The 7/7 London Bombings: How to Set Up a Patsy

The 7/7 London Bombings: How to Set Up a Patsy

Censure movement catching fire

The Free Press -- Independent News Media - National Issues

Censure movement catching fire
by Stephen Crockett
April 10, 2006

The media has largely been ignoring the fact that the Feingold Resolution to censure George W. Bush has been gaining support among leading Democrats. The Corporate Mainstream Media made it a huge story that the Feingold Censure Resolution did not immediately gain massive public support from other Democratic Senators. Senate Democrats are starting to rally behind the resolution after exploring the issue and examining public opinion on the issue.

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Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa are now co-sponsors of the Feingold Censure Resolution. Senator Harkin has written an excellent article on the subject titled “Why I Fully Support Bush Censure”. This article can be read at Tom Harkin.com http://www.tomharkin.com . Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina recently declared his support of the resolution.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont has started making comments supporting public hearings o the Feingold Censure Resolution. Many other Senate Democrats support public hearings and are making similar comments. The Senate Democrats are demonstrating their usual extreme caution but very few are publicly opposing Feingold’s efforts.

Comments by former Vice President Al Gore and DNC Chairman Howard Dean applaud Feingold’s leadership on the issue. Dozens of Democratic members of Congress are publicly on record supporting Feingold. Many members of the House of Representatives are taking a much stronger position by backing impeachment hearings for Bush.

Impeachment hearings after the 2006 elections are not out of the realm of possibility. Possible grounds for impeaching both Bush and Cheney have been extensively explored on the Internet and in various publications from The Nation to Vanity Fair. Impeachment is now a mainstream political issue and can no longer be ignored. In comparison, the Feingold Censure Resolution is viewed as very mild and moderate.

Large numbers of Americans support the Feingold measure in almost every reputable public poll. In almost every poll, more voters support the censuring of Bush than approve of Bush’s performance in office. The most recent polls show Bush have more than half the public approving of his performance in only three states (Idaho, Utah and Wyoming). Nationally, Bush has the lowest public approval rating of his Administration. His support seems to be falling from even these very low levels. Recent news developments have not yet been reflected in these polls.

The recent media reports that Bush authorized leaking classified information in the “Valerie Palme-CIA agent outing” criminal case will shred his remaining support. Once viewed as honest by the public, Bush is viewed by most voters as following in the footsteps of Richard Nixon, Ralph Reed and Tom Delay when it comes to being politically dishonest.

If these reports are true, we can expect both censure and impeachment sentiment among the public to grow dramatically. Republican political figures are running away from Bush and his corrupt supporters whenever possible. Censure is catching fire because of the corruption of Bush’s tactics and policies.

Written by Stephen Crockett (co-host, Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland 21919. Phone: 443-907-2367. Email: midsouthcm@aol.com .

Feel free to publish without prior approval and at no charge.

Incidents show that neocons everywhere are desperate

Special Reports
Incidents show that neocons everywhere are desperate
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Guest Writer


Apr 10, 2006, 01:48

Upcoming elections around the world are pinning neocons against the wall and are heralding a return to democratic socialism and progressive populism, much to the anger and angst of international bankers, militarists, and reactionary Abrahamic tradition religious sects and movements.

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The election in Italy is a case in point. With neo-fascist Silvio Berlusconi trailing in the polls, he has resorted to accusing China's Mao of boiling babies to make fertilizer and called his Communist-Socialist opponents "coglioni," a vulgar term defined variably as prick, asshole, moron, and idiot.

U.S. ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield is spinning a Venezuelan vegetable, egg, and fruit protest pelting of his motorcade as some sort of terrorist attack. The U.S. State Department complained to Venezuela's ambassador in Washington that Venezuela was in violation of the international treaty on the protection if diplomats.

Spinning an unfounded conspiracy theory (they are only conspiracy theories when the left-wing cites them), State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the incident in a poor Caracas neighborhood was condoned by the city's mayor, police, and local government. McCormack vowed that the United States will not be intimidated by such attacks of vegetables, fruit, and eggs on U.S. diplomatic vehicles.

U.S. embassy spokesman Brian Penn bemoaned, ''Our car is stained all over . . . the motorcyclists were throwing things at us for at least 10 minutes, and the police did nothing." Penn did not indicate whether there were any funds left in the embassy's CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency slush funds used to foment insurrections, secessionist movement, coups, street protests, and election chicanery to afford a car wash for the ambassador's car.

Meanwhile, as Ollanta Humala, an ally of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, looks set to capture Peru's presidency, the neocon and corporate media are ringing "alarm bells" about the leftist surge in Latin America. And Washington's pro-corporate and militarist elite has turned up the heat on Humala, a populist former military officer who champions the rights of Peru's poor and native Americans, including coca farmers.

Dennis Jett, Bill Clinton's ambassador to Lima from 1996 to 1999, said Humala is "just as wacky" as Chavez and Morales. Such rhetoric points to Jett, who was Clinton's ambassador to Mozambique, representing the "dark side" of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Council-aligned wing that is beholden to corporate special interests while at the same time appearing to oppose the Bush administration.

In Mozambique, Clinton's ambassador was opposed to the socialist policies of the government and once banned embassy and USAID officials from speaking to a pro-Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) journalist. Jett was also found to be in collusion with right-wing rebel forces of RENAMO, the former apartheid South Africa-supported Mozambican guerrilla movement. All this subterfuge occurred under the so-called enlightened worldview leadership of Bill Clinton.

The fact that the Democratic elite is resorting to the same name-calling as Berlusconi is an indication that recent mass pro-labor populist protests, strikes, and riots in France and the leftward sweep in Latin America will soon severely rip into the corporate interests of both the GOP and the elitist Democrats, along with their corporate financiers and entrenched neocon policymakers.

In October, socialist Leon Roldos looks set to win Ecuador's presidency. If that occurs, Washington already has placed an activist ambassador in Quito to turn up the heat on a socialist government in an oil-rich nation. Ecuador could end up as Latin America's second Venezuela, an oil-rich country opposed to Bush/neocon hegemony.

The most recent U.S. ambassador in Quito was Kristie Kenney, now posted to the coup-wracked Philippines where President Glorida Macapagal-Arroyo has been plagued by pro-Bush rebels within the Philippine military, and who is, conveniently, the wife of America's anti-Chavez provocateur ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield.

As the populist wave sweeps through Mexico and Nicaragua, where prospects look increasingly progressive and socialist, the real "coglioni" -- the neocons, free traders and international bankers, elitists of both U.S. duopolistic political parties, and religious fanatics will ultimately get their just rewards.

© 2005 WayneMadsenReport.com. All Rights Reserved.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is author of the forthcoming book, “Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates.” He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 1998-2006 Online Journal
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"The Moussaouian Candidate"

"The Moussaouian Candidate"

Commentary
"The Moussaouian Candidate"
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Apr 3, 2006, 11:45

The above title (from an anonymous reader) is a play on The Manchurian Candidate -- the chilling 1962 John Frankenheimer film about a brainwashed Korean War hero programmed by Chinese and Russian communists to assassinate a US presidential candidate on command. Today, 42 years after the film’s release, two years after its remake by Jonathan Demme, we have the lone patsy for the 9/11 deaths and destruction turning out to be a star witness for the prosecution against himself.

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This is beyond a misguided braggadocio. Describing Zacarias Moussaoui, the chief strategist for a South Asian terror group, Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin (short-named Hambali), who worked with ‘al-Qaeda’ and Moussaoui, called him ‘very troubled, not right in the head.” I would go beyond that and elevate him to Manchurian Candidate status, programmed however we define it: drugged, hypnotized, sleep-deprived, mind-screwed, even beset with the misguided Muslim call (inner and outer) to martyrdom, in this case a call to self-destruct to preserve the 9/11 mythology.

Past Candidates

Moussaoui reminds one of the Palestinian buzz boy Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, who confessed to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy shortly after the event, which took place on the evening of June 5, 1968, at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, recently demolished like most of the evidence. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, had just come off the podium and was taken in the opposite direction he was supposed to go, to the “pantry” of the ballroom in which he had just spoken.

In the crowded “pantry,” Sirhan was said to have called to Kennedy then fired his 8-shot .22 pistol at a distance of two to five feet, killing RFK. The only trouble was that the LA Coroner Naguchi described the death from a wound to the back of the head, under the right ear, from one or two inches distance. There were several other shots to RFK’s back, from behind. Standing inches behind RFK was one of three Ace Security Guards hired to protect him that evening, Thane Eugene Cesar, the shooter dressed as a waiter, a .22 caliber pistol in hand.

In fact, as RFK fell he pulled off Cesar’s bowtie, most likely to point to him as the killer. Cesar may be still alive, out there somewhere, while Sirhan’s parole from life imprisonment was denied on March 16 after serving 37 years. Of course, not too long after his swift confession, Sirhan recanted it and has ever since. He can’t even recall the sequence of events of that night. What’s more, the total number of shots and bullet holes made in the pantry far exceeded the eight bullets of Sirhan’s .22. Nor did they match the bullet that killed RFK, the one from Cesar’s gun.

The story is a book unto itself, notably the suppressed “Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy -- The Conspiracy and Coverup, 1968-1978" (Random House, 1978; and Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993), by William Turner and Jonn Christian. Google to find a bookseller and/or find one of many shorter stories of the suppression of this colossal truth; for instance: “Sirhan Sirhan: A True “Manchurian Candidate” by Sirhan’s present attorney Lawrence Teeter. Of course, the cover-up has been aided and abetted by an obfuscating LAPD, FBI, and CIA for decades.

Then we have Mark Chapman, still rotting in prison, confessing “on the spot” after his “so-called” assassination of John Lennon. He, too, is considered a Manchurian Candidate by many, including myself in my OJ article, On the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination, imagine. Also, Chapman like Sirhan was a victim of the CIA’s MKULTRA program and Operation Artichoke, dedicated to turning certain people into vegetable patsies.

If this all seems like a conspiracy theorist’s holiday, let me tell you that it’s no stranger than the claim that 9/11 was committed by 19 Mid Eastern fanatics with box-cutters and plastic knives. In fact, 9/11 “Mastermind” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has upped the number to 34 participants, including a mysterious Jordanian who prepared 10 of the hijackers for their task by training them to butcher camels and sheep with Swiss Army Knives. This plum comes from the 3/29/06 LA Times’ A New Name in 9/11 Plot Surfaces by Josh Meyer.

It’s more fodder for the myth that includes the illusive former CIA operative Osama bin Laden, in his cave with his laptop, directing it all like a maestro in absentia.

“That is correct,” Mr. Moussaoui Replied

This was Moussaoui’s robotic answer to question after question from chief prosecutor Robert J. Spencer, frustrating his attorneys to whom he would not speak. This climaxed in Moussaoui describing the joy he took at a tape recording of a female flight attendant pleading for her life aboard one of the planes as “gorgeous,” if indeed such a tape exists and has been validated not forged by voice cloning, a new toy from Los Alamos that requires only a voice sample to have it say anything that needs be said by anyone.

That aside, this was all happening a week after US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema was threatening to throw out the Moussaoui case because of “egregious” witness coaching by an overzealous Transportation Security Administration lawyer, Carla J. Martin, who now faces a criminal investigation for coaching multiple witnesses on their testimony and lying to defense lawyers.

All of a sudden this past week, the momentum of the case in favor of Moussaoui turned abruptly when he began digging his own grave. What was that all about if not a Moussaouian Candidate? A look at Moussaoui’s news photos reveals a worn, disoriented, beaten man. Why was this happening?

Perhaps all this had to with the 9/11 myth and whether or not the planes were really flown by terrorists at all, those lap-dancer lackeys, coke-snorting boozers, bozo drop-outs from flight-schools, some of whom were brought here to establish their presence, and who trained actually at US military bases.

Leaving that on hold for a bit more realistic investigating, the jury pondered Moussaoui’s fate for more than 12 hours, after the case came to it Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday the jurors sought a definition of weapons of mass destruction, one of three raps for which Moussaoui could be executed.

The jurors were informed that an airliner used as a missile (how about internal controlled demolition used to bring down a Tower?) was considered a weapon of mass destruction. The fact that Moussaoui was in the slammer at the time of the attacks seems to make little difference to the prosecution. They claim they would have been able to stop, thwart, minimize, analyze, scrutinize the attack if he’d revealed his al Qaeda membership and terror plans when originally arrested by and questioned by federal agents.

The conflicting truth is that Minnesota FBI agent, Harry M. Samit, warned his superiors more than 70 times that Moussaoui was a “dangerous Islamic extremist whose study of how to fly a Boeing a 747-400 seemed part of a sinister plot,” as reported in the March 30 New York Times’ At Sept. 11 Trial, Tale of Missteps and Management by Scott Shane and Neil A. Lewis. Samit added on August 31, 2001, “As the details of this plan are not yet fully know, it cannot be determined if Moussaoui has sufficient knowledge of the 747-400 to attempt to execute the seizure of such an aircraft.”

Should the FBI Be Put on Trial as Well?

But the upper level officials thought the off-center, Moroccan-born, Frenchman in Minneapolis only one of many could-be would-be terrorists maybe worthy of checking out. Samit’s memos seeking a search warrant for Moussaoui’s goods and laptop brought a response that such searching could hurt an agent’s career, Samit testified. So why don’t we put the FBI on trial, particularly those superiors that thwarted Samit’s efforts? It sounds like either they already knew Moussaoui was a nobody or didn’t want the 9/11 plans foiled in any way with new information.

In the 58-page “Substitution for the Testimony of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” the so-called Mastermind of 9/11, Mohammed considered Moussaoui “less reliable because of time he had spent in the West.” Alas, he’d been infected with our decadent ways, perhaps the perfect qualifications for a “Manchurian Candidate,” the patsy for 9/11.

Returning to Samit, when he tried to provide a link between Moussaoui and some foreign power, a basis for a warrant from Foreign Intelligence Court, the two reports from them showing Moussaoui had recruited one person to fight in Chechnya for an Islamist group allied with bin Laden, proved to be inadequate.

Samit’s higher-up, Michael Maltbie, was said by Moussaoui’s legal team, to have undercut Samit’s effort to get the search warrant. Maltbie actually deleted some details from Samit’s request, telling Samit it was risky business for his [Maltbie’s] career. And he “was not about to let that happen.” Therefore I suggest we put Maltbie as well on trial along with Moussaoui as a co-conspirator, especially if we’re playing this loose with the law and justice. But then, one misguided Muslim patsy seems to serve the need for a goat well enough, just as the Palestinian anti-Israel Sirhan did with Kennedy, and the diagnosed paranoid Chapman did with Lennon.

Ironically, Mr. Mohammed Mastermind finally said that he “had no idea that the damage of the first attack [including NYC and DC] would be as catastrophic as it was.” Well, his surprise may reflect the fact that what was “his plan” was somebody else’s plan, much closer to home and much more formidable. And, therefore, he too has the smell of goat, as in a certain book about a goat, about him.

Yet, regardless of all this, this morning the jury returns to decide if Moussaoui was responsible for at least one death on 9/11 in order to qualify him for execution, and whether or not a second phase of the kangaroo court would be needed to mitigate the charge to life imprisonment. Who knows if Moussaoui would even accept the jury’s decision for life imprisonment and not, as if acting hypnotically, blindly blame himself for all the murders?

Certainly, it would be a major victory for the real killers, as was the case in both RFK and Lennon’s deaths, one 38 years ago, the other 26 years ago. And then there’s JFK and Oswald, 43 years ago. But that’s another long story in a long US tradition of lone patsy/assassins.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writing residing in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.

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United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - Pro-Israel lobby in U.S. under attack.

United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - Pro-Israel lobby in U.S. under attack.

Pro-Israel lobby in U.S. under attack.

WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Two of America's top scholars have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive" role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.

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Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life.

They claim that the Israel lobby has distorted American policy and operates against American interests, that it has organized the funneling of more than $140 billion dollars to Israel and "has a stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, and its ability to raise large campaign funds gives its vast influence over Republican and Democratic administrations, while its role in Washington think tanks on the Middle East dominates the policy debate.

And they say that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in U.S. public life.

"Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites -- violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends," Walt and Mearsheimer write.

"The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned," they add, in the 12,800-word article published in the latest issue of The London Review of Books.

The article focuses strongly on the role of the "neo-conservatives" within the Bush administration in driving the decision to launch the war on Iraq.

"The main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to the Likud," Mearsheimer and Walt argue." Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests."

"The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) or WINEP (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy), and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war," Walt and Mearsheimer write.

The article, which is already stirring furious debate in U.S. academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby.

"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," the article says.

"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?" Professors Walt and Mearsheimer add.

"The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel -- are essentially identical," they add.

They argue that far from being a strategic asset to the United States, Israel "is becoming a strategic burden" and "does not behave like a loyal ally." They also suggest that Israel is also now "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.

"Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around," they add. "Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits."

They question the argument that Israel deserves support as the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens."

The most powerful force in the Lobby is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public affairs Committee, which Walt and Mearsheimer call "a de facto agent for a foreign government," and which they say has now forged an important alliance with evangelical Christian groups.

The bulk of the article is a detailed analysis of the way they claim the Lobby managed to change the Bush administration's policy from "halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state" and divert it to the war on Iraq instead. They write "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical."

"Thanks to the lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians," and conclude that "Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and U.S. policy more even-handed."

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc.

Conspiracy and Closed Minds on 9/11

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Conspiracy and Closed Minds on 9/11

Morgan Reynolds
March 2006

While more Americans doubt the 9/11 story every week, evidence abounds that many have a mental block against rational examination of the evidence about 9/11. The possibility that it was an inside job is a non-starter for them. Programmed “cut outs” insure that 9/11 doubts are consigned to the “conspiracy” closet.

Last June I was explaining the fuss over my 9/11 article to a family member who shall remain anonymous and he interrupted and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Millions join him in that sentiment. By implication they might as well say: “I’d rather cling to the official 9/11 myth” = “If mass murderers run free, I’m fine with that” = “If 9/11 was an inside job, then I’m ruled by monsters and I might have to do something about it, I’d rather watch Paris Hilton.”

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Where does this passive attitude come from? Causes are many but American indoctrination has two sides that figure prominently in the explanation:

• Belief in “American Exceptionalism”

• Disbelief in conspiracy

The first belief massages the American ego that we are heroes, always the good guys in history, and we can trust our government to be the same. The second steers us clear of subversive theories and thwarts connecting the dots. American exceptionalism is Civics 101, the Disneyfication of U.S. history, the “we’re so good” formula, “those stupid romances commonly called history.” Like no other nation in history, we are an unparalleled success, goes the story. With American self-esteem unrivalled, denial about 9/11 is hardly surprising. Conventional wisdom, in effect, says Yes, criminal gangs have ruled in other nations from time to time, perhaps always, but it has never happened here and cannot happen here. Evidence to the contrary is bogus, I do not have to even look at it. For one thing, I vote. We are the world’s greatest duh-mocracy. In fact, I voted for Bush-Cheney (or that other skull-and-bones candidate from Yale, I forget). I am fully invested with the regime and I’m not a criminal or traitor, so Bush-Cheney must not be either. After all, we the people are the government. Criminals and traitors do not look like us either, they look like Arabs, Germans, Japanese, Chinese.

Besides, conspiracy theories are little more than a symptom of a mental disease. Such asinine theories stem from delusion and paranoia, not objective reality. On its face, it is preposterous to believe that the U.S. government would attack its own people. History is about accidents, bungling, lone nuts, chaos and coincidence, not planning, cause-and-effect, execution and cover-ups.

False Flag Terrorism

Americans know a great deal that just is not so. The hidden history of false-flag terrorism is key, followed by trained aversion to conspiracy. When bad things happen on a large scale, chances are that an important group of people wanted them to happen and made them happen.

Governments throughout history have provoked or staged attacks on their own people to serve the powers behind the throne (“the money power”), glorify themselves, engage in vast government spending, reward friends, exert domestic control, stimulate the juices of war, annex neighbors and pursue vast geostrategic rearrangements (the “global domination project”). A few examples:

• Nero burned Rome to blame the Christans A.D. 64

• US provoked Mexican-American war 1846

• USS Maine sinking 1898

• Lusitania sinking 1915

• Reichstag fire 1933

• Hitler’s staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station 1939

• The “surprise attack” at Pearl Harbor 1941

• Bay of Pigs conspiracy 1961

• Operation Northwoods 1962

• LBJ’s Gulf of Tonkin conspiracy 1964

• Kuwaiti baby incubator hoax 1991

• Bush Jr.’s 9/11, yellow cake and WMD scams

Ruthless though plotters be, the basic principle “is as mundane as insurance fraud,” as Webster G. Tarpley writes (9/11 Synthetic Terror, 2005, p. 104), and nicely illustrated by the obscure hoax that started World War II. Hitler wanted to invade Poland but knew the German majority did not support war, so a group of hapless German convicts was dressed up in Polish army uniforms (by Tarpley’s account, also see these variations), marched to the Gleiwitz radio station, machine gunned to death, arranged as if storming the building, and Nazi agents read an anti-German statement in Polish declaring Polish forces had invaded Gleiwitz and taken over the radio station. With this farce and related border stunts, Hitler invaded Poland the next day, September 1, 1939. “Wag the dog” anyone?

Errors about Conspiracy

Many Americans know that the JFK, RFK, MLK and other assassinations were inside jobs, and Nixon’s Watergate and Reagan’s Iran-Contra are proven conspiracies with criminal convictions. Blatant government murder of U.S. citizens occurred at Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing. Yet fools and liars argue that the scale of 9/11 was too big to be an inside job because it would involve so many people. A conspirator would surely squeal and we would hear about it, goes the argument, and that has not happened.

JFK’s triangulation murder involved hundreds and nobody “ratted” that out in any substantial way, although Jack Ruby was close before he was found dead in his cell and dozens of deaths surrounded the case. Here’s how large, inside conspiracies work:

• Conspiracies—partnerships in crime—are common: a corner drug deal is a conspiracy and one in four federal prosecutions include a conspiracy charge.

• Hundreds rather than thousands probably were necessary to pull off the 9/11 psychological operation.

• Many conspirators are ideologues committed to the idea that the 9/11 hoax would serve the interests of the nation. Worthy ends justify murderous means to this crowd. The human cost of 9/11 turned out to be “only” a month’s highway fatality toll and served the magnificent ends of starting a global war on terror, two invasions and more to come, billions more in defense spending, torture, new agencies, “Patriot” controls, domestic spying, enormous new contracts, more debt and many other attractive consequences.

• Many participants are cunning sociopaths (amoral) with the mindset of stone cold killers. They wear a suit or military uniform but have no respect for the lives of the “little people.” They are ruthless, witness the fool in the White House: “But all in all, it’s been a fabulous year for Laura and me,” a tone-deaf president declared in a December, 2001 interview.

• Only the trustworthy are at the center of the hub-spoke-and-wheel compartmentalization necessary in a complex conspiracy. Only the arrogant few at the hub know the big picture before hand.

• The most secretive regime in U.S. history puts a huge premium on personal loyalty and gets it.

• Most participants did not know in advance how “over-the-top” the twin tower demolitions were going to be. That job probably was contracted out to ruthless foreigners. Once done, it’s too late to get out.

• Any participant would hesitate to squeal after the event because disbelief, disgrace and grief would follow, at a minimum, anyway. The major media, inside 9/11 from the start, would discredit squealers, as necessary.

• Risk-taking behavior is always greater in groups than for lone individuals (psychology 101).

• Once involved in the plot, everyone is “in for good.’

• Conspirators face no threat of arrest, prosecution and punishment by the government’s justice system, a proven fact since government and media obstructed and trashed New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison’s JFK investigation and prosecution.

• Controllers discipline participants through $billions in black budgets and drug money, death threats, assassination and black mail.

• Blatant and repeated resistance against truthful investigations, aided by obstruction of justice and abetted by media silencio, prove there is a lot to hide.

Consider one control technique among many: a very high CIA official died a few years ago and on good authority I know that he had a 7/24 CIA presence to protect against a deathbed confession in front of Hospice personnel. “I’m not into conspiracy theories,” says filmmaker Michael Moore, “only those that are true.”

The fundamental difficulty is not really disbelief about the ability to keep conspiracy secrets but disbelief that U.S. government officials could really collaborate in attacking America and take all those innocent lives at the World Trade Center. This is naïve. First, government is the instrument of social compulsion. Organized force is what government does. The belief that soft-hearted people rise to the top in government is akin to the belief that softies were whipping masters on slave plantations. Second, setting WTC bombs could easily have been contracted out to Mossad, otherwise known as “executioner to the world.” Killing? It’s what we do (because this is “life or death for Israel,” blah, blah). Third, people are taught that they control their government and live in a duh-mocracy but all governments are run by insiders, usually permanent and dominated by the paymasters. When policy or personnel really matter, international bankers call the tune for modern governments daily dependent on them for new loans and refinance of the old. These financiers look out for themselves and believe in a New World Order, a one-government world, and have no allegiance to America or its founding principles. Fourth, the U.S. military oath requires an oath-taker to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The enemy within the gate is key today, whether called conspiracy or not, not the enemy outside.

Skepticism about conspiracy, small or large, is somewhat beside the point in the case of 9/11 because the official Osama-and-Nineteen-Young-Arabs (ONYA) conspiracy tale is so farcical and impossible. Nearly everyone in America has easy access to the internet and hundreds of websites expose the 9/11 fraud. The analysis is out there and in a few dozen books, although the mainstream media ignores it all. Only government could have pulled off a psy-op this big, not a rag-tag band of Arab incompetents with no visible means of support repeatedly running afoul of law enforcement in the field. All the other intelligence services and governments know the real story about who did 9/11. It is like an elephant in the living room, studiously ignored by insiders who keep quiet about it. After thorough exposure via the Downing Street memo and other irrefutable evidence about the Bush-Cheney lies to justify invading Iraq, it takes a lot to remain ignorant about 9/11. It is not about a conspiracy too large to work. Ignorance increasingly has to be willful.

Visits to my site! Copyright Morgan Reynolds 2006+ unless otherwise specified. Distribution of and linking to the articles on this website is strongly encouraged, as long as the content is not manipulated or distorted in anyway.

The Secret War Against the Defenseless People of West Papua - by John Pilger

The Secret War Against the Defenseless People of West Papua - by John Pilger


March 11, 2006
The Secret War Against the Defenseless People of West Papua
by John Pilger

In 1993, I and four others traveled clandestinely across East Timor to gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship. Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data Incomplete." Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in dispatching, proportionally, as many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with the "international community."

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In East Timor, I found a country littered with graves, their black crosses crowding the eye: crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They announced the murder of entire communities, from babies to the elderly. In 2000, when the East Timorese, displaying a collective act of courage with few historical parallels, finally won their freedom, the United Nations set up a truth commission; on 24 January, its 2,500 pages were published. I have never read anything like it. Using mostly official documents, it recounts in painful detail the entire disgrace of East Timor's blood sacrifice. It says that 180,000 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops or died from enforced starvation. It describes the "primary roles" in this carnage of the governments of the United States, Britain and Australia. America's "political and military support were fundamental" in crimes that ranged from "mass executions to forced resettlements, sexual and other horrific forms of torture as well as abuse against children." Britain, a co-conspirator in the invasion, was the main arms supplier. If you want to see through the smokescreen currently around Iraq, and understand true terrorism, read this document.

As I read it, my mind went back to the letters Foreign Office officials wrote to concerned members of the public and MPs following the showing of my film Death of a Nation. Knowing the truth, they denied that British-supplied Hawk jets were blowing straw-roofed villages to bits and that British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine-guns were finishing off the occupants. They even lied about the scale of suffering.

And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the "international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary of the crushing of a defenseless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province – stolen from its people, like East Timor – is one of the great secrets of our time. Recently, the Australian minister of "communications," Senator Helen Coonan, failed to place it on the map of her own region, as if it did not exist.

An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure, according to refugees. In January, 43 West Papuans reached Australia's north coast after a hazardous six-week journey in a dugout. They had no food, and had dribbled their last fresh water into their children's mouths. "We knew," said Herman Wainggai, the leader, "that if the Indonesian military had caught us, most of us would have died. They treat West Papuans like animals. They kill us like animals. They have created militias and jihadis to do just that. It is the same as East Timor."

For over a year, an estimated 6,000 people have been hiding in dense jungle after their villages and crops were destroyed by Indonesian special forces. Raising the West Papuan flag is "treason." Two men are serving 15- and ten-year sentences for merely trying. Following an attack on one village, a man was presented as an "example" and petrol poured over him and his hair set alight.

When the Netherlands gave Indonesia its independence in 1949, it argued that West Papua was a separate geographic and ethnic entity with a distinctive national character. A report published last November by the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague revealed that the Dutch had secretly recognized the "unmistakable beginning of the formation of a Papuan state," but were bullied by the administration of John F Kennedy to accept "temporary" Indonesian control over what a White House adviser called "a few thousand miles of cannibal land."

The West Papuans were conned. The Dutch, Americans, British and Australians backed an "Act of Free Choice" ostensibly run by the UN. The movements of a UN monitoring team of 25 were restricted by the Indonesian military and they were denied interpreters. In 1969, out of a population of 800,000, some 1,000 West Papuans "voted." All were selected by the Indonesians. At gunpoint, they "agreed" to remain under the rule of General Suharto – who had seized power in 1965 in what the CIA later described as "one of the worst mass murders of the late 20th century." In 1981, the Tribunal on Human Rights in West Papua, held in exile, heard from Eliezer Bonay, Indonesia's first governor of the province, that approximately 30,000 West Papuans had been murdered during 1963-69. Little of this was reported in the west.

The silence of the "international community" is explained by the fabulous wealth of West Papua. In November 1967, soon after Suharto had consolidated his seizure of power, the Time-Life Corporation sponsored an extraordinary conference in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, led by the banker David Rockefeller. Sitting opposite them were Suharto's men, known as the "Berkeley mafia," as several had enjoyed US government scholarships to the University of California at Berkeley. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests. However, the prize – the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold – went to the US mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US secretary of state, gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade East Timor, says the Dutch report.

Freeport is today probably the biggest single source of revenue for the Indonesian regime: the company is said to have handed Jakarta $33bn between 1992 and 2004. Little of this has reached the people of West Papua. Last December, 55 people reportedly starved to death in the district of Yahukimo. The Jakarta Post noted the "horrible irony" of hunger in such an "immensely rich" province. According to the World Bank, "38 per cent of Papua's population is living in poverty, more than double the national average."

The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's special forces, who are among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard government in Canberra announced that it would resume "cooperation" with Kopassus at the Australian SAS base near Perth. In an inversion of the truth, the then Australian defense minister, Senator Robert Hill, described Kopassus as having "the most effective capability to respond to a counter-hijack or hostage recovery threat." The files of human-rights organizations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. On 6 July 1998, on the West Papuan island of Biak, just north of Australia, special forces massacred more than 100 people, most of them women.

However, the Indonesian military has not been able to crush the popular Free Papua Movement (OPM). Since 1965, almost alone, the OPM has reminded the Indonesians, often audaciously, that they are invaders. In the past two months, the resistance has caused the Indonesians to rush more troops to West Papua. Two British-supplied Tactica armored personnel carriers fitted with water cannon have arrived from Jakarta. These were first delivered during the late Robin Cook's "ethical dimension" in foreign policy. Hawk fighter-bombers, made by BAE Systems, have been used against West Papuan villages.

The fate of the 43 asylum-seekers in Australia is precarious.

In contravention of international law, the Howard government has moved them from the mainland to Christmas Island, which is part of an Australian "exclusion zone" for refugees. We should watch carefully what happens to these people. If the history of human rights is not the history of great power's impunity, the UN must return to West Papua, as it did finally to East Timor.

Or do we always have to wait for the crosses to multiply?

For information on how help visit www.freewestpapua.org

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

This paper will appear in 9/11 AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE: INTELLECTUALS SPEAK OUT, David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds. (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006)



Propping Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC by

NIST and Underwriters Laboratories

Kevin Ryan

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"Already there is near-consensus as to the sequence of events that led to the collapse of the World Trade Center.”--Shankar Nair, as quoted in the Chicago Tribune September 19, 2001





Turn on C-Span, or “Meet The Press,” or any other media program presenting federal officials. Whatever the issue, it always comes back to the same thing. Our government really has nothing else to offer us but protection from another 9/11. It uses this painful story to cut public services, eliminate our basic rights, and plunder the national coffers. But for many of us, it is not entirely clear from whom we most need protection.[1] As our debt explodes and our freedoms diminish, it would be wise to maintain focus on the origins of our War on Terror. No matter where this war leads us, we will need to keep the beginning in mind if we ever hope to see an end.





The Point of Origin: The Collapse of the WTC



Many have found that the 9/11 Commission not only failed to help us understand what happened; it also omitted or distorted most of the facts.[2] But if we really want to zero in on the exact turning point around which we plunged into chaos, we need to focus in particular on the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. This is where our hearts were wrenched and our minds were made ready for never-ending war, torture, and apparently the end of everything that was American. If we are ever to emerge from this insanity, we need to know how three tall buildings collapsed due to fire, all on the same day, when no such thing has ever happened before.


The Twin Towers and Why They Fell

It would help to begin with an accurate description of the WTC towers in terms of quality of design and construction. In July of 1971, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) presented a national award judging the buildings to be “the engineering project that demonstrates the greatest engineering skills and represents the greatest contribution to engineering progress and mankind.”[3] Others noted that “the World Trade Center towers would have an inherent capacity to resist unforeseen calamities.” This capacity stemmed from the use of special high-strength steels. In particular, the perimeter columns were designed with tremendous reserve strength whereby “live loads on these columns can be increased more than 2,000% before failure occurs.”[4]

One would expect that any explanation for the destruction of such buildings would need to be very solid as well. Four years after 9/11, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally did give us their version of “why and how” two of the buildings collapsed, but its explanation may be even less effective than the 9/11 Commission report.[5] Now that the official story has been given, however, we can see just how weak and ill-defined our basis for this War on Terror has been all along. Additionally, we can track the evolution of official comments about collapse and see who was involved.


Selling the Official Story: Some Key Players

Shankar Nair, whose statement quoted above is quite telling, was one of those “experts” on whom the government depended to support what turned out to be an ever-changing, but always flimsy, story. Many of the scientists involved in the investigation were asked to examine ancillary issues, like escape routes and other emergency response factors. But those few who attempted to explain what really needed explaining, the unique events of fire-induced collapse, appear to have engaged in what can only be called anti-science. That is, they started with their conclusions and worked backward to some “leading hypotheses.”

Not surprisingly, many of the contractors who contributed to the NIST investigation, like the company for which Nair works, just happen to depend on good relationships with the government in order to earn their living. What may be a surprise is just how lucrative these relationships can be. For example, Nair’s company, Teng & Associates, boasts of Indefinite Quantity Contracts, long-term relationships with federal government agencies, and federal projects worth in excess of $40 million.[6]

Others who worked so hard to maintain the official story included Gene Corley, a concrete construction expert listed by the National Directory of Expert Witnesses as a source for litigation testimony.[7] Corley was more than just a witness, however. He had led the Oklahoma City bombing investigation and then was asked to lead the initial ASCE investigation into the WTC disaster. Perhaps someone else, with less experience in bombings and more experience in fires, would have been a better choice. But without authority to save samples or even obtain blueprints, the ASCE investigation was ineffective anyway. Corley himself ended up being a very versatile resource, however, providing testimony supporting the pre-determined conclusions many times, and even posing as a reporter during an NIST media session.[8]

There was really no need for phony media coverage. As with The 9/11 Commission Report and the lead-up to the Iraq War, the major media simply parroted any explanations, or non-explanations, given in support of the official story. One example is from a television program called “The Anatomy of September 11th,” which aired on the History Channel. Corley took the lead on this one as well, but James Glanz, a New York Times reporter, was also interviewed and helped to spread what is probably the worst excuse for collapse given. He told us that the fires heated the steel columns so much (the video suggested 2500 F) that they were turned into “licorice.” Other self-proclaimed experts have been heard promoting similar theories.[9] They will probably come to regret it.

This is because the results of physical tests performed by NIST’s own Frank Gayle proved this theory to be a ridiculous exaggeration, as some people already knew. The temperatures seen by the few steel samples saved, only about 500 F, were far too low to soften, let alone melt, even un-fireproofed steel. Of course that result could have been calculated, knowing that 4,000 gallons of jet fuel[10]---not 24,000 gallons or 10,000 gallons, as some reports have claimed---were sprayed into an open-air environment over several floors, each comprised of more than 1,000 metric tons of concrete and steel.

Another expert who served on NIST’s advisory committee was Charles Thornton, of the engineering firm Thornton and Tomasetti. Thornton’s partner, Richard Tomasetti, was reported to be behind the unprecedented and widely criticized decision to destroy most of the steel evidence.[11] Early on Thornton said: "Karl, we all know what caused the collapse." He was talking to Karl Koch, whose company erected the WTC steel. Koch attempted to clarify as follows. “I could see it in my mind’s eye: The fire burned until the steel was weakened and the floors above collapsed, starting a chain reaction of gravity, floor falling upon floor upon floor, clunk – clunk – clunk, the load gaining weight and momentum by the nanosecond, unstoppable. Once enough floors collapsed, the exterior walls and the core columns were no longer laterally supported and folded in.”[12] This is a description of what was called the Pancake Theory, the most widely accepted version of what happened.

The Pancake Theory was promoted by an influential 2002 NOVA video called “Why the Towers Fell,” in which Corley (yet again) and Thornton were the primary commentators. Both of them talked about the floors collapsing, and Thornton described how the perimeter columns buckled outward, not inward as Koch had described. The video made a number of false claims, including exaggeration of the temperatures (2000 F), remarks about melting steel, and the incredible statement that two-thirds of the columns in WTC1 (the North Tower) were completely severed. NIST’s report now indicates that only about 14% of the columns in WTC1 were severed, and in some photos we can count most of these for ourselves.[13]





NIST and Underwriters Laboratories



In August 2004, Underwriters Laboratories evaluated the Pancake Theory by testing models of the floor assemblies used in the WTC buildings. Despite all the previous expert testimony, the floor models did not collapse. NIST reported this in its October 2004 update, in a table of results that clearly showed that the floors did not fail and that, therefore, pancaking was not possible.[14] NIST more succinctly stated this again in its June 2005 draft report, saying: “The results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11th.”[15]

At the time of the floor tests, I worked for Underwriters Laboratories (UL). I was very interested in the progress of these tests, having already asked some sensitive questions. My interest began when UL’s CEO, Loring Knoblauch, a very experienced executive with a law degree from Harvard, surprised us at the company’s South Bend location, just a few weeks after 9/11, by saying that UL had certified the steel used in the WTC buildings. Knoblauch told us that we should all be proud that the buildings had stood for so long under such intense conditions. In retrospect it is clear that all of us, including Knoblauch, were ignorant of many important facts surrounding 9/11 and did not, therefore, see his statements as particularly important.

Over the next two years, however, I learned more about the issues, like the unprecedented destruction of the steel evidence and the fact that no tall steel-frame buildings have ever collapsed due to fire. And I saw video of the owner of the buildings, stating publicly that he and the fire department made the decision to “pull”---that is, to demolish---WTC7 that day,[16] even though demolition requires many weeks of planning and preparation. Perhaps most compelling for me were the words of a genuine expert on the WTC. This was John Skilling, the structural engineer responsible for designing the towers.[17] (The NOVA video, incidentally, gave this credit to Leslie Robertson. But Robertson, who never claimed to have originated the design, was only a junior member of the firm [Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson], and Skilling was known at the time to be the engineer in charge.) In 1993, five years before his death, Skilling said that he had performed an analysis on jet plane crashes and the ensuing fires and that “the building structure would still be there.”[18]

By 2003, all of this information was available to anyone who cared. The details were, without a doubt, difficult to reconcile with testimony from officials, reporters, and scientists who were supporting the official story. But in November of that year, I felt that answers from UL were needed. If, as our CEO had suggested, our company had tested samples of steel components and listed the results in the UL Fire Resistance Directory almost forty years ago, Mr. Skilling would have depended on these results to ensure that the buildings were sufficiently fire resistant. So I sent a formal written message to our chief executive, outlining my thoughts and asking what he was doing to protect our reputation.

Knoblauch’s written response contained several points. He wrote: “We test to the code requirements, and the steel clearly met those requirements and exceeded them.” He pointed to the NYC code used at the time of the WTC construction, which required fire resistance times of 3 hours for building columns, and 2 hours for floors. From the start, his answers were not helping to explain fire-induced collapse in 56 minutes (the time it took WTC2, the South Tower, to come down). But he did give a better explanation of UL’s involvement in testing the WTC steel, even talking about the quality of the sample and how well it did. “We tested the steel with all the required fireproofing on,” he wrote, “and it did beautifully.”[19]

This response was copied to several UL executives, including Tom Chapin, the manager of UL’s Fire Protection division. Chapin reminded me that UL was the “leader in fire research testing,” but he clearly did not want to make any commitments on the issue. He talked about the floor assemblies, how these had not been UL tested, and he made the misleading claim that UL does not certify structural steel. But even an introductory textbook lists UL as one of the few important organizations supporting codes and specifications because they “produce a Fire Resistance Index with hourly ratings for beams, columns, floors, roofs, walls and partitions tested in accordance with ASTM Standard E119.”[20] He went on to clarify that UL tests assemblies of which steel is a component. This is a bit like saying “we don’t crash test the car door, we crash test the whole car.” In any case, Chapin suggested that we be patient and wait for the report from NIST, because the investigation into the “collapse of WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7” was an ongoing process and that “UL is right in the middle of these activities.”[21]

For the most part, I did wait, although I shared my concerns with Chapin again at UL’s Leadership Summit in January 2004. I encouraged him to ask for a company news release on our position, but this did not happen and I never heard from him again. By the time UL tested the floor assembly models in August of that year, I had been promoted to the top management job in my division, Environmental Health Laboratories, overseeing all company functions. Two months later, NIST released an official update that included the floor test results, as well as Frank Gayle’s results, in which steel temperatures were predicted. These results clearly invalidated the major theories of collapse, because pancaking could not occur without floor collapse and steel does not turn to licorice at the temperatures discussed.

After reviewing this update, I sent a letter directly to Dr. Gayle at NIST. In this letter, I referred to my experiences at UL and asked for more information on the WTC investigation and NIST’s soon-to-be-published conclusions. NIST had planned at the time to release its final report in December, with time allowed for public comment. After I allowed my letter to become public,[22] this date was moved to January 2005, and then nothing was heard from NIST for several months.

Other than UL’s involvement in testing the steel components, the facts I stated had all been reported publicly, but when I put them together plainly, they were considered outrageous. Five days after I sent my letter, I was fired by UL for doing so. The company made a few brief statements in an attempt to discredit me, then quickly began to make it clear that its relationship with the government, perhaps due to its tax-exempt status, was more important than its commitment to public safety.

For example, in spite of Tom Chapin’s previous statements, UL suggested that it had played only a “limited” role in the investigation. Despite what our CEO, Loring Knoblauch, had written and copied to several executives, UL said there was “no evidence” that any firm had tested the steel used in the WTC buildings.[23] In doing so, UL implied that its CEO not only had fabricated this story about testing the WTC steel but had also spoken and written about it for several years without anyone in the company correcting him. As I see it, the only other option was that the company claiming to be our “Public Safety Guardian” was lying to us about the most important safety issue of our lives.

My experiences give a taste for the delicate nature of our critical turning point. But to keep our focus, we should examine what NIST did with the results of its physical tests, which had failed to support its conclusions. Did NIST perform more tests, at least to prove its key argument that much of the fireproofing on the steel in the Twin Towers popped off due to the impact of the airliners? No, it did not. Instead, NIST put together a black box computer model that would spit out the right answers. This black box model was driven by initial parameters that could be tweaked. When the parameters that had initially been considered “realistic” did not generate results that “compared to observed events,” NIST scientists performed their final analysis using another set of parameters they called “more severe.”[24] When they were finished, their model produced video graphics that would enable anyone to see the buildings collapse without having to follow a train of logic to get there.

Tom Chapin of UL was one of those doomed to make public comments in support of NIST’s final report. His comments were innocuous enough but he did hint at something of value. “The effect of scale of test assemblies...,” Chapin said, ”requires more investigation.”[25] This may be the closest thing to a straightforward statement that we will ever see from UL on the matter. But it seems clear enough that results showing zero floor collapse, when scaled-up from the floor panels to a few floors, would still result in zero floor collapse. Perhaps a more direct version of Chapin’s comment might be that test results negating predetermined conclusions should not be used to prove them.

Other than the video, NIST left us with only some vague statements about a few sagging floors suddenly destroying two hundred super-strong perimeter columns and forty core columns. But since sagging floors do not weigh more than non-sagging floors, it is difficult to see how this might occur, especially so uniformly. NIST claimed the perimeter columns saw increased loads of between 0 and 25% due to the damage, but it never reconciled this with the original claim that these columns could resist 2000% increases in live load. And the outward-buckling theory, suggested by Thornton, was changed again to inward buckling---apparently the forces involved were never well defined. Additionally, NIST suggested that the documents that would support testing of the steel components, along with documents containing Skilling’s jet-fuel-fire analysis, could not be found.[26]

Ultimately, NIST failed to give any explanation for the dynamics of the towers as they fell, about how and why they dropped like rocks in free-fall. For both buildings, NIST simply stated that “once the upper building section began to move downwards . . ., global collapse ensued,” as if just saying so was enough.[27] As for WTC7, NIST as of yet has not elaborated on its “working collapse hypothesis,” which was vaguely presented in June 2004.[28] The bottom line is that, after more than four years, it is still impossible for the government even to begin to explain the primary events that drive this War on Terrorism.



So much has been sacrificed, and so much has been invested in this story, that we all have a need for supportive answers. But when we look for those answers, all our “mind’s eye” can see is this smoky black box, where scientific results are reversed to support politically correct, pre-determined conclusions. That critical point of divergence, where our lives were turned upside down and all logic followed, has always been too painful to imagine. But now, without expert accounts of pancaking floors and licorice steel, it cannot be imagined at all.

Some of us remain hopeful that we can still achieve a critical mass awareness of the need for truth, and in doing so pull the support out from under what John McMurtry calls “the 9/11 Wars.”[29] But if we cannot, even as the hopes for peace fade and the number of 9/11 families continues to grow, we should remember how we got this story and how it was propped up despite all the evidence against it. Because whatever happens next, after the smoke clears, our children may have a need to know.



[1] Richard Heinberg, “Götterdämmerung,” Museletter, No.144, March 2004 (http://www.museletter.com/archive/144.html).



2 David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2005). Griffin summarizes the omissions and distortions in “The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie,” 911 Visibility Project, May 22, 2005 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php).



3 Angus K. Gillespie, Twin Towers: The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1999), 117.



4 “How Columns Will Be Designed for 110-Story Buildings,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 48-49.



5 Jim Hoffman, “Building a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century,” 911Research.wtc7.net, December 8, 2005 (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html).



6 Website for Teng & Associates (http://www.teng.com/teng2k3/mainframe.asp).



7 Website for National Directory of Expert Witnesses (http://national-experts.com/members2/witness.asp?d_memnum=07572&d_lnum=2).



8 Archived webcast video of NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm), 01:15:10.



9 Sheila Barter, “How the World Trade Center Fell,” BBC News, September 13, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1540044.stm).



10 Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” May 2005, Chapter 2.



11 James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center (New York: Times Books, 2003), 330.



12 Karl Koch III with Richard Firstman, Men of Steel: The Story of the Family that Built the World Trade Center (New York: Crown Publishers, 2002), 365.



13 Eric Hufschmid, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002), 27.



14 Table of results from Underwriters Laboratories August 2004 floor model tests, as presented by NIST in October 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/P6StandardFireTestsforWeb.pdf), 25.



15 NIST, Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers(Draft) (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/NISTNCSTAR1draft.pdf), 195.



16 Silverstein’s statement is contained in "America Rebuilds," PBS documentary, 2002 (www.pbs.org/americarebuilds). It can be viewed (www.infowars.com/Video/911/wtc7_pbs.WMV) or heard on audio file (http://VestigialConscience.com/PullIt.mp3).



17 “Structures Can Be Beautiful, World’s Tallest Buildings Pose Esthetic and Structural Challenge to John Skilling,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 124.



18 Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, 138.



19 Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003.



20 Samuel H. Marcus, Basics of Structural Steel (Reston, Va.: Reston Publishing 1977), 20.



21 Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003.



22 Kevin Ryan, “The Collapse of the WTC,” 911 Visibility Project, November 11, 2004 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2004-11-11-ryan.php).



23 John Dobberstein, “Area Man Stirs Debate on WTC Collapse,” South Bend Tribune, November 22, 2004 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041124095100856).



24 NIST, Final Report, 196.



25 Comments from Underwriters Laboratories on NIST WTC report, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/comments/ULI_Ganesh_Rao_8-5-05.pdf).



26 Archived webcast video of NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm), 01:18:50.



27 NIST, Final Report, 197.



28 NIST presentation on WTC7 collapse investigation, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf).



29 John McMurtry, “9/11 and the 9/11 Wars: Understanding the Supreme Crimes.” In David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006). My present essay will also appear in this volume.





[1] Richard Heinberg, “Götterdämmerung,” Museletter, No.144, March 2004 (http://www.museletter.com/archive/144.html).



[2] David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2005). Griffin summarizes the omissions and distortions in “The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie,” 911 Visibility Project, May 22, 2005 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php).



[3] Angus K. Gillespie, Twin Towers: The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1999), 117.



[4] “How Columns Will Be Designed for 110-Story Buildings,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 48-49.



[5] Jim Hoffman, “Building a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century,” 911Research.wtc7.net, December 8, 2005 (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html).



[6] Website for Teng & Associates (http://www.teng.com/teng2k3/mainframe.asp).



[7] Website for National Directory of Expert Witnesses (http://national-experts.com/members2/witness.asp?d_memnum=07572&d_lnum=2).



[8] Archived webcast video of NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm), 01:15:10.



[9] Sheila Barter, “How the World Trade Center Fell,” BBC News, September 13, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1540044.stm).



[10] Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” May 2005, Chapter 2.



[11] James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center (New York: Times Books, 2003), 330.



[12] Karl Koch III with Richard Firstman, Men of Steel: The Story of the Family that Built the World Trade Center (New York: Crown Publishers, 2002), 365.



[13] Eric Hufschmid, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002), 27.



[14] Table of results from Underwriters Laboratories August 2004 floor model tests, as presented by NIST in October 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/P6StandardFireTestsforWeb.pdf), 25.



[15] NIST, Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers(Draft) (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/NISTNCSTAR1draft.pdf), 195.



[16] Silverstein’s statement is contained in "America Rebuilds," PBS documentary, 2002 (www.pbs.org/americarebuilds). It can be viewed (www.infowars.com/Video/911/wtc7_pbs.WMV) or heard on audio file (http://VestigialConscience.com/PullIt.mp3).



[17] “Structures Can Be Beautiful, World’s Tallest Buildings Pose Esthetic and Structural Challenge to John Skilling,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 124.



[18] Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, 138.



[19] Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003.



[20] Samuel H. Marcus, Basics of Structural Steel (Reston, Va.: Reston Publishing 1977), 20.



[21] Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003.



[22] Kevin Ryan, “The Collapse of the WTC,” 911 Visibility Project, November 11, 2004 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2004-11-11-ryan.php).



[23] John Dobberstein, “Area Man Stirs Debate on WTC Collapse,” South Bend Tribune, November 22, 2004 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041124095100856).



[24] NIST, Final Report, 196.



[25] Comments from Underwriters Laboratories on NIST WTC report, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/comments/ULI_Ganesh_Rao_8-5-05.pdf).



[26] Archived webcast video of NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm), 01:18:50.



[27] NIST, Final Report, 197.



[28] NIST presentation on WTC7 collapse investigation, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf).



[29] John McMurtry, “9/11 and the 9/11 Wars: Understanding the Supreme Crimes.” In David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006). My present essay will also appear in this volume.

Independent Online Edition > UK Politics

Independent Online Edition > UK Politics

The Capital Times

Kevin Barrett: Bin Laden tapes are as phony as Sept. 11's connection to Islam
By Kevin Barrett

As a Ph.D. Islamologist and Arabist I really hate to say this, but I'll say it anyway: 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam. The war on terror is as phony as the latest Osama bin Laden tape.

It's a tough thing to admit because I know on which side my bread is buttered and dropping Islam from the 9/11 equation is dropping my slice of bread butter-side-down. The myth that 9/11 had something to do with Muslims has poured millions, if not billions, into Arabic and Islamic studies. I finished my Ph.D. last year, so all I have to do is keep my eyes in my pocket and my nose on the ground, parrot the party line, and I'll be on the fast track to tenure track.

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The trouble is, it's all based on a Big Lie. Take the recent "bin Laden" tape please! That voice was no more bin Laden than it was Rodney Dangerfield channeling my late Aunt Corinne from Peoria. I recently helped translate a previously unknown bin Laden tape, a real one from the early '90s, back when he was still alive. I know the guy's flowery religious rhetoric. The recent tape wasn't him.

The top American bin Laden expert agrees. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies department, has just published a book of translations of bin Laden's speeches. He says that the recent tape is a fake and that it is possible bin Laden is not even alive.

Fake bin Laden tapes, "verified" by the CIA, are nothing new. Every supposed bin Laden statement since 2001 has been blatantly bogus. The last we heard from the real bin Laden came in his post-9/11 statements to Pakistani journalists: "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation. ... I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. ... I had no knowledge of these attacks."

Then on Dec. 13, 2001, as George Bush was whining about the "outrageous conspiracy theories" that were spreading like wildfire, the first and shoddiest of the "bin Laden speaks from beyond the grave" tapes appeared. The video's sound and picture quality were horrible. It showed a big guy with a black beard, doing a passable imitation of bin Laden's voice, claiming foreknowledge, if not responsibility, for the 9/11 attacks, and chortling over their success. The trouble was, the big guy clearly was not bin Laden. He was at least 40 or 50 pounds heavier, and his facial features were obviously different.

The "Fatty bin Laden" tape was widely ridiculed, and I have yet to meet an informed observer who considers it authentic. (If you haven't figured this out yet, go back and look at the images from the tape and compare them to other images of bin Laden.) But the media let the fraud pass without asking the hard questions: Why was the U.S. government waving this blatantly fake "confession" video in our faces?

Perhaps due to the widespread hilarity evoked by "Fatty bin Laden," the next Osama from beyond the grave message had no images it was an audiotape delivered to al-Jazeera in fall 2002. The CIA verified it as authentic and then got a rotten egg in the face when the world's foremost voice identification experts in Switzerland reported that "the message was recorded by an impostor."

Every bin Laden message since then has been equally phony. They are released at moments when the Bush regime needs a boost and the American media go along with the fraud. Remember the bogus bin Laden tape that made headlines right before the 2004 presidential election? If you didn't figure out that it was a CIA-produced commercial for George Bush, I have some great bridges to sell you. Walter Cronkite, bless his heart, opined that Karl Rove was behind that tape. But the rest of the media just kept pretending that the emperor was clothed.

And the fraud continues. The most recent alleged bin Laden tape has been ridiculed by America's top bin Laden expert, yet the U.S. media keep right on holding a transparent fig leaf in front of the emperor! Professor Lawrence believes that this phony tape was designed to distract world opinion from the horrific massacre of Pakistani civilians by an errant CIA drone. But it may have another, more sinister purpose: to prepare public opinion for another false 9/11-style attack designed to trigger a U.S.-Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.

The real bin Laden, who insisted that he had nothing to do with 9/11, has been dead since late 2001 or early 2002. The fake messages have been fabricated by "al-CIA-duh" to support the Bush regime and its phony "war on terror." It is time for Americans to rise up in revolt against the fake terror masters who are looting U.S. taxpayers, torching our Constitution, destroying our economy, and threatening nuclear Armageddon.

Kevin Barrett holds a Ph.D. in Arabic, with a focus on Islamic studies, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a co-founder of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth: http://mujca.com. E-mail: kevin@mujca.com


Published: February 14, 2006

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

The Company You are Keeping:
Comments on Hoffman and Green

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
9 February 2006




[Note: The subject essays are at http://www.911research.wtc7.net/essays. This response has been submitted to 9-11Research at mail@wtc7.net but thus far has yet to be posted there.]


Having no pretensions to infallibility, I, like every other serious scholar I know, welcome serious criticism. None of us, however, should tolerate shoddy, ad hominem, or sloppy research, of which the subjects of this commentary are sterling instances. I shall first discuss Hoffman's piece in some detail and then turn to Green's discussion, the deficiencies of which are more apparent.

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(A) Jim Hoffman, "A Critical Review of 'Thinking about "Conspiracy Theories": 9/11 and JFK" (version 1.0, 6 February 2006).

Hoffman claims that I am "less careful" than Jones or Griffin and therefore yield up a treasure trove of "red herrings" that benefit proponents of the "official theory". These are alleged to include "serving up" of straw men as exaggerated versions of more defensible positions, which are accordingly more vulnerable to defensive attacks. For reasons I shall now explain, this is not his best work.

(1) His first example is that, while I explain that heat from the fires could not have caused the steel to melt, the NIST and FEMA accounts only blame the fires for weakening, not melting the steel. The temperature of the fires were not even sufficient to weaken the steel, which had been certified by UL up to 2,000°F for six hours, as I explained in my study but which Hoffman overlooks.

The UL observed that the fires probably only reached temperatures about 500°F, including combustible office materials, far too low for melting or weakening. Moreover, weakening would bring about asymmetrical sagging and would be most unlikely to have overloaded the carrying-capacity of the lower floors. Even uniformly distributed sagging, for which there is no remotely plausible cause, would not have rendered these buildings unable to support their ordinary mass.

The carrying capacity of the supporting structure, of course, would have been unaffected by events occurring above. The conversion of mass into energy by fire would have even led to a reduction in the supported weight, once they had compensated for the mass of the planes themselves, which posed no challenged to their sophisticated load-redistribution capabilities, as Frank DeMartini, whom I quote, observed. The idea that melting steel caused the collapse is ludicrous.

None of us should be overly surprised that the NIST did not provide simulation models to illustrate the collapse of the buildings for the "weakening" scenario. And similar consideration apply to the melting scenario. Unless the affected floors had melted everywhere at once, their collapse would have had to have been asymmetrical and nonuniform, very different than the collapse observed.

(2) Hoffman claims that I exaggerate the time in which the buildings fell, which he estimates at 15-17 seconds. Without denying that the start and stop points can be somewhat subjective to judge, even THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT conceded that WTC2 fell in ten seconds: "At 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds" (p. 305), so I don't quite understand where he's coming from. I would have thought that the official account's conclusion here is the one to adopt.

We know that WTC7 came down in 6.6 seconds and that free-fall time would have been about 6 seconds. A graduate student has submitted a study to SPINE that calculates that it would have been impossible for the towers to have collapsed in the absence of explosives. And Nila Sagadevan has calculated that, for 109 4-inch thick slabs that were floating in air and spaced 12 feet apart to then collapse one upon another, 1300 to 12 feet in the air, would take 14.68 seconds.

That figure approximates Hoffman's figure of 15-17 seconds, but of course the floors were not suspended in air but supported by 47 massive core columns and 240 additional columns around the perimeter. I find it difficult to make any sense of Hoffman's position, unless he wants to give the official account more leeway to wiggle and squirm. Either way, that story is physically impossible, and there appear to be no good reasons to adopt his figures rather than mine.

(3) About the seismological events, a recording is now posted on the "Resources" page of our web site, ST911.org, where the initial events recorded (of .9 for 12 seconds and of .7 for 6 seconds on the Richter scale) surely were not caused by aircraft impacts on the 96th or the 80th floors of these enormous buildings but almost certainly by massive explosions in their subbasements that brought about the destruction of the support base for the 47 central columns. If I have not made that clear in my paper, then I will probably add an additional paragraph.

The subsequent recordings of 2.1 for 10 seconds and 2.3 for 8 seconds suggest the approximate duration of each of the buildings' collapse, which of course supports the official estimate of 10 seconds for WTC2, not the 15-17 seconds that Hoffman proposes. What I find most intriguing about these numbers is the suggestion that the amount of detonation required to bring them down was not the same for both towers, which is an issue that I believe deserves further study.

(4) He doesn't like "Loose Change", while I do. Recommending a source is not the same thing as endorsing everything it suggests and I have yet to discover any studies of these complex events that is flawless. Certainly, Hoffman's own work does not rise to that standard, as I have demonstrated here. So should we accuse him of creating "red herrings" or "straw men" to benefit the opposition? It is easy to find something to complain about and exaggerate its significance.

(5) I make no apologies for my analysis of the Pentagon attack. The hit point was far too small to accommodate a Boeing 757, and his measurements relative to photographs taken later raise very serious questions about his methodology and the integrity of his analysis. A Boeing 757 that flew low enough to enter at the ground floor as he pretends would have plowed up the ground in front of the building! Which means that his account is impaled upon the horns of a dilemma.

If Hoffman is right about the impact--that a Boeing 757 entered the building at the ground floor on a virtually horizontal trajectory--then he is wrong about the lawn--which would have been massively plowed up by the engines and even the fuselage; and if he is wrong about the lawn--which was not massively plowed by the engines or even by the fuselage--then he is wrong about the impact--which cannot have entered at the ground floor on a virtually horizontal trajectory!

He employs the technique of "divide and conquer" here, talking about the impact point in one place and the lawn in another, when they are causally related. I reiterate my position, which is that the amount of damage is not consistent with what would have occurred had the building been hit by a plane with the mass and the dimensions of a Boeing 757. And anyone who has actually read it knows that Dewdney and Longspaugh's meticulous analysis supports my position and not his.

He claims that "punctures in the Pentagon's facade could have easily admitted all but the lightest portions of a 757", asserting that, "planes break up on impact". According to the Purdue engineers, the support columns had the effect of shredding the plane when it entered the building. Neither account, however, can explain the exit hole in the C-ring, which was virtually symmetrical. The idea that this was caused by the rest of the fuselage, as Hoffman suggests, is not only extremely implausible on its own but even contradicts his own account.

(6) A component of an JT8D engine was found, not the massive engines that would have powered a Boeing 757. That and other considerations support the conjecture that an A-3 Sky Warrior may have been painted to resemble an American Airlines plane and used in the attack. The damage is far more consistent with its use than a Boeing 757, for the reasons that my paper explained. He even mentions that I cite a piece by Carlson as though I endorse it rather than criticize it.

(7) As if all that has gone before were not sufficient to cast doubt upon his methods, Hoffman concludes his critique by subtly discrediting the report of the air traffic controllers--"its speed, maneuverability, the way that it turned", which led them to conclude it was a military plane--by contending the plane's observed maneuvers were "well within the performance capabilities of a 757, however atypical it was of the normal operation of a jetline"! Fascinating!

Here Hoffman gives himself away, by attempting to stretch the possible and turn it into the actual. He even admits that going from the possible to the probable won't work, since this performance was "atypical" of the normal operation of a jetliner! But, since it was "possible", we should discount the conclusion drawn by a group of professional air traffic controllers who actually observed these maneuvers and substitute some mere possibility instead! That is his position.

Not to belabor the point, but in his closing paragraphs, Hoffman states that I have "failed to acknowledge that it [the notion that whatever hit the Pentagon not a 757] is considered a distraction or hoax by some of the most respected researchers in the community of 9/11 skeptics". If that's true, it shows that even 9/11 skeptics can be wrong, insofar as the available relevant evidence in its totality establishes that, on this specific point, they seem to be mistaken.

(B) Michael B. Green, Ph.D., "The Company We Keep" (version 1.1, 8 February 2006).

The author was once an assistant professor of philosophy who became a clinical psychologist, according to his own description. Certainly, his remarks about philosophy and the philosophy of science are extremely uninformed and juvenile, which does not instill confidence in his other observations, some of which are merely ad hominem attacks that are supposed to discredit my conclusions, not by rebutting my arguments, but by assailing my personality, character or whatever.

(1) He says I am "inflating [my] own bona fides . . . by offering an essentially unintelligible technical discussion of epistemology . . . grounded in addressing obscure Cartesian assumptions . . .". What I think he is trying to say is that I explain that the results of scientific inquiries are tentative and fallible, which means that the results of their pursuit are not guaranteed to be true and may have to be revised on the basis of new evidence or new alternative theories.

Precisely what is supposed to be "Cartesian" is obscure to me, but he has given a highly subjective impression here that bears faint resemblance to what I have written. Anyone who wants to cut through this nonsense should simply read the first few pages of my study, which is intended to explain why conspiracies are actually commonplace and that the term "theory" is ambiguous, insofas as some theories, including those about JFK and 9/11, are in fact empirically testable.

(2) He says that, while I am "lead to adopt what he calls 'abductivism' as the solution to a problem that few layreaders can grasp", it has "no bearing" at all on what I will say about 9/11. He apparently does not know that "abductivism" is not my term but perfectly standard terminology for the position I adopt, as several sources that I cite explain. There is nothing here that is intended as "self-promotion". I reference works where these matters are formally explained.

The basic principle of abductivism, inference to the best explanation, states that one hypothesis is preferable to another when the first provides "a better explanation" than the second, where likelihoods are used to measure the degree of explanatory power of an alternative. If the likelihood of hi on evidence e is greater than the likelihood of hj on e, then hi is a better explanation of e than is hj and, when sufficient evidence becomes available, is also acceptable.

Green may be intellectually challenged to understand such elementary principles, but most undergraduates do not have trouble grasping them. In order to explain why the official account of the collapse of the WTC1 and WTC2 cannot compare in explanatory power with the controlled demolition alternative, I explain exactly how those comparisons are drawn. Otherwise, my readers would be in a position, not unlike those who read Green, of not knowing how to judge it for themselves.

(3) He faults me for citing several standard works on 9/11, presumably because they do not agree with one another on every detail, then describes two books by Thierry Meyssan as "purporting to prove no plane hit the Pentagon"! The point of Meyssan's books with regard to the Pentagon is to explain that the evidence is incompatible with it having been hit by a Boeing 757, about which he appears to be correct. Certainly, nothing Green says suggests that Meyssan is wrong.

Meyssan advances the possibility that a cruise missile may have been used in the strike, which could account for many features of the situation that cannot be accounted for by the Boeing 757 hypothesis: the tiny hit point, lack of debris, absence of aircraft parts within the building, even the symmetrical exit hole in the C-ring. All in all, Meyssan's alternative possesses more explanatory power than the Boeing 757 alternative, but you would not know it from reading Green.

(4) Next we get a replay of the "melted" versus "weakened" steel hypothesis, a matter I have discussed above. He says my discussion of the vast discrepancy between the melting point of steel and the burning point of jet fuel fires "is both irrelevant and confusing because no USG account contends that the buildings collapsed because their fires melted their steel". Either way, of course, the official account cannot possibly be correct, and I did not overlook softening.

As endnote 38 states, "Even if the temperatures of those fires had reached as high as 1,700-2,000° F, as FEMA suggests, there was not enough time for sufficient heat to have been produced to have caused the steel to melt (Hufschmid 2002, pp. 32-40). Underwriters Laboratories had in fact certified that the steel used in construction could withstand temperatures of 2,000° F several hours before even any significant softening would have occurred. (www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104.easilywithstood.htm)"

One might have supposed that critics like Hoffman and Green would at least pay attention to technical points when they are making technical criticism. But in their enthusiasm for attacking me, they do not even acknowledge that at least some of the points they are offering in response were actually covered in the study they purport to address. Several terms come to mind that could apply to the quality of their research, including "sloppy", "shoddy", and "ad hominem".

(5) As though further confirmation were required, he offers into evidence some photographs that are actually relevant, then proceeds to claim that "Fetzer uses imaginary Bayesian prior probabilities to generate a 10,000,000,000 'proof' of his thesis". But none of his readers is going to have any idea what he thinks he is talking about, which he has wrong. My analysis is not "Bayesian" and I do not use "prior probabilities". This man has no idea what he is talking about.

As endnote 4 observed, "Some alternative models of science include Inductivism, Deductivism, Hypothetico-Deductivism, Bayesianism (which comes in many different variations), and Abductivism, whose alternative strengths and weaknesses are assessed in Fetzer (1981), (1993), and (2002). The most defensible appears to be Abductivism, which is adopted here." Although Green poses as though he were an authority in the philosophy of science, he is virtually a complete ignoramus.

Elsewhere, I explain that the collapse of the towers display features that are physically impossible and therefore have null probabilities, which are even lower than zero (because they cannot possibly occur). I offer the argument that, if we were to assume (contrary to what we know about this) that these features (rate of fall, order of fall, and so forth) had probabilities of one in ten (or actually occurred in 10% of the cases where buildings catch fire), which is preposterously high, even then these collapses would be improbable.

For one tower, ten features treated as independent with probabilities of 1 in 10 would have the probability of 1/10,000,000,000 of occurring in a single case. Of course, since there were two such events—given TWC1 and TWC2—the probability that they would both display these same ten features on the very same occasion is equal to the product of one in ten billion times one in ten billion, which is 1 over 1 followed by twenty zeros, or 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is a very small number. These calculations assume values that are far too high.43

This is a nice example of Green's methodology, where he takes points that can only be understood in context and deletes the context. Since it is doubtful that he understood them to begin with, given his meager understanding of even the most basic aspects of my analysis, including especially the principles of reasoning that underlie them, I suppose he really had no viable alternative, given that he had adopted the goal of trying to discredit me as his objective.

(6) Here and there I find some interesting points. I agree that not all of the beams came down in 30' pieces, which is something I shall correct. I find it fascinating that he differentiates between the pattern of collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 and WTC7, which is indeed correct and deserving of more investigation. 1 and 2 were parallel in construction, but 7 was different and required different demolition techniques. I agree with this point and intend to pursue it further.

(7) My arguments about the tension between a clean and unblemished lawn and the alleged trajectory the Boeing 757 are discussed more in the final paragraph of Section 9 of my paper and the endnotes that accompany it. I doubt that I could say more here that would shed more light, but there are other lines of attack on the Boeing hypothesis that deserve investigation, such as whether a Boeing 757 could even remain airborne at such low heights above the ground. But no matter.

Green tosses in some remarks about THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX that display he has either not read the book or is deliberately distorting it. That comes as no surprise, since the subtitle of the book, "Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK", is being paralleled in literature like these papers by Hoffman and Green, which appear to qualify as among the first contributions to a new literary genre, "Deceit and Deception in the Study of 9/11". Which puts them into perspective.

McKnight University Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Minnesota
Duluth, MN 55812

(c) 2006 James H. Fetzer

Vincent Foster

Vincent Foster

Antiwar Group Infiltrated by the FBI

Antiwar Group Infiltrated by the FBI

AlterNet: Election Theft Emergency

AlterNet
Election Theft Emergency
By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on January 27, 2006, Printed on January 28, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31217/

For GOP voters, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College even on the afternoon of the vote, the Bush-Cheney ticket staged a stunning comeback. Usually reliable exit polls turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in swing states. Conservatives argued, and the media agreed, that "moral values" had made the difference.

In his latest book, Fooled Again: How The Right Stole The 2004 Election, And Why They'll Steal The Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), Mark Crispin Miller argues that it wasn't moral values which swung the election -- it was theft.

TERRENCE McNALLY: You're a professor of media studies. According to your bio, you write about "film, television, propaganda, advertising and the culture industries …" Why did you write this book?

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MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Out of a sense of civic emergency. I believe that "Fooled Again" makes the case quite persuasively that there is actually no convincing evidence that Bush and Cheney won re-election.

This is a civic story of the utmost importance. It has to do with the dire need for election reform in the United States. But it's also a story about the colossal failure of the American press to do precisely the kind of job that the framers had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment. What they had in mind was that the press would function as a reliable check on executive power. It would keep the people informed about what their government was up to, and it would keep them politically engaged in national debate.

The newspapers, as limited and defective as they were in the 18th century, did perform that function, and I believe they performed that function for much of our history. We now have a corporate media system that is not answerable to the people nor concerned about the people, but [is] in the service of its pay masters. And it is far too close to the government for the health of anything like a democratic system.

One of the points of "Fooled Again" is that this is a story of tremendous importance, as far as a democracy is concerned. Yet the press has for the most part ridiculed those who have come up with very solid evidence of fraud. They've been in the business less of talking about the situation than of preventing anybody else from talking about it. And this includes some of the progressive media as well. In fact, the most hostile reviews that I've received have been in Mother Jones and Salon.

TM: I read the transcript of you on Democracy Now! with Mark Hertsgaard, a progressive journalist who has been fairly dismissive of those questioning Bush's victory. By the end he seemed to be agreeing that everything should be more fully investigated.

I would think that the 2004 election story, if tracked and broken, would be huge for whoever breaks it. Any other thoughts about why it's so ignored?

MCM: We have to understand that for some decades the press has served basically an establishmentarian function. They have the reputation, and they certainly have the self-image, of being terribly skeptical, prone to disrespectful questions, probing dark matters that authority would just as soon have them leave alone. That's a very flattering view of the press but completely undeserved. The press will not deal with any story that goes beyond a particular scandal to cast doubt on the very viability of the entire system. The press in this country will studiously ignore any story that too violently rocks the boat, whose implications are too shattering.

This is not new. Watergate was a story that the press avoided for months and months. Only the Washington Post pursued that story; everybody else made fun of it. Now we look back on Watergate with tremendous nostalgia and self-congratulation, telling ourselves the press saved the system. But since Watergate the press has preferred to deal with meaningless and trivial scandals like the Clinton scandals. They will not talk about 9/11, they will not talk about the theft of the last three elections.

TM: You also include the 2002 congressional election. That one also broke too consistently against predictions?

MCM: That's exactly right. In Colorado, in Minnesota, in Georgia, and in a couple of other states -- there was what we might call "Diebold magic" everywhere. In all these states, you had far-right-wing politicians predicted to lose by pre-election newspaper polls and by exit polls, and all of them won.

TM: Why do you believe the two successive Democratic candidates have given in so easily?

MCM: I think basically Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry this last time are far too concerned with establishment opinion, far too worried that they'll seem to be sore losers, conspiracy theorists, etc. They have therefore refused to go public with what they actually believe. Kerry told me personally on October 28th at a fundraising party that he believes the election was probably stolen.

TM: He then disavowed that in the press, didn't he?

MCM: Exactly -- a few hours after the story broke. The Democratic Party is as much a part of the problem as the Republican Party.

TM: Are there exceptions among the ranks of mainstream politicians? I think of Barbara Boxer and John Conyers. Any others?

MCM: Tom Daschle has told me he thinks very highly of the book and has given me permission to quote him to that effect. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Rush Holt. There are growing numbers of Democratic politicians who are willing to take the risks of facing the truth on this issue.

Let's put it less dogmatically. All right, maybe I haven't proven that the election was stolen, but I am completely confident that I've provided ample grounds for a serious investigation of what went on last year. It seems to me that any Democrat who refuses to even go for that kind of inquiry is really failing his or her constituency.

TM: -- and failing the voters. As a citizen, it bothers me that we leave it to a Gore or a Kerry, who's thinking about his future reputation or his future career, to stage the protest. I don't care about their careers. I care about my vote getting counted or discounted.

What's the statement that you're willing to make in "Fooled Again" about the 2004 election: stolen? worthy of investigation? evidence clearly shows in six states …?

MCM: The evidence in Ohio, as anyone who followed the story knows, is copious. Bush allegedly won that state by 118,000 votes. As I point out -- and this part of the book is largely based on John Conyers' report to the House Judiciary Committee -- the various stratagems, tricks and tactics used to prevent people from registering, to prevent them from voting, to throw away provisional ballots -- all these add up to a number far greater than 118,000.

TM:: That's news to me. Many people have said, yes, there were long lines, yes, there was disproportionate distribution of voting machines, yes, there was trouble with provisional ballots, yes, there was intimidation -- but the margin was 120,000. You're saying that they add up to over 120,000?

MCM: Oh easily, easily. It was in the urban parts of Ohio that most of this stuff went down. All the urban centers in Ohio were Democratic. If people want to get a strong sense of what was happening at the grassroots level coast to coast last year, go to a website called the Election Incident Reporting System, EIRS. Then type in the name of a state or a county, and you'll get a transcript of all the complaints that were lodged that day by people who called 1-866-MY-VOTE.

Now a lot of them couldn't get through because it was understaffed, but those who did get through left messages. You can find copious firsthand evidence of what the average person had to go through to try to vote against Bush. This didn't happen only in Ohio. Electronic touchscreen machines flipped Kerry votes into Bush votes in at least 11 states.

TM: You say similar practices (and occasionally worse ones) were applied in several other key states -- Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and even New York?

MCM: In New Mexico, for example, we're told that Bush won by some 7,000 votes. We know of over 17,000 Democratic voters who were unable to cast a vote for president because the touchscreen machines in their districts refused to record a vote for president.

These 17,000-plus New Mexicans turned out to vote in Democratic areas, and they didn't record a vote for president. Seventeen thousand is 10,000 more than 7,000. That glitch alone can account for the ostensible victory margin of Bush over Kerry in New Mexico. Greg Palast's new book will have a whole chapter on New Mexico. It's hair-raising stuff, and we haven't heard a word about it. The same kind of thing happened in Iowa, where Bush supposedly won by under 10,000 votes.

Tom Daschle was supposedly beaten in South Dakota by 4,500 votes. There was so much chicanery going on there, that it's easy to argue that John Thunes should not have won. I know Daschle believes he was robbed.

This isn't only a matter of the White House, it's also a matter of the Congress. I don't believe that this government represents the people of this country. The people of this country, however frightened some of them may be by terrorism, are essentially not theocratically inclined. They don't want a Christian republic. They were not happy with the way the government dealt with the Terry Schiavo case. Americans basically believe in the American system of government. Checks and balances, the separation of church and state.

The press kept telling us after the election that a huge outpouring of religious voters account for Bush's miraculous victory. Well that's nothing more than a talking point that the religious right itself put out after the election. There is no statistical evidence whatsoever that there was any increase in the number of religious voters.

TM: The big thing that people seized on was one particular exit poll in which people, when given a choice of a few things, said moral values was the No. 1 reason for their vote. More people answered moral values in 1996 and in 2000 than in 2004. There was actually a drop in the number of people who attributed their vote to moral values in 2004, not a rise.

Let me check a couple of things with you. I've heard that exit polls were most inaccurate -- by a big margin -- in those areas that used electronic voting machines with no paper trail. True?

MCM: That's basically true, and it was particularly noticeable in five swing states. There's a lot of stuff floating around out there in cyberspace about the exit polls. The question of the exit polls has been very badly muddied by a lot of disingenuous argument. Now a lot of people think that it's not a reliable gauge, it doesn't tell us anything. That's actually the result of propaganda obfuscation. The exit polls' sudden divergence, sudden wrongness in these five states is really a remarkable deviation from the norm.

The guy doing the best work on that particular issue is a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania named Steve Freeman, who will have a book coming out in a few months primarily about the exit poll question.

Bogus reasons for why the exit polls were so wrong include the reluctant responder argument, which holds that Bush voters were strangely reluctant to tell exit pollsters how they voted. Well, Freeman has read the raw data at precinct level and has discovered that, as a matter of fact, if anyone showed a greater reluctance to come forward and say honestly who they voted for when confronted with an exit pollster, it was actually the Democrats. There's no evidence of any numerical kind that can support the view that somehow Republicans wouldn't fess up.

TM: I would assume that the very ones being referred to as reluctant are the ones who would be proud to say they voted for God's candidate.

MCM: One of the weirdest things about this whole election business is that one of the two parties has, for over the last year and longer, been vociferously complaining about the dangers of election fraud, and that's the Republican party.

TM: Thus the ID card in Georgia, right?

MCM: Exactly. They're the ones who are always screaming about Democratic fraud, but the Republicans in this last race were really the only ones engaging in election fraud.

This has to do with the peculiarly paranoid quality of the crusading mindset. I believe this theft was to a great extent carried out thanks to a kind of crusader mentality. I've got plenty of evidence in the book that the religious right played an enormously large role in the theft of the election last year.

TM: I think first of Diebold, I think of the Ken Blackwells or the Kathryn Harrises. How does the religious right itself play a role beyond mobilizing its own troops?

MCM: That mobilization is significant when you consider that a lot of those troops have actually become embedded inside the election system.

TM: Local polling officials, that sort of thing?

MCM: One Democratic election judge tried to observe the vote count in Pima County, Arizona. A roomful of polling personnel who all belonged to the same evangelical church in the area started to call him a liberal demon, a liberal scum.

TM: When you talk about a crusader mentality, you basically mean that if you do not support my candidate you are an infidel -- and the ends justify the means?

MCM: Precisely. See, all these crimes that I attest to in the book were committed with impunity by people who regard their political adversaries as demons. And that's not an exaggeration. You know, this government is to a great extent dominated by people who have that metaphysical view of the current political situation.

It is a very serious mistake I believe to think that all of this is happening only because of the excessive greed of certain corporate powers. That greed is decisive It played an enormous role. There is no question about it. But it could not have succeeded without the vigorous grassroots assistance of a lot of people who are religious true believers. And I think that they include the likes of Tom DeLay and others.

TM: I've heard that almost all irregularities worked in Bush's favor. True?

MCM: Absolutely true. I have not yet heard of a single example of a touchscreen voting machine flipping a Bush vote into a Kerry vote. This does not mean it never happened. I'm just saying I haven't heard about it if it has.

TM: I've read that in New Hampshire, Ralph Nader's Green Party campaign paid for an actual recount. They picked the precincts they thought were suspicious, and the hand recount confirmed the actual vote totals and showed that the exit polls were, in fact, wrong. What do you say to that?

MCM: Well, the recount that they paid for found no evidence of fraud in that particular case.

TM: It confirmed the hand recount, showing that the exit polls were in fact wrong. So how does that fit your analysis of the whole scheme?

MCM: The only thing one can say about that with any scientific certainty is that the particular hand count that they carried out did not reveal any evidence of fraud. That does not mean that no fraud was committed. This is a very fine point, but when we're dealing with questions of electoral honesty and accuracy, I think we have the right to make fine points. The distinction must be made -- that particular hand count involved a sample, that sample revealed no fraud, but that does not mean that we can then sit back and say, well, OK, so the exit polls were wrong.

TM: To the question "What is the point of revisiting the last election?" you point out that there has never been a great reform that was not driven by a major scandal. Do you believe that true election reform is not going to happen until the people and the media finally wake up to this?

MCM: I think it's going to depend on the people. It's going to depend on the people simply and irresistibly insisting that the media finally deal with this subject. That's why I wrote the book.

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org).
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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