Morgan Reynolds' Latest

I've been paying a little more attention to Morgan Reynolds since I noticed that he's now collaborating on articles with Holocaust Denier Rick Rajter. Reynolds is one of the wildest of the wild, despite a fairly non-controversial background as an economist. He's back today with an article that I could't resist fisking.

Most people were caught off-guard, including the defense establishment (apparently), but counterterrorism experts and government officials quickly appeared on TV to finger the perpetrators. A Fox anchorman even solved it within a minute of the second hit: “We just saw on live television as the second plane flew into the second tower of the World Trade Center. Now given what has been going on around the world, some of the key suspects come to mind: Osama bin Laden.”

Osama bin Laden and his Arab hijackers! Yeah, that’s the ticket. Case closed. Mighty fine work. No one asked embarrassing questions like, how could all the talking heads reach the same conclusion in minutes?

Well, for one thing, Osama's organization had committed prior attacks against the US; the African embassy bombings in 1998, most notably. Although many people seem to think that Osama was unknown until September 11th, in fact he was quite well known to those who follow international terrorism. He'd been featured in an ABC News special, as well as a Time Magazine article.

Why were “independent experts” and government officials so uniform in identifying the same guy? Where was their proof, except of course, al-Sugami’s paper passport planted, er, found on the sidewalk a few blocks away before a tower fell. It must have jumped out of his pocket, maneuvered through the crashing Boeing, survived the fireball and floated down to the sidewalk unmarred.

Actually Satami's passport was not the first piece of evidence. Mohammed Atta had checked in late for his flight in Boston, and a piece of luggage he had did not make it on the plane. The FBI searched that luggage and found information tying Atta to the other 18 hijackers.

Yet public challenge to the instant conspiracy theory remains heretical. Powerful people like Vice President Dick Cheney and former CIA chief and current Texas A&M University President Robert M. Gates, for example, denounce any suggestion of government complicity in the events of 9/11 as “beyond the pale.” Evidence like the 6.6-second demolition of WTC building 7 and an 18-foot hole in the Pentagon that supposedly swallowed a Boeing 757 is dismissed as “nutball” stuff.

Perhaps because the 18-foot hole was really much more like a 90-foot hole? Perhaps because the official collapse time for WTC 7 is actually 18 seconds (per the 9-11 Commission Report, which is always cited by the CT crowd for the collapse times of WTC 1 and WTC 2)?