Columnist Praises Loose Change, Repeats Lies

Here's a review of Loose Change by a columnist in Salem, Oregon. Tim King repeats many of the debunked charges raised by Dylan Avery:

One interesting, little known fact is that the person behind the security of the World Tade Towers was Marvin Bush, brother of President George W. Bush. According to Wikepedia, he was a board member of the organization, Securacom/Stratesec, which was in charge of security at the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport, and United Airlines during a two year contract which was set to end on September 10th, 2001, only a day before the 9/11 attacks. Coincidence?

No, falsehood. First, even Loose Change admits that Marvin Bush was on the board of directors of that firm from 1993 to fiscal 2000, which means that he left the board in June 2000, as even some of the arguably responsible conspiracy websites note. Second, the allegation that the contract was set to expire on September 10, 2001 is based solely on the comment by the company's CEO that they were in charge of security right up until the towers fell. Which does not mean that their contract was due to expire, it simply means that the contract was cancelled. There is a claim at Wikipedia to the effect that Barbara Bush's book Reflections backs up the statement about the contract expiring the day before the attacks; as we have discussed this appears to be a piece of disinformation.

So in essence, the claim that Marvin Bush "was behind" security at the WTC on September 11th is somewhat similar to a claim that Bill Clinton was in charge of delivering mail to the Pentagon on that day. Bill had previously had some oversight authority on the people who delivered the mail, but he'd left that position well before the day of the attack.

Here's an article from 2002 from an obviously hyperventilating reporter that nevertheless confirms that Marvin Bush was out of the company after June of 2000:

Marvin Bush was reelected annually to Securacom's board of directors from 1993 through 1999. His final reelection was on May 25, 1999, for July 1999 to June 2000. Throughout, he also served on the company's Audit Committee and Compensation Committee, and his stock holdings grew during the period. Directors had options to purchase 25,000 shares of stock annually. In 1996, Bush acquired 53,000 shares at 52 cents per share. Shares in the 1997 IPO sold at $8.50. Records since 2000 no longer list Bush as a shareholder.

As for the magical contract ending on September 10, 2001:

Barry McDaniel, CEO of the company since January 2002, declines on security grounds to give specific details about work the company did at the World Trade Center. According to McDaniel, the contract was ongoing (a "completion contract"), and "not quite completed when the Center went down." The company designed a system, but - as he points out - that obviously "didn't have anything to do with planes flying into buildings."

And get this:

The program’s creators base their theory on the actual temperature reached by consistently burning jet fuel, which is similar in nature to kerosene. According to the figures offered, it would take a consistent temperature of 3,000 degrees farenheit to melt steel, and kerosene only burns at 2,000 degrees, not to mention that much of the jet fuel aboard the planes disbursed upon impact. Steel engineers and jet fuel experts should be consulted to test the documentary’s claims, as the information should have few variables.

Yeah maybe somebody should consider consulting some steel engineers. Or physics professors, water testers and theology PHDs, if you can't get the steel engineers to go along with the conspiracy theory.