Loose Change Telephone Game

When I was in grade school we used to play the telephone game, where one kid whispers a sentence into the ear of the person sitting in the seat next to them. By the time it gets clear around the classroom it has mutated into something completely different, and usually pretty amusing. Well this is how conspiracy theories work.

In the movie Dylan and company claim:

But on Thursday the 6th, bomb sniffing dogs were abruptly removed from the building.So who authorized all this?

President Bush's brother, Marvin, was Board of Directors at Securacom from 1993 until fiscal year 2000.

This takes two completely separate, although technically correct pieces of information, and runs them together to form a false impression.

First of all, not all bomb sniffing dogs were removed from the buildings, just the ones that were part of the extra security. The Loose Change folks manage to turn a heightened security period into some type of security lapse. Kind of like how politicians complain that if you were planning to increase the spending of a program 8%, but you only increase it 5%, then you are cutting spending.

Secondly, as the movie says, Bush left Securacom (actually Stratasec) in 2000 He was gone over 14 months by the time the attacks came around. And as a member of the board of directors, he would have had nothing to do with the day to day operations anyway, much less the security dogs. Stratesec did not run security for the WTC, they were just responsible for electronic security systems. The dogs were part of the port police, and possibly other companies working on contract. By putting these two completely unrelated facts together though, the filmmakers are able to give the viewer a completely false impression, although they technically never "lie".

But the telephone game doesn't stop here. In their extra video footage, one of the trio, who apparently never even saw his own movie promotes Marvin Bush to "head of security at the World Trade Center".

So now that this already been changed, even before getting out of the original group, I was not at all surprised to see this posted in a list of 9/11 "facts" in response to an editorial yesterday.

27 Marvin Bush involvement with the security security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. He gave the order to have the bomb sniffing dogs removed before 9/11. security contracts for the WTC complex ended 9-11-01

You start out with one thing, play fast and loose with the connections, and before you know it, you have a whole new list of "facts".

Update:

One could have all sorts of fun with this rhetorical device. For example, from my upcoming feature film "The Secret Lives of the Loose Change Guys"

In 2003 prisoners were sexually humiliated in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. They were stripped naked, dog collars were put on their necks, womens' underwear was put on their heads. Who ordered this to be done?

In 2003, Loose Change producer Korey Rowe was serving in Iraq.