attack by the likes of John Ashcroft, they’re trampled by Donald Rumsfeld, they’re disdained by Dick Cheney, and they’re not even understood by George W. Bush. The battle to preserve our freedoms is not taking place in Baghdad and Tikrit and Fallujah. It’s taking place in peace marches and demonstrations in Girardelli Park in San Francisco, in Memorial Park in Oklahoma City, and in Lafayette Park in Washington DC. [….] We, my sisters and brothers, are protecting this nation by speaking truth to power. [….]<br />And when we speak, this is the truth that we proclaim. This war in Iraq has nothing to do with national security, or freedom or democracy or human rights or protecting our allies or weapons of mass destruction or defeating terrorism or disarming Iraq. It has to do with money, it has to do with oil, and it has to do with raw imperial power. And it’s based totally on lies. Those who forced this war on an unwilling world are guilty of violating the US Constitution, the UN Charter, the Nuremberg principles, and international law. What they have done is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, and treason. [….]<br /><br />This cabal of neoconservatives from PNAC who planned this war—Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Jeb Bush—even before W. became president, they told us why they had to do it. They said we need to occupy Iraq permanently in order to dominate Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the southern Russian republics around the Caspian Sea. We need to control the entire Middle East and all its oil. […]<br /><br />[T]hey knew the American people wouldn’t stand for it, and they said so in their documents—and they said, unless there’s that new Pearl Harbor. Well, 9/11 did supply that—and we’ve been lied to not only about the war, but about 9/11 itself. They ignored the warnings: more than that, we have mounting evidence that—at least—they made it impossible for those planes to be intercepted. If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot—I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to—if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. My sisters and brothers, that is treason!<br /><br />As a combat veteran, I will not stand idly by and watch our security destroyed by a president who went AWOL rather than serve in Vietnam. As one who’s devoted his life to the security of this country, I will not stand by and watch an appointed president send our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs for the oil companies. [….] I joined the air force a long time ago to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, Exxon, and Halliburton. We’ve had enough corporate wars! No more Iraqs, no more Kosovos, no more El Salvadors, no more Colombias! These are not isolated incidents of stupidity; they’re part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial interests of the wealthy few. [….]<br /><br />As a pilot who flew a hundred and one combat missions in Vietnam, I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic—and that includes a renegade president! It’s time for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and the whole oil mafia to be removed from office and indited for treason. [Ed. Note: Video of this stirring speech, and many others, is available online at truthemergency.us.]<br /><br />6. Conclusion<br /><br />The 9/11 evidence is evidently for Bowman neither isolated, nor inert, nor immobilizing. It forms part of what he has come to understand (as he says in this same speech) as “a new form of colonialism.” Though Bowman has been a forceful critic of Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative and subsequent missile defense systems, and though his religious commitments as a lay minister may also have exposed him to forms of thought beyond the customary discursive range of air force officers, one might guess that 9/11, which he evidently believes to have been a planned catalyst in the Bush regime’s project of oil geopolitics and aggressive warfare, was also a catalyzing factor in the development of his own understanding of “corporate wars” and the “long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial interests of the wealthy few.”<br /><br />As I have already noted, Bowman is not the only conservative one-time senior member of the state apparatus to have been jolted into open opposition by 9/11 and the other crimes of the current administration.<br /><br />Perhaps it’s time that people on the left allowed themselves to be jolted as well—at the very least, into an honest and painstaking analysis of the evidence.<br /><br />So, Alexander Cockburn: can we put these stupid boxing gloves away?<br /><br /><br />(Michael Keefer is professor of English at the University of Guelph and Contributing Editor to the Centre for Research on Globalization. His recent publications include essays on textual critical theory and practice, on electoral fraud in the United States and Haiti, on false-flag terrorism in Iraq, and on U.S. plans for a nuclear attack on Iran.)<br /><br />Source URL: http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/Counterpunch06.doc<br /><br />NOTES:<br /><br />1 Most recently on that deliquescent warmonger Christopher Hitchens: see Alexander Cockburn, “Chortles in the New Yorker for Slaughter’s Cheerleader, C. Hitchens,” Counterpunch (11 October 2006), http://www.counterpunch.org/. Though this may just be a matter of long familiarity, my favourite among Cockburn’s books remains Corruptions of Empire (London: Verso, 1987).<br /><br />2 See Alexander Cockburn, “Greenhouse Gas and Global Warming: The Grand Delusion,” The Free Press (21 March 2001), http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/2/2001/551; “The Poisoned Chalice: Sapping the Empire,” Counterpunch (20-21 November 2004), http://counterpunch.org/cockburn11202004.html; and “Ayatollahs of the Apocalypse,” Counterpunch (15-16 October 2005), <a href="http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn10152005.html">http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn10152005.html</a> .<br /><br />3 I’ve only once entered an actual boxing ring with hostile intent—forty years ago, in the annual Recruit Boxing Tournament of the Royal Military College of Canada—and with inglorious results. (Had there been a special category for the very tall, bony and underpowered, I might have done better, but at over 175 pounds I was just another heavyweight. My opponent, an artless but muscular football lineman, led with his right and was wide open to every stringbean punch I could throw, but thanks to my weakness and the balloon-like 12-ounce gloves, took little damage beyond a bloody nose. Once I got too tired to hit him any more, he dusted me up thoroughly.)<br /><br />4 Albert Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 11.<br /><br />5 See Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2004), pp. 308-436.<br /><br />6 See David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2nd ed.; Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2004), pp. 174-75; and Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005), pp. 207-08, 219-23.<br /><br />7 D. B. Thomas, “Echo correlation analysis and the acoustic evidence in the Kennedy assassination revisited,” Science & Justice 41 (2001): 21-32. Thomas finds that “A conservative estimate of the true value of the probability that the putative Grassy Knoll shot is attributable to random radio noise is no greater than 0.037.”<br /><br />8 House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, House Report Wo. 95-1828 (Washington, DC, 1979), p. 95; quoted by Thomas, “Echo correlation analysis,” 22.<br /><br />9 The name “Tonto” is not derived from any native language, but from Spanish: it means “stupid.”<br /><br />10 Readers may find it instructive to compare Cockburn’s punditry on this subject with a study by mechanical engineer Michael Meyer, “Pentagon C Ring Exit Hole Mystery,” Scholars for 9/11 Truth: Articles (10 June 2006), http://www.st911.org/.<br /><br />11 See What’s the Truth? How Indeed did the Twin Towers Collapse? A Dem Bruce Lee Styles Film, available at 911podcasts.com (1 July 2006), http://www.911podcasts.com/display.php?cat=9997&med=0&ord=Name&strt=0&vid=95&epi=0&typ=0; and linked at http://www.st911.org.<br /><br />12 Paul Craig Roberts, “Where Is The Evidence?” VDARE.com (14 September 2006), http://www.vdare.com/roberts/060914_evidence.htm. (Roberts mistakenly states that the articles of Greening and Ross appear in volume 3 of the Journal of 9/11 Studies [September 2006]; I have silently corrected this error.)<br /><br />13 See for example “MIT Professor [Jeff King] Breaks Down WTC Controlled Demolitions,” Google Video (17 March 2006), http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1822764959599063248; Judy Wood, “A Refutation of the Official Collapse Theory,” (March 2006), http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html; Steven E. Jones, “Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse?” Journal of 9/11 Studies 3 (September 2006): 1-48; Frank Legge, “9/11—Evidence for Controlled Demolition: A Short List of Observations,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 1 (June 2006): 9-15, and “NIST Data Disproves Collapse Theories Based on Fire,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 2 (August 2006): 107-11; Gordon Ross, “Momentum Transfer Analysis of the Collapse of the Upper Storeys of WTC 1,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 1 (June 2006): 30-35, and “Reply to Dr. Greening,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 2 (August 2006): 14-19; and Kevin Ryan, “What is 9/11 Truth?—The First Steps,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 2 (August 2006): 1-6. An excellent compendium of key witness testimony and analysis of video evidence is available in the DVD 911 Mysteries—Part 1: Demolitions (2006), available at http://www.911weknow.com/911-mysteries-movie.html.<br /><br />14 See David Ray Griffin, “Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories,” 911 Truth.org (18 January 2006), http://www.911truth.org/artice.php?story=20060118104223192; and Graeme MacQueen, “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 2 (August 2006): 47-106.<br /><br />15 See “Shot from street level of South Tower collapsing,” Camera Planet, 2 min. 49 sec., posted 24 February 2003, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863&q=cameraplanet+9%2F11; and also two photographs reproduced by Jones in “Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse?”<br /><br />16 Squibs are visible in photographs of the collapses reproduced by Eric Hufschmidt, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, California: Endpoint Software, 2002); see also Dylan Avery, Dir., Loose Change, available at http://www.st911.org; and 911 Mysteries—Part 1: Demolitions. For an explanation of their significance, see Gordon Ross, “How the Towers Were Demolished,” http://www.st911.org.<br /><br />17 See Jones, “Why Indeed…”<br /><br />18 See J. R. Barnett, R. R. Biederman, and R. D. Sisson, Jr., “An Initial Microstructural Analysis of A36 Steel from WTC Building 7,” Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society 53/12:18 (2001); cited by Jones, “Why Indeed ….” Jones’s own analysis of steel samples from the Twin Towers is forthcoming.<br /><br />19 I mean by this people who oppose the continuing consequences of the 2004 coup d’état, engineered by the US, Canada and France, that overthrew the elected government of President Aristide. For some context, see my article “Fraud and Scandal in Haiti’s Presidential Election: Préval’s Victory and the UN’s Disgrace,” Centre for Research on Globalization (3 March 2006), http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20060303&articleid=2061.<br /><br />20 David Icke, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (Wildwood, MO: Bridge of Love Publications, 2002), pp. 463, 478.<br /><br />21 For a thorough refutation of the “no-plane theory” of Holmgren and others, see Eric Salter, “The WTC Impacts: 767s or ‘Whatzits’?” (5 November 2004, updated September 2005), http://questionsquestions.net/WTC/767orwhatzit.html.<br /><br />22 Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September 11 (Shanty Bay, Ontario: Global Outlook, 2002), and America’s “War on Terrorism” (Pincourt, Québec: Global Research, 2005). See also Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11—and America’s Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2004); Webster G. Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (2nd ed.; Joshua Tree, California: Tree of Life Books, 2006); Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2005); and Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 (Research in Political Economy, vol. 23; New York: Elsevier, 2006).<br /><br />23 Two of David Ray Griffin’s books, The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, are cited in note 8 above; see also Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). Links to his most recent articles can be found at the website of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, http://www.st911.org. For a recurrently dishonest ‘official’ response to the lines of interpretation developed by works cited in this and the preceding seven notes, see David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/11 Myths (New York: Hearst Books, 2006).<br /><br />24 Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), p. 312.<br /><br />25 Virgil, Aeneid i.462, and Georgics ii.498, in Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera, ed. Fr. Dubner (Paris: Jacques Lecoffre, 1854), pp. 195, 113.<br /><br />26 Peter Dale Scott writes, in Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. xii, that “collusive secrecy and law-breaking are part of how the deep political system works.” He adds: “What makes these supplementary processes ‘deep’ is the fact that they are covert or suppressed, outside general awareness as well as outside acknowledge political processes.”<br /><br />27 Scott, Deep Politics, p. 313.<br /><br />28 István Meszáros, “The Structural Crisis of Politics,” Monthly Review 58.4 (September 2006): 11-14, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0906meszaros.htm#Volume.<br /><br />29 Ibid.<br /><br />30 This slight contortion of Frank’s syntax seems interestingly symptomatic of a desire to avoid any recognition of discontinuity. I applaud his insistence that previous American administrations were also routinely guilty of war crimes. But why should it be beyond our dialectical powers to acknowledge both that continuity and also the qualitative differences between the rampages of the Bush regime and the less unapologetic criminality of its precursors?<br /><br />31 What’s the Truth? How Indeed did the Twin Towers Collapse? A Dem Bruce Lee Styles Film, available at 911 Podcasts.com (1 July 2006), http://www.911podcasts.com/display.php?cat=9997&med=0&ord=Name&strt=0&vid=95&epi=0&typ=0; and linked at http://www.st911.org.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:85%;">Fair Use Notice<br />This page contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political issues relating to alternative views of the 9/11 events, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.</span></em><br /> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-91276744961386379892006-12-23T20:58:00.000-08:002007-07-18T22:29:23.497-07:00Why Indeed Did The WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?<em>This is former BYU Physicist Dr. Steven E Jones <a href="http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf">first paper on the WTC collapses</a>. So far, no official investigation has seriously challenged his hypothesis that the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were brought down by explosives; specifically pre-positioned cutter charges.</em><br /><br /><em>Dr. Jones challenges serious investigators who wish to rebut his controlled demolition hypothesis - they must address thirteen reasons why he rejects the official theory, which asserts that fire and impact damage alone caused the collapses: </em><br /><em><blockquote><p><em>1) Molten Metal - Flowing and in Pools.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>2) Observed Temperatures around 1000 degrees C and Sulfidation in<br />WTC 7 Steel.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>3) Near-Symmetrical Collapse of WTC 7.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>4) No Previous Skyscraper Complete Collapse Due to<br />Fires.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>5) Plume-time During the Collapse of WTC 7.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>6) Early Drop of North Tower Antenna.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>7) Eyewitness Account of Flashes and Loud Explosions</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>8) Ejection of Steel Beams and Debris-plumes from the<br />Towers.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>9) Rapid Collapses and Conservation of Momentum and<br />Energy.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>10) Controlled Demolition "Implosions" Require Skill.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>11) Steel Column Temperatures of 800 C Needed: A Problem in the Argument of Bazant and Zhou. </em></p><p><em>12) Problems in the NIST Report: Inadequate Steel<br />Temperatures and Tweaked Models.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em>13) NIST's Failure to Show Visualizations.</em><br /></p></blockquote></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-19283315169618358142006-12-23T20:24:00.000-08:002008-12-10T11:48:37.462-08:00An Interview With Gore Vidal<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/RY4ILR4m0ZI/AAAAAAAAABg/Vehf_M9t_mo/s1600-h/vidal.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5011952425182351762" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zTSec6V75F4/RY4ILR4m0ZI/AAAAAAAAABg/Vehf_M9t_mo/s320/vidal.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em>"<a href="http://www.counterpunch.com/mariam12212006.html"><strong>I'm Jealous of Cuba</strong></a>", an interview with Gore Vidal, one of our vital political and historical writers, was posted on Counterpunch on December 21, 2006 by Rosa Mariam Elizalde. I've excerpted a section related to 9/11. It's a great interview; Vidal traces the hidden history of American imperialism. g</em><em>h</em><br /><em></em><br /><br /><blockquote><strong>RM:</strong> <em>Oliver Stone was recently sanctioned by the US State Department for violating the blockade against Cuba. His crime was traveling to Cuba to make two documentaries about Fidel. Are these measures constitutional? </em><br /><br /><strong>Gore Vidal:</strong> Well of course it's a violation, as the first amendment grants us freedom of speech, the fourth amendment of the constitution is the bill of rights, which guarantees our rights to assembly and so forth. We have had since 9/11 a coup d´etat in the United States, the first we've ever had, in which a group of rather dishonest oil and gas people were able to seize the power of the State and by so doing they ended up with the Congress in their hands, they ended up with the presidency and much of the judiciary and much of the courts. It happened very fast. It's quite unique. It will be a great story one day at the moment it's just something the people don't understand. What they've never seen before doesn't exist really. Well they're seeing it now, in situ, as archaeologists, and it's a very unpleasant sight. Out of that come the sanctions, as you put it, on Oliver Stone, who has every right to make any movie that he wants to make and in whatever circumstance, as long as he breaks no laws, and no laws have been broken here. They [Bush and Cheney] just don't like it, oh! My goodness me!<br /></blockquote></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-59301065371820861372006-12-23T18:24:00.000-08:002006-12-23T21:35:06.129-08:00Faking the "War on Terror"<em>This is an excellent short explanation of how 9/11 gives the lie to the 'War on Terror' by Michael Keefer, in his essay, "The Harper Government and Canada's 'War on Terror' immigration policy. This article was published in Global Research on December 12, 2006 </em><a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20061212&articleId=4137"><em>http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20061212&articleId=4137</em></a><br /><em></em><br /><em>Keefer is Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. </em><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>"3. Faking the 'War on Terror'</strong><br /><br />"The 'War on Terror' is spurious because there is strong evidence that the events to which it is purportedly a response-the terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001-were orchestrated not by Osama bin Laden (whose partisans or minions served, however, as useful patsies), but rather by high-placed elements within the United States government. There are several converging lines of evidence: taken separately, they cry out for investigation; taken together, they appear seriously incriminating.<strong>7</strong>"<br /><br />"There have been substantial developments during the past year in the assessment of material, photographic and testimonial evidence relating to the collapses of the three towers of the World Trade Center (the 47-storey WTC 7 as well as the 110-storey Twin Towers). These include scientifically informed analyses which demonstrate the physical impossibility of the official account of the Twin Towers' collapse,<strong>8</strong> analyses of statements by fire department personnel and by survivors that there were numerous secondary explosions in the buildings in the interval between the airplane crashes and the collapses,<strong>9</strong> video and photographic evidence that structural steel in the South Tower was being cut and melted by thermate charges during the final minutes before the tower's collapse,<strong>10</strong> videos and photographs of the collapses of the towers in which "squibs" (explosive horizontal ejections of dust and debris) are visible well below the lines of collapse,<strong>11</strong> and laboratory analyses of structural steel from the towers which point to its having been cut by thermate charges.<strong>12</strong>"<br /><br />"Controlled demolition of course implies foreknowledge of the attacks as well as a complex pattern of organization-some aspects of which were made visible by Michael Ruppert, whose book Crossing the Rubicon revealed that the U.S. air defence system was effectively disabled on 9/11 by a network of air-defence and anti-terrorism exercises which transferred most of the available interceptor aircraft out of the northeastern U.S. to Alaska and Alberta, and for a crucial period that morning left the military air traffic controllers responsible for deploying the remaining jet fighters unable to determine which of the many apparently hijacked aircraft appearing on their radar screens were real, and which blips were merely part of a response-to-multiple-hijackings exercise.<strong>13</strong> The likelihood that al Qaeda operatives could have organized the demolitions in the World Trade Center complex (whose security was contracted to Securacom, a company with close Bush family connections),<strong>14</strong> as well as somehow coordinating airliner hijackings with what amounted to a planned disabling of the air defence system, is close to nil.<br />Add to this the destruction of material evidence at the WTC site, the extreme reluctance of the Bush administration to permit any inquiry into the events of 9/11, and the well-established fact-mendaciously denied by senior members of that administration-that foreign intelligence services, having evidently penetrated different parts of the 9/11 planning, gave them detailed advance warnings, and a pattern emerges that cries out for criminal investigation. Searching analyses of these issues, as well as of many features of the attacks, the ensuing cover-up, and the underlying geopolitics, have been published by Michel Chossudovsky and by other researchers,<strong>15</strong> and the theologian and ethicist David Ray Griffin has produced magisterial summations of the evidence pointing to the Bush administration's implication in the events of 9/11.<strong>16</strong>"<br /><br />"The 'War on Terror' is fraudulent, then, because its purported and actual goals are systematically at variance. Only in the most nakedly Orwellian sense can one claim that a project which began with apparent false-flag terrorist attacks that killed some three thousand people on American soil, and has since involved wars of aggression that have killed and maimed well over 25,000 American soldiers-not to mention killing scores of thousands of Afghans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and exposing millions of their fellow citizens to the murderous and ineradicable toxicity of depleted uranium-is in any sense concerned with enhancing the security of Americans, or of anyone else. The pretexts used to legitimize the invasion of Iraq have without exception been exposed as lies and disinformation<strong>17</strong>-an embarrassing fact that has not prevented the Bush administration, with the supine or active collaboration of the corporate media, and, to their shame, the diplomatic support of western countries including Britain, France, Germany and Canada, from constructing a parallel set of lies and deceptions to legitimize an apparently imminent attack upon Iran.<strong>18</strong>"<br /><br />"It is less widely appreciated that the invasion of Afghanistan was likewise carried out under false pretexts. Planned and threatened months before 9/11, this act of aggression was carried out for geopolitical reasons enunciated more than a year earlier by the Project for the New American Century, a pressure group whose key members have all held high office in the Bush administration.<strong>19</strong> It should be of some interest to Canadians to know that in September 2001 the United States rejected offers of the Afghani Taliban regime to deliver Osama bin Laden to Pakistan for trial there;<strong>20</strong> to know that opium production, which the Taliban had nearly eliminated in the provinces it controlled, bounced back to a new high once the U.S.-backed warlords of the Northern Alliance came to power;<strong>21</strong> and to learn that the appalling oppression of Afghan women by reactionary theocrats that the Bush regime adopted as an ex post facto reason for its invasion appears not to have significantly diminished under the Karzai regime.<strong>22</strong> Canadians might also be intrigued to discover that in June 2006 a journalist who wondered about the absence of any mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden's FBI Most Wanted listing was informed by Rex Tomb, the FBI's Chief of Investigative Publicity, that the reason for this absence "is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11."<strong>23</strong> This looks rather like an acknowledgment that the so-called "Bin Laden confession video" released by the U.S. in December 2001, and widely represented as justifying the attack on Afghanistan, is in fact not authentic.<strong>24</strong>"<br /><br />"The 'War on Terror' is also fraudulent because while purporting, as Bush himself has declared, to confer upon others what Americans "wish for ourselves-safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life,"<strong>25</strong> his administration has in fact sought through false-flag terrorism and shameless propaganda and disinformation to frighten Americans into supporting a resource-war geopolitics of unconstrained aggression. Concomitants of this endless warfare include the devolution of what is now called the "homeland" in the direction of a one-party state,<strong>26</strong> a deliberate voiding of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and a parallel extinction of international human rights law whose visible embodiment is an archipelago of prisons and torture houses extending from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Graib and Bagram.<strong>27</strong>"<br /><br /><br /><em>REFERENCES FOR THIS SECTION OF THE PAPER:</em><br /><em></em><br /><strong>7</strong> The following account of this evidence overlaps at some points with my recent essay "Into the Ring with Counterpunch on 9/11: How Alexander Cockburn, Otherwise So Bright, Blanks Out on 9/11 Evidence," available at Scholars for 9/11 Truth (4 November 2006), <a href="http://www.st911.org">http://www.st911.org</a>, and forthcoming in Cold Type (December 2006), <a href="http://www.coldtype.net">http://www.coldtype.net</a>.<br /><br /><em><strong>8</strong> See for example "MIT Professor [Jeff King] Breaks Down WTC Controlled Demolitions," Google Video (17 March 2006), <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1822764959599063248">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1822764959599063248</a> ; Judy Wood, "A Refutation of the Official Collapse Theory," (March 2006), <a href="http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html">http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/BilliardBalls.html</a> ; as well as articles by Frank Legge, Gordon Ross, and Kevin Ryan in the first two issues of the Journal of 9/11 Studies (June and August 2006), and Steven E. Jones, "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse?" Journal of 9/11 Studies 3 (September 2006): 1-48, </em><a href="http://www.st911.org"><em>http://www.st911.org</em></a><em>. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>9</strong> See David Ray Griffin, "Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories," 911 Truth.org (18 January 2006), <a href="http://www.911truth.org/artice.php?story=20060118104223192">http://www.911truth.org/artice.php?story=20060118104223192</a> ; and Graeme MacQueen, "118 Witnesses: The Firefighters' Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers," Journal of 9/11 Studies 2 (August 2006): 47-106.<br /><strong>10</strong> See "Shot from street level of South Tower collapsing," Camera Planet, 2 min. 49 sec., posted 24 February 2003, <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863&q=cameraplanet+9%2F11">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863&q=cameraplanet+9%2F11</a> ; and also photographs reproduced by Jones in "Why Indeed....?"</em><br /><em><br /><strong>11</strong> Squibs are visible in photographs of the collapses reproduced by Eric Hufschmidt, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, California: Endpoint Software, 2002); see also Dylan Avery, Dir., Loose Change (2006), available at <a href="http://www.st911.org">http://www.st911.org</a> ; Dustin Mugford, Dir., September 11 Revisited: Were Explosives Used to Bring Down the Buildings? <a href="http://www.911revisited.com">http://www.911revisited.com</a> (2006), available at <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4194796183168750014">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4194796183168750014</a> ; and In the Wake Productions, 911 Mysteries: Part I, Demolitions (2006), </em><a href="http://www.911weknow.com/911-mysteries-movie.html"><em>http://www.911weknow.com/911-mysteries-movie.html</em></a><em>. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>12</strong> See J. R. Barnett, R. R. Biederman, and R. D. Sisson, Jr., "An Initial Microstructural Analysis of A36 Steel from WTC Building 7," Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society 53/12:18 (2001); cited by Jones, "Why Indeed...." Jones's own laboratory analysis of steel samples from the Twin Towers is forthcoming. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>13</strong> Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2004), pp. 308-436. See also Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, The War on Truth (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2005), pp. 267-91, 304-16. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>14</strong> Securacom's CEO from 1999 to January 2002 was Wirt D. Walker III, a cousin of President Bush-whose younger brother Marvin P. Bush was also a principal in the company from 1993 to 2000. See David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor (2nd ed.; Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2004), p. 180. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>15</strong> Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September 11 (Shanty Bay, Ontario: Global Outlook, 2002), The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order (2nd ed.; Shanty Bay, Ontario: Global Outlook, 2003), America's "War on Terrorism" (Pincourt, Quebec: Global Research, 2005). See also Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline (New York: HarperCollins, 2004); Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, The War on Truth; Webster G. Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (2nd ed.; Joshua Tree, California: Tree of Life Books, 2006); and Paul Zarembka, ed., The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 (New York: Elsevier, 2006). </em><br /><br /><em><strong>16</strong> Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor is cited in note 14; see also The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2005), and Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). </em><br /><br /><em><strong>17</strong> See Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism"; Milan Rai, War Plan Iraq (London and New York: Verso, 2002); Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, Behind the War on Terror (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2003); Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies (New York: Nation Books, 2004); Naomi Klein and others, No War: America's Real Business in Iraq (London: Gibson Square Books, 2005); William R. Clark, Petrodollar Warfare (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2005). </em><br /><br /><em><strong>18</strong> See Seymour M. Hersh, "The Coming Wars: What the Pentagon can now do in secret," The New Yorker (24-31 January 2005), <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact">http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact</a> , and "The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?" The New Yorker (17 April 2006), <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060417fa_fact">http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060417fa_fact</a> ; Michael Keefer, "Petrodollars and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: Understanding the Planned Attack on Iran," Centre for Research on Globalization (10 February 2006), <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20060210&amp;amp;articleid=1936">http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20060210&amp;amp;articleid=1936</a> ; and Jorge Hirsch, "Nuclear Strike on Iran is Still on the Agenda," Antiwar.com (16 October 2006), </em><a href="http://antiwar.com/Hirsch/"><em>http://antiwar.com/Hirsch/</em></a><em>. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>19</strong> See Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Forbidden Truth, trans. Lisa Rounds et al. (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002). </em><br /><br /><em><strong>20</strong> Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, "How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It: Give Him an 'F' in the War on Terror," Counterpunch (1 November 2004), </em><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11012004.html"><em>http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11012004.html</em></a><em>. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>21</strong> See Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terror", pp. 224-36. </em><br /><br /><em><strong>22</strong> See "On the Situation of Afghan Women," Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), <a href="http://www.rawa.org/wom-view.htm">http://www.rawa.org/wom-view.htm</a> ; and Marc Herold, "Afghanistan as an empty space: The perfect Neo-Colonial state of the 21st century, part one," Cursor.org, <a href="http://www.cursor.org/stories/emptyspace.html">http://www.cursor.org/stories/emptyspace.html</a> .</em><br /><em><br /><strong>23</strong> Ed Haas, "FBI says, 'No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11," Muckraker Report (6 June 2006), <a href="http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html#_ftn1">http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html#_ftn1</a> . For the spin machine's wholly inadequate response to this embarrassment, see Dan Eggen, "Bin Laden, Most Wanted for Embassy Bombings?" The Washington Post (28 August 2006), <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/27/AR2006082700687.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/27/AR2006082700687.html</a> . </em><br /><br /><em><strong>24</strong> For a judicious analysis of the myth-making surrounding Osama bin Laden, see R. T. Naylor, Satanic Purses: Money, Myth, and Misinformation in the War on Terror (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006). </em><br /><br /><em><strong>25</strong> George W. Bush, Speech at West Point Military Academy (1 June 2002), <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/">http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/</a> ; quoted by Pierre Guerlain, "New Warriors Among American Foreign Policy Theorists," in Dana D. Nelson, ed., Ambushed: The Costs of Machtpolitik, special issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly 106.1 (Winter 2006), pp. 113-14. The Bush administration's claims to be promoting democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere are demolished by Noam Chomsky in Failed States(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), pp. 102-65.</em><br /><em><br /><strong>26</strong> See Michael Keefer, "The Strange Death of American Democracy: Endgame in Ohio," Centre for Research on Globalization (24 January 2006), <a href="http://globalresearch.com.ca/articles/KEE501A.html">http://globalresearch.com.ca/articles/KEE501A.html</a> . </em><br /><br /><em><strong>27</strong> See Timothy Brennan and Keya Ganguly, "Crude Wars," Nikhil Singh, "The Afterlife of Fascism," and Thomas L. Dumm, "George W. Bush and the F-Word," in Dana D. Nelson, ed., Ambushed: The Costs of Machtpolitik, pp. 19-35, 71-93, and 153-60. Key collections of documents relating to torture include Mark Danner, ed., Torture and Truth: America, Abu Graib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004); and Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Graib, intro. Anthony Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). See also Onnesha Roychaudhuri, "Tracking the Torture Taxis," The ColdType Reader 9 (November 2006), <a href="http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.06/Essays.06/1106.Reader9.pdf">http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.06/Essays.06/1106.Reader9.pdf</a> .</em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-47886666575448153722006-12-21T22:57:00.000-08:002006-12-21T23:19:15.013-08:00A Letter to Joshua Frank re: His article, "How the 9/11 Truth Movement Helps Bush & Cheney"<em>Originally published at cruciblex.blogspot.com on Monday, September 18, 2006</em><br /><a name="115859797118767780"></a><br />Dear Mr. Frank, You decided a priori that the current administration was not in cahoots regarding 9/11, without supporting your position with evidence. Yet you are surely cognizant of the current regime’s known criminality, and you concede there are a lot of questions unanswered re: 9/11. But then you go on to attack the “conspiracy theorists”.<br /><br />Whoa! It seems re: 9/11 that you’ve tossed away your journalistic balance. You must know that the official story of 9/11 is also a conspiracy theory. Please do your due diligence to determine which theory is best supported by the facts. Why don’t you go back to those unanswered questions and try and answer them? You’re not writing to a fringe group out here, you know. We’re a political force that is demanding answers regarding 9/11, the ongoing justification for Bush’s state terror campaign in Afghanistan, Iraq, and who knows who is next.<br /><br />Why don’t you go back and try and make a case for your position instead of indulging in ad hominem and straw man attack? Explain, for example, how WTC Building 7 collapsed completely and totally in under 7 seconds hours after the Twin Towers collapsed, though it was not hit by planes nor did it suffer huge fires and massive damage?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-30833918036980164082006-12-21T22:10:00.000-08:002006-12-21T22:23:30.045-08:00Crucible Times v.2.0Hey Folks,<br /><br />I accidently deleted version 1.0, cruciblex.blogspot.com! I got nervous about several reports of CIA involvement in Google, so I wanted to delete everything google-related except Blogger, but of course if you do that you delete your blogs too. Anyway, I'm swallowing my concern for the time being to re-create the blog here until I find a blogging progam I like. Until then I'll be posting as many old posts from cruciblex as I can find cached on google, and adding new posts of course.<br /><br />Slightly new Blog Title: Crucible Times<br /><br />gphUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461494376426558451.post-24334708570454393112006-12-21T21:56:00.000-08:002006-12-21T22:23:53.778-08:009/11 Was A Conspiracy - by Butler ShafferOriginally posted on 9/21/06<br /><a name="115884648646889946"></a><br /><a title="external link" href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer144.html">9/11 Was A Conspiracy - by Butler Shaffer </a><br /><br /><em>I found this article at </em><a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/"><em>LewRockwell.com </em></a><em>to be in line with the purpose of this blog: To get to the truth of 9/11 and recover our democracy and our soul as a nation requires that we recover our independent, critical thought. Baby, conspiracies happen; Cui Bono? Take the blinders off, start looking at the evidence, and let's take our country back before its too late. gh </em><br /><br /><div align="center"><br /><em><strong>While you here do snoring lie</strong></em></div><div align="center"><em><strong>Open-eyed conspiracyHis time doth take.~ </strong></em></div><div align="center"><em>William Shakespeare, The Tempest</em></div><br />I have lost my sense of humor to indulge those who reflexively deny the role of conspiracies in human affairs. In the months following 9/11 – and most strenuously in the days leading up to the fifth anniversary of this event – conventional thinking has dictated that commentaries on that atrocity carry the disclaimer “I am not suggesting a conspiracy.” It seems to be understood that entrance to the temples of respectable journalism, academic scholarship, or polite society would be denied anyone who transgressed this canon.<br /><br />It is not that a speaker must refrain from expressing any particular conspiracy theory to explain troublesome occurrences: one must avoid the implication that any form of human behavior might be directed or influenced by conspiratorial forces. To even consider the possibility that a given event might have been produced by a conspiracy, is to run the risk of being labeled a “paranoid” or a “wacko.” As we have no desire to appear foolish in the eyes of others, we give in to such intimidation and preface our opinions with the aforesaid mantra.<br /><br />How easily most of us sell out our intellectual integrity, and at distress-sale prices. Even men and women with excellent minds who should know better have collapsed in the face of such a charge. Do we have such a fear of our own minds that we can no longer stand up to the epistemological inquiry that is at the base of our character and intelligence: how do we know what we know? Upon what basis do we form our opinions about the world: the consensus of our neighbors, or our independent judgments?<br /><br />Any intellectually respectable opinion must be well-grounded in empirical fact and rational analysis. I have no use for those who spin conspiratorial theories out of little more than fantasy, wishful thinking, or the failure to distinguish a temporal relationship from a causal one. The assumption that because event “X” occurred, and was followed by event “Y,” a causal connection has been established, is among the shabbiest forms of reasoning. One might just as well argue for the proposition that wet sidewalks cause rain. In fact, I have no use for conspiracy theories at all, preferring – as my late friend, Chris Tame, so well stated it – to focus attention on the facts of conspiracies! As annoying as those are who offer lazy, simple-minded explanations for complex events, I am far more aggravated by those otherwise intelligent souls who help to man the barricades of ignorance against honest and empirically-based inquiries into topics they have been told are beyond rightful questioning.<br /><br />As the events of 9/11 continue – like a monster movie – to provide us with fear-ridden entertainment, let me use them to illustrate my point. There have been numerous DVDs, articles, books, and other works that challenge the government’s “official” explanations for these attacks. While some of these presentations test one’s credulity, others have provided purported evidence which, if true, would lead intelligent minds to demand further investigation. To say this, however, is not to give credence to any particular theory that one might offer as a counter-explanation to the “official” one. It is only to suggest that a further examination might be merited.<br /><br />To ask empirically based questions is not to make an accusation, but only to pursue the “cui bono?” question as a point of departure for uncovering wrongdoing. When a government official was murdered in ancient Rome, it was customary to begin the investigation with that question: “who benefited?” My wife and I are fans of the Inspector Morse television mysteries produced by the BBC. In a recent rerun, a man was murdered, and the first question out of Morse’s mouth was “who stood to benefit from this man’s death?”<br /><br />The answer to the “cui bono” question does not necessarily identify the culprit, but it is a very rational place from which to begin asking questions. To be a suspect is not to be accused. If a woman is found murdered, her husband will probably be the first one interviewed by the police in an effort to find her killer. If the victim had a one-million dollar insurance policy on her life, with her husband as the beneficiary, this will add to the intensity of the investigation. This does not, of course, prove that the husband was responsible for his wife’s death, only that it is sensible for the police to intensify their inquiry as to him.<br /><br />I spoke to a young college student the other day. He informed me that he had asked his political science professor whether he thought it possible that persons within the United States government might have been involved in the 9/11 attacks. His professor adamantly denied even the possibility, saying that American government officials were too decent to ever do such a thing. Is this what passes for “science” in the study of government?<br /><br />If this academician is prepared to be disabused of his delusions of faith in political systems, he might want to go to “Google,” and enter the phrase “Operation Northwoods.” Numerous entries will appear, with the first one – from Wikipedia – providing, perhaps, the greatest amount of information on this 1962 scheme by leading Defense Department officials. The plan was to have terrorist acts committed in various American cities – including Washington, D.C. – in which people would be shot; bombings would take place and planes hijacked; while “evidence” would be fabricated implicating the Castro regime with such acts. One proposal in the plan called for the destruction of an empty drone plane – which, people would be told, carried American college students on a holiday. All of these contrived “attacks” would then be used as a justification for an attack on Cuba. This plan had the written support of all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including its chairman.<br /><br />That top U.S. government officials could concoct such a deadly plan as a pretext for war in no way proves that 9/11 was a similarly contrived event. What it does do, however, is strip away some of the high-school civics class veneer of the state that leads most Americans, including the aforesaid political science professor, to dismiss in knee-jerk fashion and without any felt need to examine the evidence, the idea that their government could engage in such calculated wrongdoing. In light of the lies, forgeries, cover-ups, and other deceptions leading to a “war” in Iraq, how can any intellectually honest person categorically deny the possibility of the involvement of American political interests in 9/11?<br /><br />I want to emphasize, again, that I am not even suggesting that persons other than Al Qaeda operatives were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I know of no evidence sufficient to sustain such an accusation. I am, however, suggesting that a number of critics of the “official” explanation have offered enough thoughtful evidence and factual analysis to warrant a thorough investigation of these events. The inquiry should be conducted by competent men and women with no preconceived agenda – whether as defenders or critics of governmental behavior – and without fear of asking any and all empirically related questions. Were he not a fictional character, I would insist that Inspector Morse – with his “cui bono?” disposition – be made chairman of the investigatory group.<br /><br />For such an inquiry to have meaning, it must be accompanied by a widespread change in current attitudes that make most Americans unwilling to consider the possibility of “conspiracies” directing events. Such a naïve mindset reflects an ignorance of so much of human history as to be embarrassing. The role of the “agent provocateur” – which found expression in the Operation Northwoods plan – is much better known to Europeans, whose political histories are replete with well-established in-house scheming.<br /><br />To help my American neighbors get beyond this anti-conspiratorial brain-lock, I proclaim that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were, indeed, brought about by a conspiracy. Any who deny this are invited to explain why the World Trade Center buildings no longer appear on the New York City skyline! Unless one is to offer the state’s favorite “one-lone-nut-with-two-commandeered-airplanes” as the causal explanation, it seems quite evident that these attacks were brought about by at least two persons, thus constituting a “conspiracy.” The next question is whether the conspirators were of Al Qaeda or other as-yet undisclosed origins or, perhaps, a combination thereof. One could contend that these occurrences were the products of nothing more than random accidents; a bad day for airline pilots who could not keep from plowing their planes into buildings. But even such a far-fetched explanation implicates a conspiracy, as many persons in both the government and the media went to great lengths to inform us that these were planned attacks.<br /><br />What forces were responsible for the crimes of 9/11? Admittedly, I do not know, nor am I prepared to transform my skepticisms into accusations. Perhaps it is the lawyer in me that has this strange attraction to evidence as the basis for my empirical judgments. In employing the “cui bono?” test as a point of departure, I find only two groups which, in Inspector Morse’s question, seem to have benefited from these attacks: (1) Al Qaeda, and (2) the United States government. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have become a major political force in the world, in large part due to the Bush administration’s violent reaction to 9/11. But the American government – with its expanded police and military powers, increased military spending and the creation of new weapons, and the popular acceptance of the idea that people can be held, indefinitely, without trial – has benefited from this event by greatly expanding its powers. 9/11 was the product of a conspiracy, the only question being: who were the conspirators?<br /><br />But as with a murder investigation, that one has benefited from a crime does not prove one’s causal role in it. It is important that this critical distinction continue to be made. Suspicion and guilt are not synonymous words. At the same time, however, intellectually respectable thinking demands a willingness to pursue any inquiry wherever it may lead. There is far too much at stake in our world for any of us to take comfort in our institutionally-certified ignorance by pulling the blankets up over our heads so that we not see the bogeyman.<br /><br />But there is another factor – what I call “existential courage” – that must remain at the forefront of our efforts to live as human beings, rather than as servo-mechanisms to the institutional order. What kind of people are we that we should lay our liberties, property, and lives – including the lives of our children – at the feet of rulers, to be disposed of in any manner that suits their momentary temperaments? What have we become that we regard any questioning of this arrangement as the products of “irresponsible” or “paranoid” minds? Why should free and energized minds be fearful of asking any questions, particularly those we have been told it is improper to ask?<br /><br /><em>September 18, 2006 Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival.I found this article at </em><a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/"><em>LewRockwell.com </em></a><em>to be in line with the purpose of this blog: To get to the truth of 9/11 and recover our democracy and our soul as a nation requires that we recover our independent, critical thought. Baby, conspiracies happen; </em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1