As many of you know, on this
board, I believe and many others do too, that
our getting to the truth of 9/11
is seriously important! Please
read!!!
Hi everyone,
This is really an excellent article, well worth reading. The
author covers
all the important issues (WTC demolition, lack of interceptor jets,
insider trading, 9/11 wargames, etc) and avoids the more
controversial,
less substantiated claims. Our appreciation goes out to the
Colorodo
chapter who did the leg work to get the article published.
Please consider writing a letter to the Boulder Weekly thanking
them for
Also, if you think it is valuable to get mainstream press articles
like
this one published, please support our work by making a donation
during
our pre-election fundraising drive. This is the last time we will
burden
you with a request. To donate, please visit:
Towards truth and peace,
Emanuel Sferios
Webmaster, 9/11 Visibility Project
True Believers
The 9/11 Truth Movement questions our new day of infamy
by Joel Warner
Tim Gale became a believer one day last January. He was prowling
the
Internet when he came across a video of one of the World Trade
Center
towers collapsing on Sept. 11, 2001. It was likely a video Gale
had seen
before, but this footage was in slow motion. As Gale watched the
tower’s
110 floors begin to crumble, he noticed something unusual.
Right before the tower dropped into a cloud of debris, the windows
on the
upper levels of the towers blew outwards, one floor at a time, like
clockwork. That wasn’t caused by the plane slamming into the tower
or the
ensuing fire, Gale told himself.
There were bombs in the World Trade Center.
"It blew my head off," says Gale. "I started searching like crazy."
What Gale found, in countless websites, books and films, was a vast
network of information questioning the official story of what
happened on
Sept. 11. The 42-year-old Boulder resident was inundated with
decades-old
memos, foreign newspaper clippings, engineering studies and
national-defense policies. And he discovered the collapse of the
World
Trade Center was just the beginning–he believes he’s witnessing the
collapse of the American society.
"I was being confronted with the raw fact that the U.S. government
was
complicit in the mass murder of its own citizens for geopolitical
purposes," says Gale. "It’s too much to bear in the confines of
your
mind."
Gale began spending six to eight hours a day cross-checking
evidence he
found online or in publications. He wrote a 40-page paper, just to
organize and process all the information. He began spouting words
like
"shadow government," "false flag" and "black ops." Then he met up
with
other people in the Denver-Boulder area who were asking the same
questions
he was, and they decided to form the Colorado chapter of the 9/11
Visibility Project. Now they’re hosting film screenings and
discussions,
spreading the word that there’s a whole lot more to 9/11 than
we’ve been
led to believe.
Gale and his local compatriots are not alone. Across the nation
and the
world, a growing number of people are joining what’s called the
9/11 Truth
Movement. These people say there’s enough evidence–or enough holes
in the
official record–to suggest that government officials allowed the
Sept. 11
terrorist attacks to occur, if not had a hand in them. While the
movement
has attracted the support of several notable figures, it also
faces the
risk of being associated with fringe theories of the Twilight Zone
variety
and has received the cold shoulder from most of the progressive
press and
the peace movement. Plus, there’s the fact that some say the 9/11
Truth
Movement has no basis in reality whatsoever.
Gale doesn’t necessarily mind being labeled a conspiracy theorist.
"To have a conspiracy all you need is a couple facts that don’t
match up,"
he says, adding that in the case of 9/11, there’s more than enough
questionable facts. "Until you’ve read three or four books about
it, don’t
tell me I’m quirky, because you have no grasp. You go into this
stuff, and
it’s a freaking journey."
The new Pearl Harbor
At 8:21 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, 20 minutes after it leaves Logan
Airport
in Boston, Mass., stewardesses on American Airlines Flight 11 use
airphones to report their plane has been hijacked. It’s expected
that
officials on the ground will jump into action. They don’t.
Once a hijacking is confirmed, it’s standard protocol for the
aerospace
officials to quickly get military escort aircraft into the air to
follow
the plane. In the previous year, fighter jets had been scrambled
67 times
to escort planes that had moved off course or lost radio contact, a
process that usually takes 10-20 minutes. But on Sept. 11,
protocol does
not go as planned.
Two fighter jets are eventually scrambled to intercept Flight
11–but by
this point, nearly half an hour has passed. At the very moment the
jets
take off from a Massachusetts base, Flight 11 strikes the North
Tower 200
miles away.
By this point United Airlines Flight 175, which also departed from
Logan,
has moved off course. With the fighter jets in the air over
Massachusetts, they should be able to intercept Flight 175. They
don’t.
At 9:03 a.m., Flight 175 hits the South Tower. The fighter jets
are still
70 miles away.
Similar irregularities are occurring to the south. At 8:56 American
Airlines Flight 77 disappears off radar. Twenty minutes later
United
Airlines Flight 93 is presumed hijacked. But fighter jets don’t
take off
until 9:30. The jets don’t make it to Flight 77 before it hits the
Pentagon, nor do they do they reach Flight 93, which crashes in the
Pennsylvania countryside.
This series of events is the clearest example for Janice Matthews
that
the U.S. government is hiding the truth about 9/11.
"It was automatic procedure to send out fighter jets after planes
that go
off course. It’s been standard operating procedure basically
forever. And
only our government or our military can interrupt standard
operating
procedures. Al Qaeda does not have the power to intervene in our
military
procedures. So that’s the clearest example of how they allowed it
to
happen," says Matthews.
Mathews is the co-founder the 9/11 Visibility Project. Matthews and
several other concerned citizens started the organization last
fall to
advocate for a complete and unobstructed investigation into 9/11.
The
group now has chapters in 40 cities–including the Boulder
chapter–and five
which receives millions of visitors.
The 9/11 Visibility Project isn’t the first group to question what
happened on Sept. 11, but it’s the first to try to fuse voices of
dissent
worldwide into a viable movement.
"There was research going on all over the world, but nobody was
actually
doing any activism," says Matthews. "So our goal was to become an
activism-oriented group, start getting the information out to
people and
start doing everything we could to push for a real investigation
as a way
of supporting the 9/11 victims’ families."
Matthews and her compatriots believe they’ve collected a wealth of
documentation proving that U.S. government officials were at least
complicit in the terrorist attacks.
For one thing, members of the 9/11 Truth Movement say the U.S.
government
had extensive intelligence suggesting how and when terrorist were
planning on striking the United States. They note that Pentagon
officials
had discussed the possibility of plane attacks since the 1980s. In
the
months leading up to Sept. 11, U.S. officials received repeated
warnings
from other countries and internal sources that al Qaeda was
planning to
attack the country in the foreseeable future. And then there was
the
now-famous Aug. 2001 report titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike
in
U.S."
As for additional evidence that key U.S. players knew beforehand
about the
attack, members of the 9/11 Truth Movement note that there was an
unusually large amount of "put" options purchased by unknown
investors on
United Airlines, American Airlines and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
& Co. in
the days before Sept. 11. This type of investment only pays off if
stock
prices for the companies unexpectedly drop–as they did when these
companies were impacted by 9/11.
Aside from spotty air defense, there are other things about the
events on
Sept. 11 that don’t sit well with some people–most significantly,
the
collapse of the World Trade Center.
"The fact that the towers were detonated versus falling down…
that’s
pretty well accepted by most everyone [in the 9/11 Truth
Movement]," says
Matthews. "Independent investigators have proven through physics
and fire
studies, etc., that the buildings could not have fallen the way
that they
were."
Matthews and others point to a 2002 editorial in Fire Engineering
magazine
that states, "The structural damage from the planes and the
explosive
ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down
the
towers."
9/11 Truth Movement members say there are a variety of other
issues that
need to be addressed about Sept. 11. There are reports that a CIA
agent
met with Osama bin Laden in summer of 2001, that the United States
was
associated with payoffs to al Qaeda members, and that President
Bush
blocked investigations into connections between the bin Laden
family and
the White House.
And then there’s Vigilant Guardian. This was one of several
air-defense
mass-casualty exercises occurring the morning of Sept. 11, say
9/11 Truth
Movement members, possibly involving simulated hijackings and
false blips
on radar screens. Some wonder if these exercises were scheduled on
purpose to confuse ground-control officers.
Matthews says that most people in the movement believe the
government
allowed 9/11 to happen, rather than caused it. While even the idea
of the
U.S. government condoning the killing of 3,000 American citizens
may be
hard to swallow, Matthews say it’s far from impossible.
For one thing, say 9/11 Truth Movement members, the Bush
administration
was looking for a reason to invade Afghanistan to build an oil
pipeline
through the region. The terrorist attacks provided them with the
perfect
opportunity.
9/11 Truth Movement members also point to a disturbing report
titled
"Rebuilding America’s Defenses," by the Project for the New
American
Century, a neoconservative think tank involving the likes of Jeb
Bush,
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The report
predicts the
ascension of global U.S. military dominance. The report states,
"…the
process of [this] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary
change,
is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing
event–like a new Pearl Harbor…"
Some say the Sept. 11 attack was the neocons’ ready-made Pearl
Harbor.
After all, they say, it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S.
government has
condoned or sponsored an attack on its citizens to generate public
support
for war. They point to historical events like the sinking of the
U.S.S.
Maine, the sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on the U.S.S.
Maddox and
the attack on Pearl Harbor as circumstances that appear to be
orchestrated
by the government for hawkish purposes.
The 9/11 Truth Movement’s theories are gaining popularity. The 9/11
Visibility Project counts among its supporters the former National
Defense
Minister of Canada Paul Hellyer, Jim Hightower, Howard Zinn, the
National
Green Party and family of 9/11 victims. The movement has held
public
forums in San Francisco and Toronto, and members have presented
their
findings to United Nations delegates. The Denver County Democratic
Assembly passed a resolution calling for a new 9/11 investigation
after
they heard some of the theories. And according to a Zogby
International
poll this summer, half of New Yorkers believe U.S. leaders had
foreknowledge of 9/11.
"It’s not just crazy longhairs going after this," says Gale.
"There’s a
cadre of really intelligent people who believe this is happening."
The fringe
The questions started soon after 9/11. Why did American Airlines
Flight 77
disappear off radar screens over Ohio on Sept. 11, only to
reappear over
Washington 40 minutes later? How did the cumbersome Boeing 757
execute
exceedingly complicated maneuvers to perfectly hit the Pentagon,
especially when it was piloted by a hijacker who allegedly did
terribly in
flight school? And why did commuters near the Pentagon say they
heard the
shrill sound of a fighter jet overhead, not the noise of a
commercial
airliner? And why do some early photos of the attack site show
little
damage or debris other than a singe 15-foot hole in the
Pentagon–even
though the plane had a 125-foot wingspan?
These concerns have led some to suggest that the Pentagon wasn’t
hit by
Flight 77, but instead by a fighter plane or missile. It’s the
subject of
a video called 9/11: Pentagon Strike, that’s been making its way
around
the Internet. It is one of a handful of controversial theories
that some
in the 9/11 Truth Movement say could give their movement a bad
name.
Another contentious hypothesis is that the planes that hit the
World Trade
Center weren’t typical passenger planes. Some interpret the video
evidence
to suggest these planes were camouflaged jets that fired missiles
into the
towers before crashing into them. But if the airliners didn’t
crash into
the Pentagon or the World Trade Center, what happened to the
passengers?
"That’s the part of the 9/11 thing that’s really speculative," say
Gale.
"People are going through gymnastics trying to figure out that."
Some have gone so far to say that all the missing passengers were
loaded
onto United Airways Flight 93, which was then shot down over
Pennsylvania.
Another theory is that the passengers have become secret wards of
the
government.
Some 9/11 Truth Movement members try to steer clear of these sort
of
theories, or go out of their way to debunk them.
"I think it all should be investigated, but some of this is pretty
hard to
present to people right away," says Fran Shure, a member of the
Colorado
chapter of the 9/11 Visibility Project. "We have to be careful
about what
we present to the public. And I think as long as we have hard
facts,
documented facts, we can feel safe presenting it to the public."
These fringe theories may be one of the reasons the 9/11 Truth
Movement
has been hard-pressed to obtain significant U.S. media coverage,
even from
progressive news outlets. Matthews says the national liberal radio
program
Democracy Now has yet to report on their concerns, despite numerous
requests from 9/11 Truth Movement members. The peace movement has
also
been slow to jump on the 9/11 skeptic bandwagon.
"I think the people in the peace movement are afraid of being
labeled
conspiracy theorists, fringe elements, nuts, crazies," says Carolyn
Bninski, member of the Boulder-based Rocky Mountain Peace and
Justice
Center. While Bninski says she believes the 9/11 Truth Movement
brings up
valid questions, she is quick to note that’s her personal opinion,
not
that of the Peace Center.
Some 9/11 Truth Movement members say the media blackout on their
activities is caused by the corporate control of the media, or
maybe even
by shadowy CIA control of left-wing pundits. But Shure, who’s a
psychotherapist, thinks otherwise.
"I think any time information comes to us that is outside of our
world
view, outside of our cultural understanding, it’s extremely
frightening to
let this come in," she says. "This is a thought that is very
difficult to
let into our psyche. The implications of it, the implications that
our
government would be complicit in such a horrible attack, are huge."
Deconstructing 9/11
As the construction manager for the World Trade Center, University
of
Colorado civil engineering professor Hyman Brown gets a call every
three
weeks or so from someone who has a new theory about 9/11. Some of
these
theories are hard for Brown to dispute, he says, but debunking the
central
World Trade Center theories embraced by 9/11 Truth Movement is
easy.
"It is correct that the towers did not collapse because of the
airliners
hitting it. But we do know how it collapsed and it has nothing to
do with
conspiracy," says Brown. "What caused the building to collapse is
the
airplane fuel and the fire-suppression system that we now have,
which
basically blocks off five-floor blocks, so the fire can’t go up
and the
fire can’t go down. You now have a fire confined to a five-floor
area,
burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steel in that five-floor
area
melts. All the tonnage above the five-floor area comes straight
down when
the steel melts. That broke all the connections, and that caused
the
building to collapse."
Just-released preliminary findings from a National Institute of
Standards
and Technology study of the World Trade Center collapse support
Brown’s
theory.
Brown isn’t the only one who doubts the claims of the 9/11 Truth
Movement
members. Some say these theories of a 9/11 conspiracy are just
that–unfounded conspiracy theories.
"Basically they are inflating a mystery out of nothing. I find a
lot of
this doesn’t even get off the ground, as far as an argument. It’s
kind of
frustrating and shameless that you have people out there that are
promoting this stuff," says Kevin Christopher, public relations
director
for SciCop, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of
the Paranormal.
Just like 9/11 Truth Movement members are posting their intricate
theories online, skeptic organizations like SciCop are posting
detailed
deconstructions of these hypotheses. But some say the most damning
refute
of the 9/11 Truth Movement comes from the bipartisan National
Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11
Commission, which released its public report in July 2004.
"We believe the record is laid out authoritatively in the 9/11
Commission
report," says Mike Hurley, a former senior council and team leader
on the
9/11 Commission and now senior director for the 9/11 Public
Discourse
Project, which was formed in the wake of the commission to educate
the
public on terrorism. "I think we conducted the broadest and deepest
investigation of our government perhaps in the history of the
United
States."
The 9/11 Commission’s report concluded that the government "failed
across
the board" to prepare for the terrorist threat, says Hurley, but
the
investigation found no evidence of government involvement in the
attacks.
"We didn’t answer everything, in terms of our investigation. We
answered
what we believe are the most important questions. But there are so
many
things out there, and I mean I hate to say it, but you almost
don’t want
to dignify them with answers because there are just so many bizarre
theories and things like that," says Hurley. "Certainly it’s
rather easy
to weave these sinister theories by picking up an odd thread here
and
there, but when we track these things down, we would find there
was no
substance to them."
According to Hurley, many of the circumstances on Sept. 11 that
9/11 Truth
Movement members link to government complicity are actually
examples of
mistakes. For example, fighter jets weren’t purposely obstructed
from
tracking the hijacked airliners, says Hurley. Instead, thanks to
miscommunication between different government agencies and the
pilots, the
fighter jets were delayed or had trouble locating the hijacked
planes.
Many members of the 9/11 Truth Movement aren’t buying the 9/11
Commission’s story. They say leading members of the commission
maintain
disturbingly close ties to the Bush administration (Phillip
Zelikow,
executive director of the commission, co-authored a book with
National
Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice), and that a true independent
citizens’
investigation into 9/11 needs to take place.
"[The commission report’s] given us more to report on," says
Shure. "Most
people think that it is such a wonderful report, but when they
find out
about how there’s other information that hasn’t been investigated
at all,
the 9/11 Commission at least has the appearance of being nothing
more than
a white wash or a cover-up."
Quest for meaning
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim knows a thing or two about
conspiracy
theories. After all, he chaired the Assassination Record Review
Board in
the 1990s, which was charged with releasing classified information
on the
John F. Kennedy assassination–a job that put Tunheim right in the
middle
of the mother of all conspiracy theories.
Tunheim and his colleagues spent five years delving into the
myriad JFK
theories, releasing six million documents. Still, Tunheim is sure
die-hard
conspiracy theorists will never be satisfied, no matter how
exhaustive the
investigation.
"People want to believe that events happen for a profound reason,
and
that’s why it’s difficult for a lot of people who have interest in
the
assassination to believe that a troubled nut like Lee Oswald could
have
done it by himself. It just seems implausible to them that an
event that
rocked the country in such a major way and had a profound impact
on world
events could have been brought about by a 23-year-old nut," says
Tunheim.
"They want to believe that it happened for a more profound reason,
and the
CIA orchestrating the assassination would be a far more profound
reason in
the view of a lot of people."
According to Mark Fenster, author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy
and
Power in American Culture, this type of obsession with conspiracy
is part
of the American way of life, from elaborate notions involving
Masons,
bankers and Communists to Hillary Clinton claiming there’s a
right-wing
plot to take down her husband.
"The point is that there’s a long American tradition of populism.
Of fear
and loathing of centralized positions of power. And oftentimes
utilizing a
populist argument will lend itself to implications of conspiracy.
That is,
the government is working to take my property. Or is conspiring to
achieve
a certain goal," says Fenster. "Not all populist arguments are
conspiracy
theories, but all conspiracy theories are at their core populist."
Fenster says that a large segment of the American public probably
believes
in some form of a conspiracy theory. While he’s not sure if
conspiracy
theories are becoming more common today, he does feel that the
Internet
has led to the rapid proliferation of new theories. According to
the BBC,
an estimated 36,000 Princess Diana conspiracy theory websites were
created
after her death.
"The technology of the Internet is such that one can quickly and
easily
and virtually costlessly type something up and put it on a website
or put
it on an electronic bulletin board and spread the idea really
quickly,"
says Fenster. "Whereas 10 years ago it would require you to either
meet
face to face with people or put it in print and circulate that
physically."
The Sept. 11 attacks’ dramatic unfolding, extensive live coverage
and
global ramifications would seem to be the perfect recipe for
widespread
conspiracy theories. But both Fenster and Tunheim doubt the extent
of the
9/11 conspiracy theories will reach the level of the JFK
conspiracies.
They say the spottiness of the original JFK assassination
investigation,
and general Cold War-fueled secrecies and skepticism, led to the
public
questioning the official record. On the other hand, they say, the
9/11
Commission’s thorough, open and user-friendly investigation (some
say the
commission’s report, which reads like a Robert Ludlum novel, is
more
exciting than the conspiracy theories) is less likely to encourage
skepticism.
"It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the near term, as to
whether
more and more people believe in a 9/11 conspiracy theory," says
Fenster.
"My guess would be that if additional [terrorist] events occur, and
especially if Bush gets re-elected, then there would be more
significant
numbers believing in this, just like I think how the percentage of
people
who believed in conspiracy theories went up with each additional
assassination in the ’60s."
Some say conspiracy theories corrode historical events and
encourage
greater cynicism and alienation from society. But Fenster believes
that,
as long as they’re kept within healthy bounds, conspiracy theories
can be
good for the country.
"If one assumes that the American populist tradition is a good
tradition,
and I’ll say that it is, then the populist aspect of conspiracy is
also a
good thing," he says. "It helps us to recognize that it’s a
perfectly
acceptable thing to question what our leaders tell us."
Matthews at the 9/11 Visibility Project agrees. She says most of
the
people in the 9/11 Truth Movement don’t claim to know what actually
happened on Sept. 11; they just believe there are enough disturbing
questions remaining about the event to warrant a much more thorough
investigation of America’s new day of infamy.
"Nineteen people, none of whom were airliner pilots, with
boxcuters got
into our airplanes, shut down our military system and bombed some
of the
most heavily protected airspace in the world," says Matthews.
"That’s a
conspiracy theory."
For more information on local 9/11 Visibility Project activities,
contact