David Griscom's Latest Hypothesis

You can tell David L. Griscom's a serious scientist, because he's careful to call it a hypothesis and not a theory.

Is he a CIT-head?

I have previously prepared a PowerPoint (available on request) based on eyewitness reports and the officially released Pentagon-security-camera frames that supports a hypothesis proposed by others that the Pentagon was struck on 9/11 by a smallish twin engine aircraft superficially resembling the a Boeing 737, 757, or 767. Most probably the specific aircraft type was Cold-War-era Navy A-3 converted to an unmanned air vehicle (UAV). UAVs are commonly referred to as “drones.” According to eyewitness reports, this second aircraft arrived at the Pentagon simultaneously with American Airlines Flight 77 (AA-77) but from a different quarter, at higher speed, and at lower altitude. Thus, most witnesses caught a glimpse of one or the other of the two planes, but not both. The expanding fireball of the A-3 impact then distracted everyone from noting (or correctly interpreting) the escape of the Boeing 757. In this analysis of the Pentagon attack, the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 77 (AA-77) would have escaped unscathed.

Is he a pod person?

So I reasoned that that both UA-175 (#N612UA) and AA-11 (#N334AA) took off on the morning of 11 September 2001 as unmodified Boeing 767s that had been continuously in the possession of their original owners. However, the plane that actually struck WTC2 was captured on film and digital video cameras by many dozens of individuals – and widely-published frames from these films (some even appearing on magazine covers) show the impacting aircraft to have unmistakable external modifications.

Or is he a bumbler?

Returning to the proposed ruse, I asked myself: Would it have been possible to fool the radars into missing two aircraft swapping places? Actually, the answer might have been “No” ...were it not for one thing: AA-11 turned off its transponder at a convenient time to cover up its possible substitution for a drone not possessing a transponder. This switchoff was done at point and time D on Slides 2 and 3, respectively – i.e., just before the two aircraft would have met near point E in my scenario. An aircraft’s transponder sends high-strength signals (so-called “mode C returns”) back the radar installations with encoded data specifically identifying the aircraft in terms of a four-digit number assigned by the air traffic controllers and giving its precise altitude based on an on-board airpressure altimeter. The “primary returns” (small triangles in Slide 3) represent reflections of the radar pulses off the skin of the aircraft, which bounce back to the radar receiver as signals very much weaker than those from the aircraft’s transponder ...and carrying no information about the aircraft’s identity. These weak primary returns are susceptible to large statistical errors when an attempt is made to extract altitude data from them (note scatter in triangles in Slide 3).

Nevertheless, as suggested by the bold arrows that I have added in Slide 3, the NTSB primary-return data appear consistent with actual detection of an unknown aircraft climbing to 30,400 ft and there meeting AA-11, which in turn promptly begins to descend.

Well, actually he's all of the above, and more. Believe it or not, Steven Jones' favorite peer reviewer believes in a CIT-like hypothesis for Flight 175:

Specifically, what I see in this film is a super-fast aircraft much nearer the camera than to the WTC, which pulls out of a steep dive practically simultaneously with the 767 attacker seen striking WTC2, banks sharply to its right, and disappears going away from the camera (in the general direction of the WTC). The object I am describing here has been widely noted but is generally spoken of as being a bird. However, no bird known to man is capable of flying laterally into our field of view and then turning away and disappearing in the distance in a total elapsed time of less than a second! Yet this is exactly what we see in Slide 6! It seems quite possible that this may be the very same “bird” as the one captured flying west to east just north of the World Trade Center just 14 seconds later (see the following video and Slide 7):

Good news for the family members: Griscom no longer believes that all the passengers survived.

In earlier versions of this hypothesis, I supposed that all passengers were co-conspirators, who would have been sent on their separate ways to tropical islands or mountaintop retreats of their choices. Subsequently, it was suggested to me that the head conspirators might not have had complete trust in everyone privy to the conspiracy. Thus, while promising a cushy “witness protection program” to every co-conspirator ordered to board one of these flights on the morning of 9/11/01, it seems very possible that the leaders shunted aside and murdered those they considered less trustworthy. Moreover, on study of the occupations and travel priorities of some of the people on the passenger and cabincrew lists of the 9/11 “hijacked” jetliners, I now believe that a number of innocent people were allowed to board these flights as well ...and that all of these innocents were murdered.

(Italics in original)

Well, as you can see, David Griscom is a very serious and diligent researcher. I can readily believe that his 12 pages of comments and suggestions on the nanothermite paper improved it immeasurably. Note to commenters: Don't talk about the microspheres! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

Ready for a Laugh?

Guess who exposed himself as the peer-reviewer for Steven Jones' Active Thermitic Materials paper?

No, not Snoopy. That would be deserving of some respect. Instead it's that sack of fecal matter inhabiting the hockey jersey, David L. Griscom. Does that seem like a harsh assessment of such a kindly-looking old phart?

Well, Griscom has earned it and more. In a movement not exactly blessed with sensitivity, he came up with the single-most offensive theory put forth by the Truthers: All the passengers on the four doomed flights are alive and living it up in Tahiti.

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

As I have pointed out in the past, the reason these retards believe that somebody could be persuaded to betray their friends, family and country, is because they themselves would jump at the opportunity, provided the Swiss bank account was handsome enough.

So yes, the guy who "peer-reviewed" Jones' paper is a Troofer moron himself. Professor Jones tries to put a smiley face on it:

The reviewer's name is Prof. David L. Griscom. Among his impressive credentials, Prof. Griscom is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the AAAS.

Well, he's certainly an AAAS-hole, Steven. But even the Troofers have their limits, and in the comments, loosenuke points out:

Does his promotion of theories, for which there's no actual evidence, such as 'all passengers survived' and 'the Pentagon was hit by a fighter jet', affect your opinion of his credibility- why or why not?

And JO911S published a letter by Griscom Feb 07; why didn't you mention this?

I think you previously mentioned that Bentam was given suggestions for reviewers; was Griscom one of the people suggested?

Jones does a little shuffle:

I do not think that Prof. Griscom's studies on 9/11 "compromise" him as a reviewer -- he critiqued the paper critically as a scientist, giving (as he said) the authors twelve pages of comments and questions. This scientific thoroughness is unusual in a review (from my experience) -- very unusual.

I do not know how the editors selected the reviewers, and I do not know the name of the other reviewer.

Never mind that he's a nut; his nuttiness wasn't evident in his review of our paper. And the second part is a dodge; loosenuke didn't ask him how the reviewer was chosen, just whether Jones recommended him. Given that Jones used to point out Griscom as an example of another physics professional for 9-11 "Truth", it's not hard for me to guess the answer to that question.

But it gets even better. Jones says he doesn't know who the second peer-reviewer was. Not to worry, the next commenter says:

I do know the name of the second Peer Reviewer, who obviously wants to stay anonymous yet. All I can say is that his reputation is undoubtable, too.

Yeah, I'm sure that if Sitting Bull knows him, he must indubitably be another fruitcake.

Troofer Moron of the Month: David L. Griscom

I have talked about this particular reptile before, but I note he is still active in the 9-11 Troof Movement, posting his support for the nanothermite nonsense over at OpEd News. As you can see, he looks a little like Andy Gump, but his mental ability is more like Forrest Gump.

Griscom holds the distinction of having the single-most offensive theory in 9-11 Troofy Troof. As he wrote:

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

Yep, you or I might consider Todd Beamer an American hero; but in Griscom's alleged mind, he's a co-conspirator living it up in Tahiti on his handsome Swiss bank account.

Apparently our railing about Griscom got through to somebody over at the Scholars for 9-11 Truth and Justice, as I see he is no longer listed on their membership rolls (Who says they don't have standards?). He remains one of the contributors to JONES, however, and of course he's still proudly listed at the buffoonish "Patriots Question 9-11" site; in fact he's the second professor listed (after AK Dewdney).

True to our dictum that idiots who believe in one nutty conspiracy theory believe in another, Griscom is a big proponent of one of the more unusual theories of the 2004 election: That Bush stole Arizona.

Having witnessed suspicious behaviors by poll workers at three of his four precincts, John Brakey launched a 1,000+ hour audit of the voting at precinct #324, and called on David Griscom for assistance in analyzing the voting records.

Eventually, the investigative duo uncovered a pattern of poll-worker fraud, and Griscom was able to use simple gambler’s odds to prove that the probability of seven different irregularities being committed exactly 11 times each, was less than one chance in 20 million if they were seven random accidents due to poll-worker incompetence.

Hooo-boy do the Troofers love that "one chance in 20 million" crap. Never mind that Bush won Arizona by ten percentage points as all the polls had predicted, and that Kerry did not campaign here significantly.

Griscom contributed a couple of comments to a Troofer article on OpEd News which is the reason he came onto my radar screen again.

Missing The Point

Arabesque finally notices that David L. Griscom is a slight embarrassment to the 9-11 "Truth" Movement.

Now granted, Arabesque is trying to clean up the more unsavory elements of the fruitcake brigade. But get this:

Now what's interesting is that within the same month that this article was published, we have SLC pointing it out... The article came from Griscom's homepage. So within two weeks, someone found the article and forwarded it to SLC and it was then ridiculed.

Yes, and for something like 17 months nobody did anything about it. I brought it up quite a few times. As for "somebody found the article and forwarded it to SLC", I don't recall how I came across Griscom's nutty paper, but my first guess is that I got it from Nico's news aggregator, which used to have a watch for 9-11 Conspiracy Theory tags. From the way Arabesque talks about it, this was some sort of operation that we planned to discredit the kooks.

We don't have to work at that part; they give us plenty of material without our having to expend significant effort. And the idea that Griscom's reputation can be rehabilitated by taking down the paper is silly; he's radioactive and so are the others who rely on him for crediblity, including Steven Jones:

The Most Insulting CT Yet?

Lord knows, I thought Dylan was insensitive, but this guy makes him look like Richard Simmons. David L. Griscom, a retired research physicist, has come up with his own rather unique theory.

An underlying postulate, or working hypothesis, of my earlier Pentagon model was that the passengers on AA-77 volunteered to feign their deaths in return for cushy “witness protection” programs. This concept is not original to me. It was explored by the CIA in the early 60s as a component of a scheme to fake the shoot-down of an American airliner over international waters as a justification for invading Castro’s Cuba. “The plan [Project Northwoods] was to replace said aircraft with an identical drone, flown by remote control, and land the original plane at an [Air Force] base where passengers, boarded under prepared aliases, would be evacuated. The drone would then fly the route and when over Cuba, emit a distress signal before being destroyed by radio signal.”

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

Yep, that's right, this toad believes that all the passengers were paid off. Todd Beamer and Jeremy Glick are probably sipping Pina Coladas on Tahiti right now. Simply disgusting!

Update: PDoh in the comments: Hey if someone offered me 10 million quid to disappear to some tropical paradise and relax on a beach all day with fit women I would take it.

Perhaps you are missing what they would really have been given the 10 million pounds for; complicity in the murder of thousands of people. Then again, maybe this is why the "Truthers" are so easily convinced? After all they'd take the money if it were offered to them.

He's also a 2004 Election kook, which confirms my already low opinion of Fitrakis, Freeman and their ilk.