The Return of Richard Andrew Grove

We debunkers all have our favorite wackos in the 9-11 Denial Movement. James enjoys Karl Schwarz, the CEO of that internationally renowned company, Patmos Nanotechnologies, and Ambassador Leo Wanta, the richest man in the world. Others might prefer Luke "You are scum, sir!" Rudkowski. Teenyboppers no doubt swoon for the Incredible Hunk, Matt Lepacek.

But one of my personal faves is undoubtedly Richard Andrew Grove, who embodies the old maxim that if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

An aside here. Back in the early 1990s, I worked as a commercial mortgage banker, arranging loans on apartment complexes. A new type of lender was appearing back then, called conduit lenders. They would make a bunch of loans, then take them over to Wall Street and securitize the package and sell off the securities, generally at a profit.

We had one conduit lender who wanted our business, but every time I tried to nail the guy down on the details he'd start talking smoke and mirrors, driving me crazy with fancy big picture jargon that didn't even make sense, when I wanted nuts and bolts. I've always considered myself a pretty bright guy and by then I'd worked in the business for 15 years with no difficulty, so it wasn't long before I realized that this guy didn't know what he was talking about and was making it up as he went along.

That's sort of how I feel about Grove after listening to him on several occasions. He's certainly entertaining, and you always get the feeling that he's leading up to something profound, but he never quite gets there. It's smoke and mirrors and when it's time to get down to the nitty gritty, he's talking abstract impressionism.

Some of the Deniers claim he's some sort of whistle-blower, but as best I can make out he worked for a software company that did some accounting software package for Marsh & McClennan that siphoned off the money from M&M, and when he tried to report this to M&M they set up a meeting with him. For the morning of 9-11. Dundundunnn! So actually 9-11 was all a plot to kill Richard Andrew Grove, since the executive who was going to be confronted that day called in from home rather than attending that meeting. And all the people confronting the manager were killed except for Richard, who was running late that day.

Of course, how this all fits into the larger picture that the 9-11 kooks have in mind is beyond me. I mean, did Cheney call up the head of Marsh & McClennan to tell him that they had a big false flag attacked planned for the next week and if they wanted to get rid of any pesky whistle-blowers, just have them in the Towers that morning?

Anyway, Grove has decided to put out a movie, or at least what passes for a movie in the 9-11 Denial Movement. It's very typical of the genre; a bit of railing about how the mainstream media doesn't cover this stuff, followed by a whole lot of examples of the mainstream media covering this stuff. There is a long segment of Steven Colbert, but nobody could argue that Colbert's comedy somehow has been silenced.

I'll add some updates as I watch further. Grove's clearly a lefty; lots of talk about poverty, and even a brief audio clip from Mumia Abu Jamal.