Gage Lies About Jersey Girl Endorsement

No particular surprise here:

We're proud to have the endorsement of The Jersey Girls, who single handedly forced the Bush Administration to convene the 9/11 Commission after one year of inaction following the attacks of September 11.

We are pleased that Patty and Lorie have signed our petition. We have also received signatures from Josef Princiotta, Manny Badillo, Bob McIlvaine, Ellen Mariani. Let us know if there are any of them we are not listing here!

Manny Badillo and Bob McIlvaine are Jersey Girls? Who knew? And of course Patty (Casazza) and Lorie (Van Auken) are only two of the original Jersey Girls (a third, Mindy Kleinberg also endorsed Gage's group, although she apparently did not sign the petition). Where's Kristen Breitweiser, the most famous of the JGs?

9-11 Press For Truth Analysis Part I

This is the hot new video in the 9-11 Denial Movement, although that seems a bit odd as the film does not (according to those who've seen it all) include any mention of the popular conspiracy theories, like the Bumble Planes or the missile into the Pentagon, or the controlled demolition at the World Trade Center. I am going to analyze the film in short bits; today I'll look at the first 10 minutes.

The film starts with a brief intro of clips from 9-11, including the initial CNN report and the crash of Flight 175 into the South Tower. It then jumps to President Bush. The music at this point is rather harsh and jarring in the background as the president gives his speech that evening. The image splits into two, then four then 9 and so on, distancing us from him.

We are introduced to three of the four Jersey Girls, 9-11 widows from the Garden State. Note particularly the soft music as they are introduced. The voice over notes that these widows had questions. At the top of their list is the question of "Why had the US military defenses failed to stop any of the four hijacked planes?"

Here the film engages in a little casual dishonesty. First we are shown a clip that the first hijacking was reported to the military at 8:38 AM (true). Then the announcer intones, "The last plane was reported to have crashed in Pennsylvania just after 10:00 AM (true enough, but the screen says 10:06, which is false; the 9-11 Commission concluded that the plane crashed at 10:03). One of the Jersey girls laughs and says, "That's almost two hours, that planes were flying around the skies of the United States with no military response."

And that is a lot of crap. First, even if we use their times, that's not even an hour and a half. And anyway, the question is not how long the air defenses had to react to all the hijackings, it's how long they had to react to each individual hijacking. As we know, that's not a very long time.

Flight 11: NEADS notified at 8:38. Crashed at 8:45.
Flight 175: NEADS notified at 9:03. Crashed at 9:03.
Flight 77: NEADS notified at 9:34. Crashed at 9:37.
Flight 93: NEADS notified at 10:07. Crashed at 10:03.

As you can see most advance warning that NEADS (Northeast Air Defense Sector, a unit of NORAD) had for any of the hijacked planes was seven minutes for Flight 11. The notion that our air defenses could have intercepted any of these planes with that little warning is completely unrealistic.

The movie then goes on to contrast this supposedly slow response by the military to the 1999 incident where air traffic controllers lost radio contact with Payne Stewart's plane. But in that incident air traffic control (PDF) got no response at 9:33 AM EDT. A Cubana Air flight tried to raise the plane at 9:38. According to the NTSB report on the plane crash the a military plane intecepted Stewart's jet at 9:54 CDT. That may sound like 21 minutes, but note the Time Zone change--it's actually an hour and 21 minutes. So the notion that the military did a crackerjack job with Payne Stewart, but was sluggish in response to 9-11 is just not borne out by the facts.

Next we comes a question about Bush's personal response on 9-11. Once again we get the creepy music; this documentary makes no bones about who's the villain of the piece, and it ain't Osama. We're shown a clip of Cheney talking about the Secret Service yanking him from the White House, and this is contrasted with Bush sitting in the classroom reading to the children, with I guess the implication being that the Secret Service screwed up by not pulling the President from the room. One of the Jersey girls helpfully asks, "If people fell down on the job, by not informing those who were in leadership positions, who had the power to do something, why were we not looking at our protocols so we could fix it going forward."

Of course, one assumes that the standing order since 9-12 is that if there is a terrorist attack again, the President is immediately to be pulled away from what he's doing. And as for that "power to do something", what exactly does she think he could do, run outside and shoot down the hijacked planes with a SAM?

So now we're two "questions" into the movie and they're asking about procedure changes in the event of a terrorist attack?

9-11 Press for Truth Analysis Part III

The third ten minute segment of the movie mostly concerns the 9-11 Commission report.

Another odd bit: As New York City Mayor Bloomberg begins his testimony, one of the JGs says, "We begged and pleaded that people should be put under oath." This is just a poor choice from the filmmakers, because what could Bloomberg have to hide? If you recall he wasn't even mayor when 9-11 happened, he was just a candidate for the office. "At the beginning they were not...."

So subsequently they were? Sheesh, you got your way and you're still griping?

Next we get into the crappola about Phillip Zelikow. The movie makes it seem like the Jersey Girls did some crack investigative work.

Kristen Breitweiser: "We have found out that not only did he serve on the transition team for the Bush Administration, that he was a person who wrote a draft memo for the setup of the Bush Administration's National Security Council, that he was an individual who wrote the preemptive war strategy that was eventually used for the war in Iraq, that he's a close friend of Condoleezza Rice's, we want him to resign."

One thing that is soft-played in this film (but it's not hard to read between the lines) is that the Jersey Girls and many of the other family members portrayed in this film are also anti-war activists, who not only opposed the war in Iraq, but also the one in Afghanistan. While informing us of the supposed conflict of interest of Zelikow, the filmmakers make no effort to advise us of conflicts of interest for the family members.

At about 22:00 we hear griping that the commission was not being given the information they needed. Immediate afterwards, there is a complaint that too much information was provided. Somewhat reminiscent of the complaint the two grandmothers had about the food at the nursing home:

Grandma 1: The food here is terrible.
Grandma 2: And such small portions!

Then we get the complaint that classified documents were only viewed by two of the commission members: Republican Zelikow and Democrat Jamie Gorelick. More sinister music, and "At that point I knew the fix was in."

Classified information is classified for a reason. Revealing it to one Republican and one Democrat strikes me as a common sense solution. But of course to the conspiracy nutbars, the Democrats are just as likely to be involved in the coverup as the Republicans. I don't quite know where they get this idiotic notion, but it seems to be pretty pervasive.

Hilariously, the mockumentary goes on to present its first administration hero; Richard Clarke. Never mind that Clarke admitted that he failed in his responsibility to protect the nation from terrorism. He's a hero because he apologized for his mistakes.

Then we get griping about how President Bush and Vice President Cheney insisted on meeting with the commission together, in private, and not under oath. More creepy music. More griping about them not being under oath. But of course if you really believe that Bush was lying about 9-11, do you think that being under oath would change that?

Then the 9-11 Commission Report was issued and we get more griping about that. It didn't answer my questions, complains one of the JGs. What questions were unanswered? They don't specify, but as we have already seen, most of the question that these people are asking have been answered. They just don't like the answers because they don't implicate Bush.

Then we get griping about the fact that the news media pretty much accepted the 9-11 Commission Report as doing a good job. Chris Matthews, hardly an administration shill, asks whether the families, "Can't deal with reality." A Newsweek editor says that the families seem unable to accept that there was no way the attacks could have been stopped. Good thinking, but of course, that's not what the movie wants us to think.

We get griping that the news media, "Failed again and again to connect the dots." Another little aside to the conspiracy crowd. One of the women says that she was hoping for another Woodward and Bernstein. Let me guess, that would result in the impeachment of the President? Is it obvious that's what this is really all about--that the Jersey Girls wanted heads to roll?

Ah, but the Woodward and Bernstein did arise, in the person of Paul Thompson, the man behind this movie. Amusingly one of the women comments that "He would back it up with links to mainstream media sources..." just as the video shows this:



Yeah, that well-known major media source, Mother Jones.

Confronting David Ray Griffin in Osaka

Note: This is a guest post from a JREF debunker who attended a DRG event in Osaka, Japan. As most of you probably know, Griffin generally does not allow himself to get in settings where he will be challenged by people who understand and can debunk the minutiae that the Troofers use to make their flimsy case. I think Mark (Gravy) Roberts, James B, and I would love to get a chance to debunk Griffin in person, but he's smart enough not to get into that situation. So big kudos to Adversity1, who lived the dream. Here's his report, verbatim:

Hey folks.

Went to the David Ray Griffin tour in Osaka today. Something like 50-60 people there. What was interesting here was that the event in Osaka was hosted by the 'people's newspaper', a new left newspaper that has been around since the 1960s. Because of this, the plain anti-semitism of the Tokyo conference could not be so easily put on display. In fact in the book sale area, there was typical anti-war literature and 'vanilla' 9/11 truth literature.

So yeah, I was invited to speak on stage after Griffin made his speech and critique him. Griffin was also critiqued by a left activist previously, which was rather brutal. He was repeatedly shown pictures of airplane parts in the Pentagon, to which he could only double down and claim that 'well if you're going to commit false flag terrorism, you would leave some evidence behind'. So yeah, that's his answer to the Pentagon stuff, that the government planted it. People in the audience were looking at each other like 'whaaaat?' It was awful. So I started yelling out 'what about the body parts??' To which Griffin said that he would get to later. Eventually he did, after skipping over it in one of his uselessly long monologues. His reasoning about all the body parts the coroner found? Well those appeared at the pathology center and there were [U]never any bodies from the plane found in the wreckage[/U]. To which I laughed out loud, quickly opened up my copy of Firefight, found the page where it mentioned BODIES STRAPPED TO SEATS and interrupted again. 'Um, just a brief correction to what you're saying there.' But no, Griffin wouldn't have it. He claimed he had to move on because there was no time. 'Yeah you want to move on because you're lying. SCUMBAG.' To which he had no reply and the whole auditorium got really quiet lol.

So the left activist had already pretty much torn the dude up when he got his chance to speak. He spent his time mostly on the 9/11 comission report, the chairman, Norman Mineta, timeline contradictions etc. I didn't think he was going to get into any real woo, but yeah he did. Claimed again no plane at the Pentagon, then brought up the voice synthesizers. I loled. I think he'd really lost people at this point.

Oh by the way he made his debut at the end of this speech as a Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorist, stating something like the President knew the attack was coming or something. Very political to do in a nationalist Japan where this sort of conspiracy theory is used by the right to imagine away their war of aggression. But this is David Ray Griffin, the most disgusting apologist I've ever personally witnessed.

After his presentation, which was quite accurately translated by Kikuchi Yumi, the so-called 'peace activist' who had invited Griffin to Japan. By the time that I was called up to stage to critique his arguments, however, she suddenly [B]refused to interpret[/B] for Griffin and I. She claimed that she had heard I spoke really good Japanese, so it shouldn't be a problem, and dashed off to the bathroom. Um, well yes I am a professional translator. But there is a huge difference in the field that I translate for (electronics) and the specialist terms that I would need to translate anything about the WTC collapses. Nevertheless, these were the circumstances given to me and I went ahead with my critique, in Japanese.

I opened with the statement that I do believe that there was something called the 9/11 truth movement, and that this included the 9/11 families who helped initiate the 9/11 commission report, writers like Lynn Spencer, Patrick Creed, Rick Newman and others. However, what we are dealing with here in Osaka today is not a truth movement. It does not seek out objective truth. Next, I decided to follow up on the question that Griffin had avoided earlier, pulling out my copy of Firefight and reading the passage on page 373 about not only airplane parts being found, but [B]bodies strapped to seats[/B]. After I read my question in Japanese, I said it to Griffin and he looked at me dumbfounded for like 10 seconds. There was laughter in the audience. It was a really odd moment. Um, so then he responded and said something about how well these are only the accounts of two people and how can you trust that, and if you were going to commit false flag terrorism then you would have to plant some evidence to make it look realistic. I think most people in the audience got the point that he was just ********ting. I was then asked to make all my criticisms and then Griffin would address them later. So I moved onto his point about the 'faked' calls to victims, and quoted from George Papcun, the creator of voice-morphing technology who states emphatically that what Griffin claims is simply not technically possible. Then I talked about how Michael Hess, one of the two witnesses to 'explosions' in WTC7, about whom Griffin had earlier claimed that along with Barry Jennings, 'these two men witnessed the event, and therefore there is no way that they can be lying', had clarified in the new version of the BBC's 'the Third Tower' that what he thought was an explosion was in fact the impact of the WTC tower on the south side of the building. Then I brought up the final statement of the 9/11 Family Steering Commitee which accepted the findings of the 9/11 commission, and then the Jersey Girl's acceptance of the building 7 NIST report (thanks JihadJane!). I believe these were the only points I was able to make in such a short amount of time due to the limits of my Japanese and the need to interpret everything back to Griffin. In response to all of my points, Griffin essentially waffled. He spent something like 5 minutes of his reply on completely random subject matter including claiming that the conspiracy that the truthers allege is equivocal to the 'government's allegations' of an Al Queda conspiracy (even though he refuses to put together a hypothesis of his own!). At least some people in the audience were annoyed by this obvious ********ting and one guy started cat-calling "HEY, you're repeating yourself!" in Japanese, which led to Griffin eventually trying to address my points. Re: Hess, well he's a friend of Giuliani's. Re: the Jersey Girls and the 9/11 Family Steering Committee documents, well one of the Jersey Girls endorsed my book. LOL

So that was about it...it was obvious by this point that even the activists with the 'people's newspaper' who had put the event on, just wanted to put an end to this event and move on. I could tell that at least some of them were by the end extremely critical of what they heard. A few came up to me shaking their heads and laughing afterwards, and those who were already critical felt clearly vindicated.

But before I left the stage, I had a present for Dr. Griffin. I had printed out all 300 pages of Ryan Mackey's critique of his work, gave a brief description of the paper plus an introduction to Ryan Mackey to all assembled before handing it over to a disgruntled Griffin.

With that, the 'people's newspaper' folks ended with a Chomsky quote against the conspiracy theory and closed the event. As people were walking out, I handed attendees copies of a review that a socialist newspaper had done of Hideji Okina's 'The Trap of Conspiracy Theories' which is a pretty concise statement of how these theories are linked to anti-semitism and irrational fear of authority (I should state for the record that I am on the radical left and as such completely opposed to anti-semitism/anti-Zionism). The reception of the article was awesome, people came up and thanked me directly, told me I had done a great job despite being forced to speak in Japanese and I had several longer conversations with people. One person even asked where to download the Mackey paper lol. I think the truth movement suffered a defeat here in Osaka and it's thanks to the (belated) critical inquiry of some of the 'people's newspaper' staff, Griffin and Kikuchi's own complete incompetence, and my limited contribution.

So after this disastrous performance, I went onto stage to confront Griffin one more time. I asked him about his personal correspondence with Hufschmid and Bollyn and other holocaust deniers. He claimed that he had taken Hufschmid's references out of the new edition of his book, but that Bollyn 'is different' and does not deny the holocaust. This is either willful ignorance or a blatant lie. He also mentioned that Hufschmid lives about a mile from him, and that he had been over to his house several times!! 'And he didn't mention anything to you about holocaust denial at those times??' 'No, no he didn't.' Wow. So they are closer than perhaps people here knew.

Anyways over the next week I'm going to try to get video of the event for people to see. I would also like to turn this into a post on Screw Loose Change if possible and call out Kikuchi Yumi for what she is, a smiling face knowingly making excuses for some of the worst reactionaries both abroad and at home.

Endnote from Pat: Great job, Adversity1!

Update from Pat: Jon Gold claims that the Jersey Girls (presumably minus Breitweiser), issued a cleverly worded endorsement of the NIST report on WTC-7 that really was them mocking the report, but unfortunately I cannot confirm this because the Zionist New World Order has blocked my access to 9-11 Flogger. This is important because Patty Casazza and Mindy Kleinberg are clearly the foremost experts in structural engineering in the world and if they're not on board with the NIST report, then it is clear that 9-11 was an inside job.

Grifter Responds

A group called the Institute for Religion and Democracy put out a press release noting that David Ray Griffin will once again be using church facilities to spread his conspiracy nonsense:

A professor from a United Methodist seminary who argued that the World Trade Center and Pentagon were actually attacked on September 11, 2001 by the Bush Administration is back with another outrageous book.

David Ray Griffin, author of “Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11”, is releasing a ninth book on the attacks, this time alleging that the Obama administration is attempting to undermine 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Griffin’s earlier work was published by Westminster John Knox Press, the official publishing house of the Presbyterian Church (USA), a move that sparked controversy in the denomination. Starting April 23, Griffin is also launching a 15-city lecture tour questioning the justification for the war in Afghanistan. The tour will feature stops at Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches, as well as schools such as Iowa’s Drake University.

Grifter has now responded. It's the usual crapola:

Already at that time, however, my 9/11 books had also been endorsed by professors of economics, history, philosophy, and international law, as well as by former members of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, including the CIA, and by a member of the British Parliament (as anyone can see by looking at the "editorial reviews" on Amazon.com). My more recent books have been endorsed by a member of the Japanese Senate, a former US governor, by 9/11 widows (including members of the "Jersey Girls," who were instrumental in getting the 9/11 Commission established), by engineers (including Jack Keller, who has been given special recognition by Scientific American), and by several natural scientists (one of whom was awarded the National Medal of Science24). Does IRD believe that such people endorse silly books?

I can't speak for the IRD, but I certainly believe that those people endorse silly books. Jesse Ventura is the "former US governor", and he's a total fruitcake. I assume that Fujita is the member of the Japanese Senate. The Washington Post recently described Fujita's beliefs as "too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion." The Jersey Girls? At least two of them (Lorie Van Auken and Patty Casazza) are crackpots, and I've got my suspicions about Mindy Kleinberg as well. Jack Keller? As usual with the academics among the troofers, his professorship is "Emeritus", and his engineering background? According to Patriots Question 9-11, he's an agricultural and irrigation engineer. Too bad the title "Waterboy" is already taken. The natural scientist is Lynn Margulis, an eminently silly woman.

Note as well, that Grifter tries to have it both ways. When somebody from the government opposes his theories, they're "from the government":

NIST's reports are no better. This is not surprising, because NIST is an agency of the Commerce Department.

But when they agree with him, suddenly this is evidence that he's credible:

Already at that time, however, my 9/11 books had also been endorsed by professors of economics, history, philosophy, and international law, as well as by former members of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations...

Read it for yourself; it's the usual whining about how the government's own theory is a conspiracy theory, the planes should have been intercepted in ten minutes, Barbara Olsen's phone calls, etc.

Proud To Be the Kookiest PBS Station in America--KBDI, Denver

Here's a presser on their upcoming presentation of Press For Truth.

For starters, they use a picture of the Jersey Girls, featuring Kristen Breitweiser in front:



Except that Breitweiser does not appear in the film except in old TV clips, and the other three widows are actually the stars of the show (in addition to Bob McIlvaine).

That photo was used on the DVD cover for PfT, which we covered back in the dog days of 2006, but at least they had the decency to remove Mrs Breitweiser:

Following the attacks of September 11th, a small group of grieving families waged a tenacious battle against those who sought to bury the truth about the event -- including, to their amazement, President Bush. In this documentary, six of them -- including three of the famous 9/11 widows known as the "Jersey Girls" -- tell the powerful story of how they took on the greatest powers in Washington, compelling lawmakers to launch an investigation that ultimately failed to answer most of their questions. The filmmakers collaborated with the media group Globalvision (WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception, Beyond JFK) to stitch together overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception, and spin. As a result, a very different picture of 9/11 emerges -- one that raises new, and more pressing, questions.

And if you pledge $104 to these Rocky Mountain Oysters, you'll get a DVD of PfT plus In Their Own Words, all the crappy questions that they had to pull out of PfT because they were even more ridiculous and embarrassing than the ones they left in.

But wait, there's more! If you send another $50, we'll send you David Ray Grifter's The New Pearl Harbor! Oh, we can tell that KBDI is an exemplary PBS network, representing the Rocky Mountain spotted feverish contingent proudly.

And if you are delusional enough to part with 304 bones to the nutbar network, you could actually get 5 DVDs plus two books. The added DVDs are Blueprint for Truth by Box Boy Gage, Fabled Enemas by Bermas, and a DRG lecture from 2007. Why mention the added book (a Peter Dale Scott snoozer), nobody's going to read it.

What a sad, pathetic little station KBDI is.

An Answer for Jon

Over at Troof Action, Gold ponders why I do this:

Pat Curley is a lying, deceptive piece of sh*t that spends all of his time concerned about something he has repeatedly said there is nothing to.

Cosmos, who's a family member, asks:

How many years has he been doing this?

 Gold:

 I guess for 5 years or so. Day in, and day out. About something he and his kind repeatedly say there is "nothing" to. No cover-up of any kind, etc... and so on.

Five years or so is right, give or take four months.  As for all of my time, day in and day out, that's a ridiculous exaggeration.  In fact, I've put very little time into SLC this year.  The last couple weeks, sure, but the tenth anniversary has meant an explosion in coverage.  In fact, over all, I've felt a little guilty for the infrequent updates this year, because there's so little new under the sun.

As for why I do it, it's pretty simple.  I agree with the Truthers on two things: the date of the attacks and the fact that they were extremely significant events in the United States' history.  Hell, three things: That it is very important for us to understand what happened that day.  And therein lies the key; the Troofers are the new hijackers.  They want to obscure the real facts of 9-11 for their own purposes.

Jon Gold likes to hide behind the skirts of his beloved Jersey Girls and moan about how they deserve answers to their questions.  Let me ask you this, Jon-boy.  Who has lied to the Jersey Girls more, me, the US Government or David Ray Griffin?

Update: Well, that shut him up.

9-11 Plotters' Trials To Be Shown to Victim's Families

A superb decision by the military.

The trials will be beamed to closed-circuit television viewing sites on military bases at Fort Hamilton in New York, Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Fort Meade in Maryland and Fort Devens in Massachusetts, Morris said.

One of the Jersey Girls is mentioned:

U.S. federal courts normally ban cameras. But through an act of Congress, Moussaoui's 2006 court hearing in Virginia was shown by closed-circuit television to victims' families at courthouses in Boston, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

"We got much more information from those hearings than we ever got from the 9-11 Commission," said Lorie Van Auken, whose husband Kenneth died in the World Trade Center, referring to the investigation the U.S. Congress launched into the attacks.

I would love to see the trials broadcast on CourtTV, but this is the second-best option.

9-11 Press for Truth Analysis Part II

Doing the second ten minutes here. First there is a complaint about how very few people who were rounded up initially ended up charged. But we know now that very few other people in America were involved in the plot. There is no mention of Zacharias Moussaoui, however, which is a rather glaring error. By November of 2001, the narrator says, the Jersey Girls decided that an independent investigation was needed to do what the Justice Department and the media "seemed unwilling do". Boy, gave the Justice Department two months, did they? We get a little teaser of CT nonsense from one of the Girls:

"We felt that the country was at risk from terrorists and incompetence... and um, maybe worse."

Oh, yeah, maybe worse, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.

Then we get into the destruction of the towers. Again, no direct controlled demolition discussion, but it's certainly hinted at. "Why did the buildings fall? How could skyscrapers just like, crumple to the ground in ten seconds?" As usual, the narrator is unable to resist the "factoid". "Never before, or since, had fire caused a steel frame building to collapse."

Of course, that's BS both ways. The World Trade Center towers did not solely collapse because of fire; there was also a little matter of the planes slamming into them, destroying columns and stripping fireproofing from the steel. And steel-framed buildings have collapsed from fire before; just not highrise steel framed buildings.

Then we get into World Trade Center 7, and I'm sorry, but I'm beginning to doubt this is anything less than a CT film cleverly disguised.

We get the mother of a firefighter giving us the next lie:

"The largest structural collapse in world history, the largest loss of life on American soil since the Civil War and not one governmental or elected official wanted to know why and how this happened?"

In fact the collapses of the World Trade Center buildings are probably the most studied disasters of all time. Major building code changes have come out of these studies. Are these women, who tell us how much they have studied 9-11, simply unaware of all this?

The announcer also tells us that Tom Kean (whose name is hilariously mispronounced the way it looks--it's really pronounced Kane) and Lee Hamilton headed the commission which was evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, but the commission members were all former "DC insiders and lawyers". (Menacing music). Boo, hiss.

Then we get a gripe about the money. As usual they cannot resist having one of the family members lie for the camera. Bob McIlvaine is called on to do his part:

"Remember in the 1990s they spent a hundred million dollars to investigate Clinton's sexual exploits. 100 million dollars!"

Except of course that the Starr Investigation cost $80 million and it investigated a heck of a lot more than Clinton's sexual exploits (including Whitewater), and resulted in the imprisonment of the sitting governor of Arkansas, as well as other convictions. McIlvaine is the father of a 9-11 victim and a longtime 9-11 Denier. He even appeared on Cynthia McKinney's bizarre Citizen's Commission back in 2004.

Jersey Girl Falls for Con Man

The Troofers are all excited over Patty Casazza's recent appearance at a Troofer rally where she revealed that some unnamed "whistleblower" met with the Jersey Girls at the side of a road in Maryland and revealed that the government had known all about the 9-11 attacks.



I am amused that Jon Gold, who trumpets endlessly his support for the families, introduces her as Patty Casava. Correction: It is pointed out in the comments that the person introducing Patty is not Jon Gold. Looking at the video, it sure looks like him, but it does not sound like him, so my mistake.

She starts out talking about how the planes should have been intercepted immediately as soon as the transponders were turned off. But later:

Sibel brought us many whistleblowers and I submitted them personally to Governor Kean, who was the chairman of the Commission, and I said, "These people are not being subpoenaed. They will not come before the Commission voluntarily unless they are subpoenaed." And he promised me to my face that every whistleblower would be indeed heard. And most were not heard. Sibel was only heard because we dragged her in to surprise the Commission on one of the days we were meeting with them, that we had her with us. We met other whistleblowers on the side of the road of Maryland, you know, to hear what they could tell us. None of them revealed state secrets to us, by the way. But they had information, and basically, the government knew, you know, other than the exact moment, they knew the date and the method of which the attacks were supposed to come. And none of this made it to the mainstream media.

The sad thing is that some con man probably did tell them this. Which gives me a renewed distaste for Sibel Edmonds

President Obama Meets With Family Members

Including the Jersey Girls, which leads to the obvious question (not answered in the article): Did Patty Casazza tell him about her mystery informant? The one that told her that the government knew every detail of the attacks beforehand?

Lorie Van Auken, a leader of September 11th Advocates, a group headed by four New Jersey women who lost their husbands in the attacks, called the meeting "impressive," saying Obama gave detailed answers to their questions and allayed many of their concerns. She said the president did not rule out some form of military commissions in the future and acknowledged shortcomings in dealing with terrorism suspects in regular criminal courts.

"He acknowledged this was quite a mess and it really needed to be looked at by his legal team and by him," said Van Auken, whose husband, Kenneth Van Auken, was killed in the World Trade Center and whose group supports closing Guantanamo Bay. "I think everybody recognized, no matter which side of the issue they're on, that this is a quagmire that will not be solved easily."

Mindy Kleinberg, another member of the group, said Obama also made clear that "nobody is just going to get freed by the closing of Guantanamo."

Did any of them say anything about how they want Bush and Cheney prosecuted? Or is that just the sort of stuff they murmur to Jon Gold and company?

Marketing Footnote 44

Clever bit by the makers of "Press For Truth"; they mention that they are working on a film about 'Footnote 44', which they see as the smoking gun in the 9-11 Commission Report. If you want to find out about Footnote 44, send them an email (so you get on their email lists of folks who might be dumb enough to throw some money their way) and they'll let you know the big secret.

In our original, unreleased interview with 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean, he referred to the incident in question as "one of the most troubling aspects of our entire report -- that particular thing." Former White House Counter-Terror Adviser Richard Clark believes it is the particular area of 9/11 that strongly warrants further investigation. Famed CIA agent Bob Baer (basis for George Clooney's character in 'SYRIANA') has told us he concurs. So do "the Jersey Girls", the widows at the center of 'PRESS FOR TRUTH'. And according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright, "half of the Bureau" (the FBI) also believes something is terribly wrong here.

Update: As pointed out by James B in the comments, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright, Osama bin Laden was behind the 9-11 attacks. Indeed, the prize was awarded for his book on the lead-up to the attacks, The Looming Tower.

To find out what they're all so worked up about, please email producer Ray Nowosielski at Ray@BandedArtists.com, subject: "Footnote 44". We have a teaser trailer and business plan available to those who appear serious about being involved with the project. If you don't help us make 'FOOTNOTE 44', those responsible for this cover up may never be held accountable.

Of course, there is one problem with this "teaser": Google. I took a quick look around for Footnote 44, 9-11 Commission Report, and sure enough solved the mystery:

Immediately after referring to the staff statement, Breitweiser focuses on Footnote 44 of the Commission report, which "proved that the CIA deliberately withheld information from the FBI about two of the terrorists who would go on to become 9/11 hijackers." The footnote indicates a CIA desk officer instructed an FBI agent not to send a cable with information about Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi to his colleagues at FBI headquarters.

Yep, it's the mystery that appears in virtually every 9-11 kook film.

What Do They Want?

The September 11th Advocates (essentially the Jersey Girls minus Kristen Breitweiser plus Monica Gabrielle) release a statement on the upcoming tribunal of KSM and four others:

It would seem that the U.S. Government found itself in a conundrum when they allowed prisoners, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), to be tortured in secret prisons around the world. Once tortured, any confession or testimony from KSM, or others, could not be deemed reliable. Furthermore, the focus of the eventual proceedings would become a trial about the practice of torture, instead of being a trial about alleged terrorist crimes. That would have been untenable for the U.S. Government, which wants to avoid any and all accountability for their own crimes of torture.

In order to bypass potential discussion of torture, the latest Chief Prosecutor for the Military Commissions, Brig. General Mark Martins, found a willing witness in Majid Khan, a fellow GITMO inmate to KSM. Khan himself was not involved in the 9/11 plot. He supposedly got his information from time spent behind bars at GITMO with KSM. Kahn (sic) will be allowed to give this hearsay evidence against KSM in return for a reduced sentence. However, Khan’s sentencing won’t take place for four years. It seems the Prosecution is pinning their hopes and dreams on Khan’s upcoming performance. None of this lends credibility to an already suspect system.

Additionally, with campaigning for the upcoming Presidential elections heating up, the timing of this latest attempt at justice for 9/11 is exploitive (sic) at best.

First of all, why the focus on the supposed torture of KSM and others? KSM admitted his role in the 9-11 attacks before he was captured. Second, Casazza, Kleinberg, et.al., appear not to understand the meaning of the term "hearsay evidence". Admissions made to a fellow prisoner are not hearsay. It is when the admissions discuss third parties that it becomes inadmissible as evidence. If, for example, KSM confessed his part in the 9-11 attacks to Khan, that would be perfectly acceptable as evidence. On the other hand, if KSM told Khan that Ramzi bin-al-Shibh was the paymaster for the attacks, that would not be admissible.

More important is the third issue. Are the September 11th Advocates so wedded to the idea that KSM and his co-conspirators should be tried in a US court that they would be willing to accept the possibility of him being set free? I certainly am not.

Jersey Girls Continue to Agitate

I am beginning to think that Ann Coulter and Ted Rall were right.

Our government’s official story regarding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, tells us that 19 Arab hijackers successfully defeated the United States military by hijacking four commercial airliners within two hours on a budget of approximately $400,000. These men, armed only with small knives, box cutters and Mace, were able to knock down the World Trade Center towers in New York City and strike the Pentagon.

No, that's not "our government's official story". It's what happened. They did not hijack the planes "within two hours"; it was about an hour and fifteen minutes. They did not "knock down the World Trade Center towers" with "small knives, box cutters and mace". They used something much larger, rhymes with "trains". For women supposedly so consumed with the events of that day, they don't seem to know the slightest thing about 9-11.

Get off the stage, ladies. The CIA tapes (which is the hook they peg their letter on) did not indicate that the 9-11 nutbars, which sadly you've joined forces with, were right.

Fruitcakes Continue "Research"

Over at the no-planers forum, a particularly vile nutbar is posting research about Kristen Breitweiser, apparently with the aim of proving that her husband Ron never existed.

So I read through her book "A Wake up Call". She poses as a truth seeker, but talks about the "planes slicing through the buildings" every chance she gets. I don't buy it. She never uses lasts names except when talking about the Jersey Girls. There are no pictures, which is really weird. She does say she bought the house on Long Island although she doesn't say how much it was. It had to be at least 2 million but they only had a mortgage of $300,000 on the NJ prop. (which is weird because it looks like it was an enormous property) She also has an apartment on the Upper East Side.
She doesn't say anything about Ron's "family" she says they had a falling out then doesn't mention them again.
She says to get a death certificate, the WTC companies had to sign an affidavit that the people were in the wtc that day. That's it. Then the families. Perfect opportunity for fraud.
I forgot the story about how they recovered her husband's ring from the wreckage. I don't believe that for a second. Then she says the ME lost his arm in the freezer for three years - it's like they added that part because people didn't buy that they found the ring without the hand. She also mentions another "widow" -the wife of James Martello an equity trader - I looked up their house and they had a mortgage for $4,000.000 (yeah that's million) on a house in Rumson NJ near her that they signed the deed on in August of 2001. Then she paid it off in 2002. Where did that $ come from? Even if there was life insurance they wouldn't get it that fast.

Then Ron's brother shows up:

I have to commend you on your research and can understand how certain coincidences you were able to link together as part of your theory, but as the brother of Ron Breitweiser I think your statement is inappropriate. He did exists and is missed dearly by a family that truly loved him.

They natter on about how Ron isn't in the Social Security Death Index; as I have pointed out endlessly one of the reasons for not appearing there is if survivor benefits are being paid to a spouse or dependent child. It's just another one of those stupid sacred lists that the Troofers invest with so much power.

Loosers Exhort the Troops

I don't know who "Joe" is at 9-11 blogger; Dylan's something like enigs.

Happy New Year to everyone from Louder Than Words. As hard as it is to believe, 2007 has come and gone. Reprehensor at 911Blogger has written a comprehensive overview and assessment of the year's major events. With all of that behind us, a year of monumental potential is ahead, and its outcome lies entirely in our hands.

The movement has come a long way since its inception, but the ever-present question is: What next? What needs to be done to ensure that we see some accountability? The release of films such as “9/11 Press for Truth” and its companion “In Their Own Words”, and our own film “Loose Change Final Cut”, and books such as Steve Alten’s “The Shell Game”, it is becoming easier and easier to approach the uninitiated with the concept of 9/11 Truth.

They've all heard about it and know you're a bunch of fruitcakes.

With that being said, we could not be more proud of how the project turned out. We have a solid two hours of information that is extremely difficult to dispute. Our debunkers and skeptics have! been virtually silent. The mainstream media has refused to cover it. Their only responses have been, "It's boring" or, "It's too long," instead of actually addressing the information within.

As I've said before, there's no there there. The real problem with Final Cut is not that it's boring or too long, although it is both. It's that the film represents yet another retreat from the real conspiracy theories that the Troofers believe in, but have decided to downplay in the hopes of getting some more public support. Dylan said in one interview that he hoped that after watching his film people think that at least there was negligence on 9-11, which isn't even LIHOP. But at that point who cares besides the Jersey girls?

What Does Jon Gold Believe?

I honestly don't know. He argues that 9-11 Truth isn't just about controlled demolition, or a missile hit the Pentagon, but that it includes "just asking questions" and air quality issues. But at the same time, he believes "elements of the government were complicit in the attacks."

More than any other Truther, he hides behind the family members (particularly the Jersey Girls). When asked to explain his theory on Opie & Anthony several years ago, Jon started in with some story about how Bin Laden's brother was involved in some arranged marriage scheme, but the federal government flew him out of the country while the rest of the country was unable to fly. Of course, this latter bit is wrong; the Bin Ladens left the country after the flight ban was lifted.

In this video, he asks people to get angry, not that the Troofers need much help with that.

Let's track the claims made:

1. "Elements of the government were complicit in the attacks."

2. "There are elected officials in government today who know the truth and don't speak it."

3. "The media is (sic) well aware of the deception and they don't bother to cover it."

(An aside: Gold asks why the President did not want an investigation to reveal what happened, so that they could take steps to make sure it never happened again. Of course, Gold is making the usual Troofer mistake of assuming the 9-11 Commission was the investigation. It was not. And the government did take steps to make sure it never happened again, as revealed by the fact that it has not happened again.)

Well, you can already see the problem, right? Despite Gold's swearing up and down that he's not an evidence guy, he's already accused unnamed elected officials and the entire media of being in on the cover-up.

Update: Here are some videos Gold made to counter the BBC's claim that they were about to answer the final unanswered questions about 9-11:



As you can see, it's mostly procedural questions. It's not hard to understand why the administration might not want to answer those.



As you can see here, Gold is reduced to doubting quotes from the administration and pushing the "there were plenty of warnings" crap.



In this one, Gold actually pushes the pathetic "DeMasi and Bellone found the Flight Data Recorders at the WTC line". One more time, Johnny:

FIRE MARSHALS ARRESTED a self-proclaimed "honorary firefighter" for allegedly touring the country with pilfered FDNY gear to promote a 9/11 book, officials said yesterday.

Michael Bellone, 51, of Brooklyn, who volunteered at Ground Zero and later collaborated on a book about the experience, showed off the equipment during speeches to schoolchildren, authorities said.

After fielding complaints, FDNY investigators questioned Bellone and discovered that a breathing mask, air tank and other gear he was using had been missing from the department since October 2001, officials said.