4um: The 9/11 conspiracy plots thicken

They are politically diverse and include academics, ex-officials and Web surfers. All share a belief that the Bush administration played a role in the 9/11 attacks. Their numbers seem to speak to Americans' innate distrust of their government.

NEW YORK — He felt no shiver of doubt in those first terrible hours.

He watched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and assumed al-Qaida had wreaked terrible vengeance. He listened to anchors and military experts and assumed the facts of Sept. 11, 2001, were as stated on the screen.

It was a year before David Ray Griffin, an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down the path of disbelief. He wondered why Bush listened to a child's story while the nation was attacked and how Osama bin Laden, America's Public Enemy No. 1, escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora.

He wondered why 110-story towers crashed and military jets failed to intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian official was reprimanded, much less cashiered.

"To me, the report read as a cartoon," Griffin said. "It's a much greater stretch to accept the official conspiracy story than to consider the alternatives."

Such as?

"There was massive complicity in this attack by U.S. government operatives."

If that feels like a skip off the cliff of established reality, more Americans are in free fall than you might guess. There are few more startling measures of American distrust of leaders than the extent of belief that the Bush administration had a hand in the attacks of Sept. 11 to spark an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

36 percent suspicious

A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll of 1,010 Americans found that 36 percent suspect the U.S. government promoted the attacks or intentionally sat on its hands. Sixteen percent believe explosives brought down the towers. Twelve percent believe a cruise missile hit the Pentagon.

Distrust percolates more strongly near Ground Zero. A Zogby International poll of New York City residents two years ago found 49.3 percent believed the government "consciously failed to act."

Establishment assessments of the believers tend toward the psychotherapeutic. Many academics, politicians and thinkers left, right and center say the conspiracy theories are a case of one plus one equals five. It's a piling up of improbabilities.

Thomas Eager, a professor of materials science at MIT, has studied the collapse of the twin towers. "At first, I thought it was amazing that the buildings would come down in their own footprints," Eager says. "Then I realized that it wasn't that amazing — it's the only way a building that weighs a million tons and is 95 percent air can come down."

But the chatter out there is loud enough for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to post a Web "fact sheet" poking holes in the conspiracy theories and defending its report on the towers.

The loose agglomeration known as the "9/11 Truth Movement" has stopped looking for truth from the government. A cacophonous and free-range a bunch of conspiracists, they produce hip-hop inflected documentaries and scholarly conferences. The Web is their mother lode. Every citizen is a researcher.

Did you see that the CIA met with bin Laden in a hospital room in Dubai? Check out this Pakistani site; there are really weird doings in Baluchistan ...

Peter Knight, senior lecturer in American studies at the University of Manchester and editor of the 2002 book "Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America," called the movement "a strange beast, an amalgam of elements. You've got the anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war crowd — you know, if they lied about the war, maybe they lied about 9/11. Another part is people merely interested in the anomalies, with no preconceived political agenda.

"Then you have the more traditional right-wing conspiracy part of the continuum that believes a vast cabal has taken over the United States, the mega-conspiracy of the right's new world order. To them, all of these things are connected. Each group inserts 9/11 into its pre-existing conspiracy model."

The academic wing is led by Griffin, who founded the Center for a Postmodern World at Claremont University; James Fetzer, a tenured philosopher at the University of Minnesota; and Daniel Orr, retired chairman of the economics department at the University of Illinois.

The movement's de facto minister of engineering is Steven Jones, a tenured physics professor at Brigham Young University who has studied vectors and velocities and tested explosives and concluded that the collapse of the twin towers is best explained as controlled demolition, sped by a thousand pounds of high-grade thermite.

Jones has been placed on paid leave while the Mormon-church-owned school investigates his claims, it was announced Friday.

The physicist published his views two weeks ago in the book "9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out."

Former Reagan aide Barbara Honegger is a senior military-affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. She's convinced, based on her freelance research, that a bomb went off about six minutes before an airplane hit the Pentagon — or didn't hit it, as some believe the case may be.

Then there's Morgan O. Reynolds, appointed by George W. Bush as chief economist at the Labor Department. He left in 2002 and doesn't think much of his former boss.

"Who did it? Elements of our government and M-16 and the Mossad. The government's case is a laugh-out-loud proposition. They used patsies and lies and subterfuge and there's no way that Bush and Cheney could have invaded Iraq without the help of 9/11," Reynolds asserts.

They are cantankerous and sometimes distrust each other — who knows where the double agents lurk? But unreasonable questions resonate with the reasonable. Colleen Kelly's brother, a salesman, had breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on Sept. 11. After he died she founded September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to oppose the Iraq war. She lives in the Bronx and gives a gingerly embrace to the conspiracy crowd.

"Sometimes I listen to them and I think that's sooooo outlandish and bizarre," she says. "But that day had such disastrous geopolitical consequences. If David Ray Griffin asks uncomfortable questions and points out painful discrepancies, good for him."

Griffin's book, "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11," sold more than 100,000 copies and became a movement founding stone. Last year he traveled through New England, giving speeches. One evening in West Hartford, Conn., 400 mostly middle-aged and upper-middle-class doctors and lawyers, teachers and social workers sat waiting.

Griffin took the podium and laid down his ideas with calm and cool. He concluded:

"It is already possible to know beyond a reasonable doubt one very important thing: The destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by domestic terrorists. The welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed."

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a Boston-based left-leaning think tank, is no fan of the 9/11 Commission. He believes a serious investigation should have led to indictments and the firing of incompetent generals and civilian officials.

"They don't do their homework; it's a kind of charlatanism," says Berlet. "They say there's no debris on the lawn in front of the Pentagon, but they base their analysis on a photo on the Internet. That's like analyzing an impressionist painting by looking at a postcard.

"I love 'The X-Files' but I don't base my research on it. My vision of hell is having to review these [conspiracy] books over and over again."

In the days after Sept. 11, experts claimed temperatures reached 2,000 degrees on the upper floors. Others claimed steel melted. Nope. What happened, says Eager, the MIT materials-science professor, is that jet fuel sloshed around and beams got rubbery.

"It's not too much to think that you could have some regions at 900 degrees and others at 1,200 degrees, and that will distort the beams."

The truth movement doesn't really care for Eager. A Web site casts a fisheye of suspicion at the professor and his colleagues. "Did the MIT have prior knowledge?" notes one chat room. "This is for sure another speculative topic ... "

Professsor Jones' suspension was reported Friday by The Associated Press. Peter Knight was quoted by McClatchy Newspapers.

Just saying that a plane hit it doesn't really seem to be very convincing, does it?

Thank you, James. I don't know what "G-man" A and "G-man" b are so annoyed about so often. As has been aknowledge several times, buckeroo did manage to establish that there are Hanjour/Hanjoor certification documents, not just verbal claims about them. Why he was certified/licensed when the evidence indicates that he wasn't qualified is an entirely different issue and far from simply a .guv faith-based one. The fact that the paper-trail exists surely isn't unquestionable proof in and of itself that it's valid.

Why would you two OCT/Official Conspiracy Theory guys take it so personally if you didn't have a hand in the shenanigans to sell or give him a ticket that he shouldn't have had? You can be fairly certain that papers for show animals are inspected and rejected with more stringent standards than you act like we should apply to an alleged hijacker and all those who apparently bent and broke the rules for him. As for impossible standards set for your side's alleged witnesses, are any of them available for cross-examination? They definitely ain't all upstanding and trusty sorts by my estimation. No doubt you'd agree with me that everyone who claims to be a well-intentioned and sincere Truther isn't, so you should just expect that a number of your speakers and evidence exhibits and such are not going to pass muster either. This is, afterall, an Information War that has evidently been PsyOpped/led astray to some extent on both sides. If we could agree on that much as a core Truth, I think there'd be less hostility flying around or should be somewhat less of that, anyway. Then we could make some headway on why that's been done.

Now, A & b, who honestly sounds more believable to you in this comparative example? Mr. Anonymous "Psychic Seer" of the Official Fizzycs Spinorama or the next witness who is named and seems much more credible, imo:

"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you can't do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how 'sensitive they are to criticism.'

I already told the goofus to contact the manufacturer to do his own research. That is where he can find his proof or disproof. I already know the answer.

19. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs. This is perhaps a variant of the 'play dumb' rule. Regardless of what material may be presented by an opponent in public forums, claim the material irrelevant and demand proof that is impossible for the opponent to come by (it may exist, but not be at his disposal, or it may be something which is known to be safely destroyed or withheld, such as a murder weapon.)

In order to completely avoid discussing issues, it may be required that you to categorically deny and be critical of media or books as valid sources, deny that witnesses are acceptable, or even deny that statements made by government or other authorities have any meaning or relevance.

So which of USG, press,or witness 911 statements are acceptable to you, Half Tw00fer?

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One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be, if there were any credibility to that thesis. That is, I suspect, why the 9/11 movement is treated far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and activist work....Noam Chomsky

No, it means that after 1999, he lost interest in being a regular pilot because he was not able to get a regular job with Saudi Airlines, and only was interested in suicide piloting from his increasing involvement with jihadi movements.

So he allowed his non-suicide hijacker skills to get neglected because he no longer cared about aircraft and passenger safety.

If I recall correctly the original episode where Harry appeared was "The Trouble With Tribbles" which I believe was written by a real Science Fiction writer by the name of James Blish.

"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator

He never COULD fly safely, as I already posted to you in the way of news reports and quotes from his flight instructors.

I already know that you need to do more than punch 4 numbers into the frequency control of the VORTAC receiver, you need to know what to DO with the information it returns. It doesn't fly or navigate the plane for you, unlike the 757's flight management system which you "forgot" existed on board commericial airliners, but certainly DOESN'T exist on Cessna 172's.

Additionally, you neglected the fact that even IF Hanjour knew how to triangulate his position and plot a course, he didn't, since the autopilot was engaged the entire time, except for a course correction midway between Ohio and Washington, where he (or the ACTUAL pilot) realized he was slightly off course somehow, and corrected the problem, then reengaged auto pilot till near Washington DC.

To change the course with autopilot engaged, or for the autopilot to fly the plane to the desired destination, the correct sequence of commands needed to be issued to the flight management computer, which Hanjour had never seen before in his life.

The statement you quoted was made by James but I do agree with it. Tell me, "Mr. Aviator", on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most difficult, how hard would it be for an incompetent and suicidal hijacker to control a huge plane he had about zero experience maneuvering so, mere inches above the ground as if it was a rocket-propelled hovercraft, through dense air and high g-forces at such a speed, when he could have nosedived into the roof quicker, easier and most likely with a much higher casualty count if the objective and motivation was to be a martyr and not an amatuer stunt pilot?

"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton

He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic.
OsamaBinGoldstein posted on 2010-05-25 9:39:59 ET (2 images) Reply Trace

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton

LOL, aggravator can read the mind of Hanjour/Hanjoor now. This is getting better all the time! I wonder what his next amazing trick will be.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton

Oh, to be sure, life is beautiful all around where buckster and the aggravator reside. The staff even allows them to play on the computers.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton

This just goes to show that eyewitnesses are not always right on what they hear or what they see. There was a video taped by a documentary film group that happened to be filming at the time the first plane hit the North Tower and captured it's impact with the North Tower.