As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Troofers Will Believe Anything
Troofer and presidential longshot Cynthia McKinney once again shows that conspiracy theorists will believe just about anything. She is now claiming (hey, she said she checked her sources) that the US government executed 5,000 people after Hurricane Katrina, and dumped their bodies in a swamp. Well, OK, it is not that much stupider than most of the stuff they claim.
Again, I don't know why they think these videos of people getting annoyed and irritated at them help their cause. This guy doesn't get into the 9-11 stuff; it's the CFR and the NAU and the Federal Reserve kookery that he pushes.
Alex Jones had mentioned a few months ago that this was the first film he'd been involved with that went into the Israeli connection. We get the story of the lady who phoned the police about the five dancing Jews outside her apartment. We get Michael Rivero, of What Really Happened talking about them. We get the supposed van full of explosives stopped outside of Manhattan, and the Israeli art students mystery.
(Note: The dancing Jews existed. I don't mention this much, but a client of mine who's Jewish and fanatically pro-Israel was the first person I talked to on 9-11 and his immediate comment to me was, "Now you know what Israel goes through every day." So I can imagine some Israelis reacting in an inappropriately celebratory manner, knowing that America had discovered what terrorism was all about.
The van full of explosives on the GWB did not. I don't know the truth or falsity of the Israeli art students story. If we catch Israelis spying in the US, I'm 100% in favor of arresting and imprisoning them.)
We're told that the Israelis routinely spy on the United States; this seems to be true from everything I've heard. The question is whether it's really sinister or just an example of the (justified) paranoia of that tiny country. I don't approve of their actions, but I understand them, and I would be the first to say that Jonathan Pollard should not be released.
Jason assumes that the Israelis had a prior knowledge of 9-11. He notes that one of the dancing Jews said that their purpose was to document the attacks; as somebody noted in the last post on this, the news cameras of CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS were also there to document the attacks; this does not mean that the news media knew beforehand.
This is another "Merry Pason" confession. The conspiracy theorists all seem to think that evil people are compelled to blurt out their guilt on TV.
We get something about a van exploding on King Street between 6th and 7th; this is the first I've heard of that. Then there's a discussion of an Israeli company that does the billing for most US phone calls. Carl Cameron points out that this means that they could track people; all very true, but you'd need a starting point.
Overall, Jason puts a lot of dots in this section, but does little connecting.
In Part II, we get discussion of John O'Neill. Then we get Robert Wright, another FBI agent talking about "...the very real Middle Eastern terrorist threats to American citizens both at home and abroad." But doesn't Jason believe there are no Middle Eastern terrorist threats? Again, all this harping on the warnings and failures to act do not indicate MIHOP, but LIHOP at the very most, and arguably simply make the case for incompetence.
We hear that George Bush, Sr., was in the White House on the morning of 9-11, though what that is supposed to indicate to us is unclear. We learn for the umpteenth time that the Bin Ladens and the Bushes are friendly. But if Osama is an outcast from his family, why does that matter?
The Bin Laden family flight out of the US is rehashed. Again, it doesn't mean anything, and no, the Bin Ladens did not leave when all flights in the US were grounded:
The ad is as false as it can be when it claims the bin Laden family members flew home "when most other air traffic was grounded" following the attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, according to the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), the bin Laden flight was on Sept. 20. (See footnote 28 in the 9/11 Commission's report in "supporting documents" at right). That was one week after the FAA allowed commercial air traffic to resume at 11am on Sept. 13.
And in fact, Bermas goes on to show a Bin Laden family member on the tarmac "eight days after 9-11". Well, I hate to be the one to point this out, but eight days after 9-11 was six days after air traffic resumed.
Bermas goes on to claim that there were agents in the FBI who actively protected and aided the "alleged" terrorists. Because an informant for the FBI rented two of them a room?
Then we get the Able Danger stuff. I don't want to spend a lot of time on Able Danger; the Senate Intelligence Committee (PDF file) concluded that there was no evidence that it really identified Mohamed Atta as a member of the "Brooklyn cell".
Coming up next: The band must be playing Hava Nagila, because Jason's going to give us the Dancing Jews.
As debunkers are always pointing out, conspiracy theorists have fervently avoided coming up with a 9/11 narrative. With leading figures such as David Ray Griffin specifically warning them not to do so. As a result the best narratives that have been done are parodies, like that of Matt Taibbi. Whenever they do attempt to do so though, they end up sound like paradies, for example this discussion of United 93 from the increasingly inaccurately named "Veterans for 9/11 Truth" mailing list. I will leave the name off to protect the guilty.
Fight 93 was shot down and it landed at Cleveland. Let me clarify. As the "Operation Northwoods" document (blue print for 911) points out. They rendezvoused a drone painted to resemble, somewhat, a commercial airliner, and containing incendiaries/explosives. Once it intercepted the flight path of 93, the original flight was diverted to the international airport at Cleveland. While it was in route, the drone was, for what ever reason, shot down near Shanksville, Pa. It was either shot down by an eager pilot they failed to exercise control over, or Cheney decided that it was better for the plan as it had unfolded to that point to bring the drone down. Because that was what was found near Shanksville. It was certainly not a commercial airline.
According to the Cleveland papers and United Airlines, the people aboard flight 93 were evacuated after it landed due to a reported bomb threat. They were apparently evacuated to a government/NASA hanger.Most likely they were killed to provide bodies for the morgue. They would need bodies to support their cover story of a commercial airline, flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, another lie. I don't recall, but can look it up where they said the 911 bodies were shipped to. I think it was a morgue in Northern Virginia or somewhere in Maryland.
Annie Machon (former girlfriend of no-planer and son of God David Shayler) and Ian Henshaw explore the conspiracy theories with a pair of debunkers. I sincerely wish the Troofers would drop the whole "Kean and Hamilton said the commission was set up to fail," argument; it's quite simply another quote mine that does not mean what they think it does; Kean and Hamilton did say they were set up to fail; they did not say that they did fail.
Henshaw also gets off the familiar "Bush helped the Bin Ladens get out of the USA" argument. It's true and everybody knows why; Osama is the black sheep of the Bin Laden family and the rest of the clan has nothing to do with him. He also gets away with the claim that Bin Laden worked for the CIA in Afghanistan, which is emphatically not true. Both Henshaw and Machon do the typical "I don't know what happened on 9-11," bit, which is hilarious, because they do believe 9-11 was an inside job by the Bush Administration. We also get the warnings bit, which does not fit with the inside job claims.
Following in the footsteps of Kevin Barrett, yet another troofer comes about with a book about "my struggle". As I have long maintained at the heart of trutherism is the egotistical belief that you are some epic hero struggling against a tyranny, that you posses some secret that others lack awareness of, and that only you can save the ignorant masses. Lacking in self-esteem, they do not.
David Ray Griffin Continues to Doubledown on Idiocy
David Ray Griffin is on Alex Jones' radio show pimping his new conspiracy book.
Well let me just mention some of the other things where I bring the story up-to-date. So in the second chapter I focus on flight 11 [sic] and the Pentagon. And there you know the support for the official story has been the eyewitness testimony the people who say sure we saw a Boeing airplane a 757 coming in. And in this I show that there is an enormous amount of eyewitness testimony of people on the ground both inside and outside the building far more than we had before, saying there simply was no plane. People come and it is just like Shanksville they look around and say well where is the plane? You would think you would see something.
Of course this is simply selective citations. Yes, there were plenty of people who never saw evidence of a plane crash, many commented that it seemed like it disappeared, because the devastation was so complete. Many, however, were witnesses to the plane crash. The authors of Firefight interviewed over 150 people. Has Griffin interviewed that many people? Has he ever interviewed a single eyewitness?
As I mentioned before, they cited the first responders who picked up the body parts, who found the airplane seats, who pulled the engines out of the Pentagon, or found the black boxes, but he would rather cite people who actually have no evidence instead.
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 issue where some of the conspiracy theorists pretend that the list of victims published by CNN is a "passenger manifest" is such a blatant example of dishonesty that even other conspiracy theorists, a group hardly known for their self-awareness, have called them on it. That still doesn't stop David Ray Griffin from lying about it though, employing his usual brand of absurd logic, in a podcast named Electric Politics.
Kenney: One of the points that I think people are wondering about that probably could use some clarification is what is the difference between a passenger manifest and a victims list and whether there has been confusion about that. I am not sure that that is really the cornerstone of any of your arguments because you show how the government has changed the names and identities and so forth of the alleged hijackers so many times that regardless of whether the original list may have said it doesn't really matter, but still has that been a question do you think?
Griffin: Well you know, some people have started making that distinction. I am not sure that distinction wasn't just created after the fact that none of the manifests that the airlines put out at the time had any hijackers names or any Arab names whatsoever. But be that as it may, the fact remains that we have no evidence of any list that has the name on them. And we have evidence that when they say that they had identified the hijackers immediately that they are lying.
The trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed begins, with the defendant trying an interesting strategy in interrogating the judge. I don't know why he doesn't go with the "Dick Cheney did it" approach, which supposedly is obvious to everyone.
Invoking names such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he admitted organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, probed the private opinions of the military judge who is overseeing his case Tuesday in a series of sometimes testy exchanges during a hearing on the judge's impartiality.
Mohammed, wearing a black turban, began by asking Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann about his religious beliefs and whether he had any association with the religious organizations of Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell.
"If you are in one of those denominations, you are not going to be fair," said Mohammed, who switched between Arabic and English when he spoke to the judge. The judge said he had not belonged to any congregation for some time but had attended Lutheran and Episcopal churches.
The pretrial hearing provided Mohammed and four other defendants facing murder and war crimes charges for their alleged involvement in the terrorist attacks with the opportunity to discover any bias that would suggest Kohlmann should recuse himself. Three of the five, including Mohammed, are representing themselves.
Kohlmann, who will rule on his own impartiality, noted that he had responded to nearly 600 questions in writing. Tuesday's proceeding allowed the defendants and their attorneys to ask follow-up questions.
A strange concern, if there were no hijackers like the troofers say. Just continue to ignore all the evidence there guys...
Seven years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the remains of 13 of the 19 men responsible have been identified and are in the custody of the F.B.I. and the New York City medical examiner’s office.
But no one has formally requested the remains in order to bury them.
“Politically, one can understand that this is a hot potato,” said Muneer Fareed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America and a former professor of Islamic studies. “People don’t want to identify with the political equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer.”
What would happen if someone asked for the hijackers’ remains is not clear.
Well somehow I doubt that Kevin Barrett or David Ray Griffin will get around to conducting research like this:
Flagg Miller, a professor of religious studies at the University of California at Davis, has been combing through never-before-heard audiotapes that once were in the Al Qaeda leader’s private library.
Al Qaeda terrorists have released numerous audio and video recordings of bin Laden since the Sept. 11 attacks, but the tapes in Miller's possession offer the first behind-the-scenes access to the terrorist’s private world. They reveal how he developed his anti-American sentiment and the progression of Al Qaeda's military strategy, warfare tactics, recruiting methods and training camps.
"He has a far more raw militant voice than what many people are used to," Miller said in an interview with FOXNews.com. "He talks about the United States being the No. 1 enemy dating back to a time before the first Gulf War. These tapes suggest that anti-Americanism was there earlier than many have thought."
Others have responded to the danger of Islamic terrorism, however, by minimizing the threat, or blaming the victim, or embracing conspiracy theories that obscure the reality of 9/11. I found evidence of that last week when, along with John Ray, a very bright Carnegie-Mellon student who blogs at Conspiracies R Not Us, I appeared on Toronto-based show “The Agenda with Steve Paikin” to offer the skeptics’ view of the “evidence” behind 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also on the show: two Canadian academics, Graeme MacQueen and Michael Keefer, who argued that the American government deliberately staged the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. (You can view the program in its entirety here.)
As a conspiracy-theory-ologist I have been meaning to read Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History, on the JFK conspiracy theories, for some time, but haven't had the time myself. Thus I was rather glad to pick up a copy on audio CD, even at 15 CDs, seriously abridged from the 1600+ pages of the written version.
I must say I was not disappointed. Bugliosi lays out the errors, misrepresentations and outright lies of the JFK conspiracy theorists in much the same way as Deborah Lipstadt does to the Holocaust deniers. As I have long maintained, conspiracy theorists all operate in much the same way, the only difference is the subject that they choose to discuss.
There is even an overlap there though, in that Bugliosi selects out for a well-deserved mocking, none other than 9/11 conspiracy guru Jim Fetzer, for his idiotic "Fake Zapruder Film" theories, showing that the no-plane theories are not the first wild leaps of logic for our side-burned friend. In many ways though he points out that the JFK conspiracy theorists managed to succeed well beyond their 9/11 counterparts, with at least a majority of Americans tacitly accepting their viewpoints. Also they actually managed to bring at least one of their theories to trial, with the ill-fated Jim Garrison prosecution, memorialized in the Oliver Stone movie JFK, which essentially ended up being Loose Change with a budget and directorial talent.
All in all an excellent book, someday, perhaps when I am retired or on a long vacation, I will have to digest the print version.
As the old saying goes, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. This poll by Kevin Barrett fits in the first 2 almost as much as the last one.
22% of the people living households with two registered voters in Ron Kind’s congressional district (3rd district, Wisconsin) think 9/11 might be an inside job, according to a scientific poll released today. The poll was conducted by Voice Broadcasting, Inc. out of Arlington, Texas, and was commissioned by the Kevin Barrett for Congress campaign.
22% of registered voters in Ron Kind’s district represents about 64,000 voters.
The exact wording of the poll question was:
“Do you think it’s possible the 9/11 terror arracks [sic] were an inside job?”
OK, well 22% is certainly higher than the 4.6% that they came up with previously, but look at the question:
“Do you think it’s possible the 9/11 terror arracks were an inside job?”
Well, OK, if you made a good enough argument I might agree with you that it is possible, but there is absolutely no proof that it is true. What type of an idiotic poll asks not what people think about an issue, but what they think is possible regarding it? If you asked whether UFOs are possible I would say yes, but you won't see me making a pilgrimage to Area 51 any time soon.
He continues this pseudo-questioning with another question.
The poll also found that 47% think that the Bush Administration might be telling significant lies about what happened on 9/11, and 24% think the Bush Administration may have known about the 9/11 attacks in advance, and let them happen on purpose.
Once again, they might be. I don't believe they are though. There is no evidence of it, but it is theoretically possible. And yes, they may have known, but there is nothing to show they did.
Incidentally Barrett was also in the news today. Now he has something in common with his campaign advisor Rolf Lindgren, in that they have both been arrested lately.
U.S. Congressional candidate Kevin Barrett, a former one-semester instructor at UW-Madison, was arrested in Madison Tuesday for violating a restraining order filed by his wife, Fatna Bellouchi.
According to Madison Police Officer Lori Chalecki, Barrett turned himself in to police after violating the no-contact provision of his restraining order.
On Sept. 10, Barrett was charged with domestic abuse following a criminal complaint filed by Bellouchi.
According to the complaint, Barrett struck his 14-year-old son several times in the back and threatened Bellouchi with clenched fists.
And the conspiracy theorists wonder why debunkers don't publicize our names and addresses.
Once again, a "Truther" (and a father of a WTC victim) talks about how nobody wants to talk to him because they know he's going to start in again with the 9-11 conspiracy theories. Bob goes on about how many friends he's lost because of his involvement in 9-11 "Truth", about how very few of the family members are "Truthers", etc. But it's okay because he's talking about how lousy his normal life is compared to how wonderful he feels in the company of fellow Truth Cult members.
He confirms some of what we might expect. McIlvaine was apparently a prominent member of Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of antiwar family members of 9-11 victims. He talked about how great it was getting on television in Columbia. Okay, so Bob's a tad leftist in his politics; that fits for much of the middle-stage 9-11 Truthers; those who came on board in 2004 and 2005. Dylan's film brought in the youngsters who were more politically apathetic or libertarian.
en·tro·py (on a macroscopic scale) a function of thermodynamic variables, as temperature, pressure, or composition, that is a measure of the energy that is not available for work during a thermodynamic process. A closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy.
Richard Gage, who must have taken a different type of physics class in college defines this somewhat differently, in an interview with Peter Collins from last week.
Collins: It [WTC7] would have careened off to some odd angle because the upper part of the building would be intact, essentially, not quite the foundation, but the area above it would have collapsed. And you would have had some remnants of the upper stories intact. Would you not?
Gage: Yeah, that would be called entropy, the Law of Entropy. Following the path of least resistance. But it doesn't do that it goes straight down. Through the path of greatest resistance. The remaining columns were not damaged, breaking 400 structural steel connections per second.
Uhh, that would be called the Law of Gravity. It was in all the papers.
1. No, Iraq did not have anything to do with 9-11 as far as I know.
2. I am not anonymous. If you're too dense to figure out who I am, ask Dylan Avery. Ask Jason Bermas. Ask Jon Gold. If you don't know who I am, you haven't been around the 9-11 "Truth" Movement for very long.
I also note that most of the people griping about me being an anonymous poster on a blog usually have names like Benjamin Franklin, ST, Condoleezza Rice, etc. Sauce for the goose but not for the gander?
The troofers like to claim the support of 84% of Americans, even though their own polls only show that 4.6% actually believe in their LIHOP theory. Judging by the meager turnout at recent events, even that support make be weak though. As proof of this I was amused at the polling results of the only "9/11 truth candidate" for president, Cynthia McKinney, who has openly supported their views on several occasions.
It could be worse.... well, no, actually it couldn't.
Les Jamieson posts an update on the NYC 9-11 Fruitcake Ballot Initiative:
Thanks to all the hard-working petitioners who have spent months on this historice effort, we have now gathered over 30,000 signatures of NYCregistered voters!
This is the minimum requirement to submit a ballot initiative to NY City Council. Now the foundation has been established. From here we will build and create a winning campaign that will result in placing the Initiative for a new, independent, comprehensive 9/11 investigation on the ballot in 2009.
Of course, 30,000 being the minimum and since a fairly large percentage of the signatures will probably turn out to be from Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, they are going to need quite a bit more. And they missed the deadline for 2008. But it's not a bug, it's feature!
Our core team of 25+ volunteers actually feel positive about this. We prefer to increase our numbers to a much higher level which will make an undeniable case for passage. Therefore, we will continue to gather petition signatures into the next year with the goal of reaching 100,000 signatures and establish a powerful mandate showing the voters of New York City are calling for the creation of a new Commission that will conduct an authentic and comprehensive investigation of 9/11.
Heheh, 25+ volunteers? I'm beginning to think that the 4.6% estimate of the "Truthers" in the population at large may be off by a bit, or else there are something like 369,975 goofballs in New York City who aren't carrying their share of the load.
Conspiracy nutter Alex Jones is on Iranian TV ranting against the United States while supporting the Russian invasion of South Ossetia. Yeah, this guy is a real patriot.
Now I watch these nitwits for the blog, not because I enjoy their eloquence, but Richard Gage has to be the worst public speaker I have ever seen. Obviously the only reason he has achieved prominence in the conspiracy community is his pretense to authority. Witness this rally he speaks at in San Francisco, in which he, among other things refers to the Afghan people as "Afghanistans".
But the award for the most jaw droppingly stupid line since Sophia's "clunkity clunk" comes 11 minutes in:
Not one floor is found in what we are told is a 110 story gravitational pancake collapse. There is a couple of 3 stories of structural steel, a pile, and aluminum cladding. There are no floors found at either of these twin towers. Where did they go? We're going to Denny's, we're looking for pancakes. We don't find any.
I think you should be going to a hospital looking for a mental health professional, personally.
Jesse Ventura visits the 9/11 memorial in Mesa along with kook state senator Karen Johnson as well as making a speech. Our buddy the Feathered Bastard reports on some of the nuttiness on his blog, as well as a local tv station witnessing him arguing smoke color with a firefighter. I wish this guy would get some new talking points, as it is the same 3 incorrect factoids repeated ad nauseum.
Say hello to the Debunking Directory, a new website dedicated to debunking 9-11 kookery. It has a nice, clean look and is well-organized. Poke around there for a bit.
I am taking September 11th off from blogging or commenting. The anniversary is about remembering the victims, not about idiot historical revisionists with a bizarre historical view. I will see you all on Friday.
The Weekly Standard has an amusing follow-up to the Ron Paul Fest.
I decide to bait Ventura, offering that some of the 9/11 Truthers in the crowd are disappointed their viewpoints aren't being represented.
"They will when I get up there," he growls. He says he's been studying the issue "for well over a year and a half," and he feels "very strongly that the truth has not been forthcoming."
When asked what the truth is and whether the government had something to do with it, he says, "I don't know. But I know this, I do have somewhat of a demolition background, being a member of the Navy's underwater demolition team, and I spoke to a few of my teammates a couple weeks ago. We're all in agreement that buildings can't fall at the rate of gravity without being assisted. And that's called physics, that's not an opinion."
Taking the stage, Ventura has the crowd ululating as he hits all the hot buttons, from the evils of the Patriot Act and closed presidential debates to the need to jealously guard our Second Amendment rights. Then, keeping his promise to me (and breaching assurances to convention organizers), he gets down to business, to a little "something called 9/11." It's like lighting a match around the double-knits. They ignite.
Under the impression that there are no stupid questions, Ventura proceeds to ask several: such as why doesn't the FBI website's list of top ten international terrorists include the 9/11 attacks among Osama bin Laden's other crimes? And why hasn't the Justice Department charged Osama bin Laden? Though he doesn't actually accuse the government of participating in the attacks, he doesn't need to, judging from the crowd reaction. "Inside job!" someone chants.
The last several years, as the anniversary of 9-11 approaches, interest in the 9-11 conspiracy theories has risen. For example, in 2006, 9-11 Flogger's traffic rose from 149,000 visitors in July to 322,000 in September. In 2007, it went from 231,000 in July to 337,000 in September. Note in particular that the 2007 numbers were higher in both months than they had been the prior year.
But things really have begun turning. To use a currently popular catchphrase, the 9-11 "Truth" Movement is showing no bounce this year, not even a dead cat bounce. As I have remarked the year over year traffic over there has been declining dramatically. In July of this year they had 169,000 visitors, a slump of about 30% over the prior year. And there is no indication that interest is peaking again; at the current rate they project out to 174,000 visitors this month, almost a 50% drop from last year's visits.
Meanwhile, with a day to go, Box Boy Richard Gage is only 526 architects and engineers short of his goal of 1000 such morons in his little club. This one goes out to all the "Truthers" out there:
While not as hard hitting as I would like, this is probably the closest David Ray Griffin has ever come in an on-line interview for the writer Sam Vaknin. It is amusing to try and watch Mr. Griffin justify his theories, or more specifically lack of theories. For example this part on who blew up the towers:
Q: Did the US Government possess in-house the expertise necessary to control-demolish WTC 7? Surely they didn't sub-contract or farm out the demolition?
DRG: Apart from an investigation, we have no way to know for certain. But the planners probably did hire someone: As explained by ImplosionWorld.com, true implosions, which cause a building to come straight down into its own footprint (as WTC 7 clearly did), are "by far the trickiest type of explosive project, and there are only a handful of blasting companies in the world that possess enough experience . . . to perform these true building implosions" ("Debunking 9/11 Debunking," Ch. 3). If the point of your statement that they "surely" would not have farmed out the demolition is that they would have feared that doing so would result in someone spilling the beans, this is an unrealistic assumption. No one would have been brought into the operation who could not be trusted to keep quiet. And why would someone confess to having participated in a project that killed thousands of fellow citizens?
Of course what he is missing is that while someone may theoretically exist who would commit such a horendous act, how exactly would you go about finding this group of people without giving the whole thing away? I would like to see the RFP for such a proposition.
"Hello, this is United Demolitions Inc., right?"
"Yes it is."
"Hey, would you guys have any problem secretly rigging an office building for demolitions, killing several thousand people?"
"What, are you $&#^ing nuts? What kind of animals do you think we are?"
"OK, well forget I asked."
Griffin also takes his whole "I refuse to make an hypothesis" line so far, that he tries to back away from statements he just made. One of his answers (emphasis added):
DRG: I doubt if anyone was flying the planes that struck the Twin Towers and whatever it was that hit the Pentagon. They were most likely all flown remotely. The evidence suggests that the Pentagon, besides having bombs go off inside, was struck by a missile or some small airplane (which could have been flown by remote control).
And then the very next answer:
Q: If a missile hit the Pentagon, then where is or was flight 77?
DRG: I have never argued that a missile hit the Pentagon.
Griffin also makes another dubious assertion, but as I don't have a copy of his book around I will have to check on it.
DRG: It does appear to have been a case of insider trading (as I reported in "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," citing the careful study by Allen Poteshman, who teaches finance at the University of Illinois).
I don't know for certain if the reference is in there, but that book came out in 2004. Poteshman's paper did not come out until late 2006, although it was available as a draft about a year earlier.
One of the problems with dealing with the loons like DRG is that there's always somebody a little loonier who's battling with them, and making them look sensible by comparison. Check out Andrew Kornkven's theory:
According to his theory, there really were hijackers on the planes, but they were not Arab Muslims, or even Muslims of any sort. He also holds that relatives of victims did not actually report receiving cell phones calls. Instead, this claim was invented by the corporate media to trick the foreseen 9/11 truth movement into denying that the calls occurred, because the calls had revealed real truths that the government did not want to be known.
Got that? Neither do I; it takes a special kind of paranoia to make sense of that claim.
The rest of it is a muddle, which goes on for thousands of words. Kornkven seems to be criticizing DRG for validating the phone calls (which would indeed be news), while DRG assures us that he does not believe in them either.
Troofers like to claim that they have all these academics on their side, but the actual quality of work turned out by these scientists is no better than a layman. Witness this letter from a supposed physics PhD to NIST regarding their recent WTC7 report. It is supposedly on a scientific subject, but has no more science beyond what you would find on a typical troofer blog. And it can't even get that right:
Anecdotal Evidence for the Controlled Demolition of WTC 7 1. Larry Silverstein's remarks about the decision to "pull" are clear enough. The arguments about the meaning of "pull" are a smoke-screen. There is a causal relationship between "and we made that decision" and "we watched the building fall down." The latter follows the former. Their decision resulted in the fall of WTC 7. This could only take place with controlled demolition.*
I love how he tries to explain that the debate over the meaning of "pull" is a smoke-screen, as if NIST would care, given that "pull" is only a demolition term within the troofer community itself, and nowhere else on Earth. The bizarre thing is that the footnote points out that this argument is invalid anyway.
* This is not a direct quote of Silverstein's words. He said, "And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." http://911review.com/errors/wtc/pullit.html
Why you have a footnote pointing out your own inaccuracies is beyond me.
Johannemann was a part-time janitor assigned to clean rest rooms in the north tower on 9/11 and was, indeed, credited with saving a man.
His family says that day changed him, that he became withdrawn and began drinking heavily, falling in and out of work.
The Troofers of course will claim that he was depressed because he knew that 9-11 was an inside job. How long before he's added to Patriots Question 9-11?
Here were the reporters, finally covering the Paul movement. Here’s what they were covering: Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, a vision in a yellow T-shirt and blue blazer, aired 9/11 conspiracy theories while reporters rushed to get comments from attendees. (I walked past a New York Times reporter who was quizzing two Paul backers about controlled demolitions.)
That pissed some people off. “I think the 9/11 Truth Movement is dead,” said Justin Martell, a Franklin Pierce college student who’d spent much of 2007 showing up at New Hampshire candidate rallies asking about a new investigation. “I might even be sympathetic to it,” said Paul voter Mike Reineke, “but I’m from New York, and that’s a touchy subject that you don’t want to talk to voters about.”
Thanks to Sword of Truth, for pointing out this article in the comments.
Update: Since posting this originally, the source, Reason Online has modified this excerpt. It now reads:
That pissed some people off. “I think the 9/11 Truth Movement as we knew it in 2006 and 2007 is dead,” said Justin Martell, a Franklin Pierce college student who’d spent much of 2007 showing up at New Hampshire candidate rallies asking about a new investigation. "We need to focus on the bigger picture, on issues like Iraq." The 9/11 truth issue roiled a number of attendees. “I might even be sympathetic to it,” said Paul voter Mike Reineke, “but I’m from New York, and that’s a touchy subject that you don’t want to talk to voters about.”
Troofers got noticed at the Democratic National Convention, by inserting themselves into protests and harassing journalists. At the Republican National Convention, they find themselves invited, at a Ron Paul "Revolution" counter event:
Then Ventura moved on to a more controversial topic — “something that when I discuss it, I get attacked,” he said. “Something called 9/11.”
Now, at every Ron Paul event I’ve been to this year, I’ve seen people from the so-called 9/11 Truth movement, and this event is no different. (You can tell who they are by their “9/11 Truth Now” t-shirts.) When Ventura brought up 9/11, these people starting cheering and clapping. “ Why is it that when you ask questions about 9/11, it’s out-of-bounds?” he said. “Why has the U.S. Department of Justice not charged Osama Bin Laden for 9/11?”
As Ventura continued to “ask questions” about what really happened on 9/11, a vocal contingent in the crowd (coming from all parts of the arena) took to chanting, “9/11 was an inside job.” At one point, it got so loud that Ventura had to pause for a few moments before going on. Many in the crowd were applauding Ventura throughout his discussion of 9/11, but some were sitting stone-faced, looking on with dismay.
Update: Added video. Jesse joins the Fair Play for Al Qaeda Committee. Check out his pal, Jim Fetzer at the end.
Since Jason has always been cordial with me, I decided I would take on his newest film. It is one of the oddball ironies of our position vis-a-vis the "Truthers" that our attention gives credibility to some of these projects. I'll take on the film ten minutes at a time, provided I don't lose interest:
General comments: After Dylan's nasal twang and Sofia's ice goddess voice, Bermas' narration is something of a relief. I do think he's a little too matter-of-fact in tone, but that may change at some point in the film. There are many places where there is annoying repetitive noise in the background, such as right at the very beginning, when we see the Naudet Brothers footage. I checked the high-quality Google video and found the same problem. It's incredibly annoying.
Points argued:
1. The networks were too eager to nominate Osama Bin Laden as the mastermind of the attacks. Of course, it's like back in the 1980s when a bomb went off in London, of course the IRA was going to be the first suspect on everybody's list.
2. The FBI doesn't want Osama for 9-11. This nonsense continues. Bermas claims that Rex Tomb said this; we don't know that. We know that Ed Haas says that Rex Tomb said this, but we also know that the FBI is furnishing evidence to the military tribunals currently getting underway of KSM, Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, and others involved in the planning.
3. Many of the hijackers were trained within US military bases. Simply a case of similar names. Note that as usual, the sources are mainstream media reports from the first days after the attacks.
4. Colonel Stephen Butler, of the Defense Language Institute, said Bush knew in advance of the attacks.
Butler's a clear case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Here's the text of his letter:
It's about time conservative idiots like Steve Kelly and Rod Musgrove got a dose of reality. Of course President Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. His daddy had Saddam and he needed Osama.
His presidency was going nowhere. He wasn't elected by the American people, but placed into the Oval Office by the conservative supreme court. The economy was sliding into the usual Republican pits and he needed something on which to hang his presidency.
For them to accuse Democrats of being "sleazy" is laughable. Isn't it ironic that Kelly begins his inane babble with a reference to Monica Lewinsky? How many people died because of Monica Lewinsky? And for Musgrove to call the assertions "contemptible" is another joke. Funny how he manages to make disparaging remarks about President Clinton, as well.
Face it people, Bill Clinton was a great president. This guy is a joke. What is sleazy and contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain. The Democrats asking pertinent questions is their duty as public servants.
Steve Butler
Note the lack of evidence presented in the letter. Bermas claims Butler is an authority because one or more of the hijackers purportedly attended his school, and yet Butler fails to mention that fact.
5. A woman named Diane Albritten (ph) called the CIA on some of her hijacker neighbors living at 502 Orrin Street. This appears to be true:
Fed up with the parking problem, and suspicious of activities at the house, the neighbor across the street at 503 Orrin St., John E. Albritton, called federal authorities, according to his wife. She says they observed a van parked outside the home at all hours of the day and night. A Middle-Eastern man appeared to be monitoring a scanner or radio inside the van, she says.
But reading the article it's pretty clear that the neighbors suspected drug-dealing and that there were too many people living in the house, not exactly the kind of thing that the CIA investigates.
6. J. Michael Springmann claims he was told to issue visas to unqualified applicants. Bermas overlays Mohamed Atta's passport on the screen, but of course Springmann is talking about 1986-1987, more than a decade before Atta came to the United States. Springmann rattles on about some Sudanese guy; of course, none of the hijackers were from the Sudan. Springmann managed to imply that the guys he was pushed to let in were CIA assets, like "the guys I let in a couple years previously." Of course it was not a couple of years previously, it was well over a decade previously.
7. Springmann gets into deeper waters with his claim that he had met some people who told him that the CIA was working with Osama Bin Laden. This claim has been repeated endlessly, mostly by people who have not looked into Osama's activities in the 1980s.
8. Bermas claims "It is now known that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset, under the codename, Tim Osman."
9. Cynthia McKinney comes on to talk about how the US government paid the Bin Laden family $300 million to construct "the camps". McKinney claims that these camps were located in Afghanistan. I will have to look further into this claim; it's a new one on me.
Richard Gage visits his alma mater, USC, at an alumni event, and presents the dean of the School of Engineering with some troofer material to "peer-review". The dean, to no surprise laughs heartily and politely makes a non-committal response. Bizarrely, only moments after telling him that they have 435 architects and engineers in their organization, Gage explains they need his help, because they do not have the expertise. Probably the only thing he has ever got right.