Thursday, March 14, 2024

Truth and Consequences: A Watershed Moment for Rebuilding a Movement (archive)

(archived from February 16, 2011)

by Scott Creighton

The website “9/11 Blogger” has been exposed as a controlled opposition site years ago by myself and other well-meaning Truth advocates.  Heavily controlled actually. 

Typically I wouldn’t waste my time or yours writing about the goings on over there but recently it has come to my attention that Blogger could  become a kind of microcosm for the Truth movement which allows us to better understand (1) the well-financed concerted effort which has been leveled against our little movement by those who mean to end speculation and reasoned inquiry about 9/11 once and for all and (2) the resilience of those of us who still demand to know the truth and still dare to speak it. 

What has happened has become a sort of watershed moment for the Truth movement. The contractors have tipped their hand and we have to decide what we are going to do about it. Are we going to reclaim what was stolen from us or are we going to fold?

In order to better illustrate the overall objective of the current campaign to demolish the Truth movement, I’m sorry, but I have to delve into a little of the obvious problems with the official story of 9/11. At least, these used to be considered obvious problems, before a certain element of the Truth movement started chipping away at them piece by piece.

 

Part 1 – A Brief History of An Uncomfortable Truth

What is the “truth” about what happened on Sept. 11th 2001 and the follow-up anthrax attacks (IMO: from now on we should endeavor to list these events together as we should work to mention Building 7′s demolition whenever we write about 9/11 because they are clearly tied into each other though MSM works to dismiss that fact.) which combined killed nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens and according to the Bush administration, “changed the world forever”?

Bill Moyer recently said…

“… many people inhabit a closed belief system on whose door they have hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign, that they pick and choose only those facts that will serve as building blocks for walling them off from uncomfortable truths.”  Bill Moyer

I couldn’t have put it any better.  As a side note, Mr. Moyer spent about a paragraph demeaning the unofficial research into the events of 9/11, but for the most part it’s a pretty good article.  With all due respect though, while Mr. Moyer talks about how the media and the people of this country refuse to look at the hard evidence of the past, perhaps he himself would like to finally come forward and have an open discussion about the Gulf of Tonkin incident (1964) which happened under his reign as Special Assistant to LBJ (from ’63 to ’67) or perhaps he could try to shed some light on those murky circumstances surrounding his former boss’s sudden promotion in Dallas in 1963.

The uncomfortable truth that we have to face in this country, the truth that many have already faced with one very notable exception, is that the United States and her allies are the greatest purveyors of violence and terror in the world today and that they do it and have been doing it for generations, with the sole purpose of expanding their empire and gaining more and more wealth for a relatively few at the hideous expense of pretty much everyone else. This is so well-known in even moderately enlightened circles that it is considered a cliché and not really worth repeating or debating. It’s like debating the existence of gravity; I’m sure you can find a willing participant, but, what’s the point?

Few will try to argue that the CIA does not run off-the-books black ops and destabilization programs. Few will try to argue that we do not support undemocratic dictators and despots because their form of “stability” serves our corrupt “national interests” (read as United Fruit or Unocal’s Trans Afghan Pipeline) better than democracy ever could. Few will argue that official lies have been generated to support military engagements since the Spanish-American war or that Bush and his administration (also repeated in the Senate by Hillary Clinton, by the way) entered the White House looking for a way to justify an attack on Iraq and then lied repeatedly in order to justify regime change. A quick review of Cheney’s 2001 “Energy Task Force” and their leaked maps of how they were going to divide up Iraq’s oil fields puts that argument to rest.

Fact is, most people know that the Patriot Act was written well before 9/11 and in fact, so was the invasion plans they used in Afghanistan. Those were only completed a few days prior to 9/11 as “luck” would have it. Most people know that the Patriot Act was stalling in congress just after 9/11 and that the anthrax attacks, originally attributed to Saddam Hussein, actually targeted those members of congress and the press who most opposed its passage. Most people know the anthrax came from our high security military bases. Most people now know that the FBI worked diligently to frame one guy but eventually had to pay him 5 million U.S. tax-payer dollars for doing just that. Most people know that the FBI then set to work on another “suspect”, attempting to bribe his family members and eventually setting in on a low-level psych therapist who took the bait and worked to help set Dr. Ivins up. And most people know that even though Dr. Ivins had access to some of the most deadly toxins known to man, he allegedly chose to end his life with Tylenol rather than defend his good name and that of his family.

Most people know all of this and yet for far too many, that “Do Not Disturb” sign still hangs in the balance of reason and what remains of their faith.

I won’t go into the volumes of circumstantial evidence that drives many people to question what happened on Sept. 11th 2001, if I can be so bold as to speak for “many people”. But let me just say, it is significant and for the most part, like the Amerithrax case and like the not-so-secret history of American violence targeting civilians, it is well documented in main stream media in bits and pieces. 

To get to the truth of what happened on Sept. 11th, you don’t really have to delve that deep; you just have to open your eyes and trust your instincts, like many of us did in the beginning.  For example…

1. What do you see?


Collapse or Controlled Demolition?

Do you really think that this is a picture of a building collapsing due to gravitational forces?

What you see are streamers flying in all directions including upward. Massive chunks of steel columns flung some 600 feet or more with enough force to stick into other buildings. Pulverization so complete that first-responders marveled at it and officials working at the recovery site don’t even remember finding a single interior steel fire-rated door or a filing cabinet.

Add to that the fact that it is official documented fact that immediately after the first plane hit the first tower, the world’s leading explosive controlled demolition company, Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI),  was on site, at Ground Zero, and they didn’t leave until the clean-up was complete some 9 months later. Now also add remember that CDI’s owner is on record for having called friends in the lower Manhattan area and warning them that the buildings were going to come down, while those buildings were still standing.

And then you have the hundreds of first-responder statements that mention seeing and hearing explosions like those at an explosive demolition.

The RJ Lee report studied the make-up of the dust at Ground Zero and what they found should have forced main-stream America to re-examine what happened on 9/11. What they found were tons and tons of metallic spheres which indicated, beyond any doubt, that massive amounts of heat were present in the destruction sequence of the Twin Towers. These spheres were molten at the time of the demolition, molten and pulverized, probably by high explosives. Evidence discovered in the aftermath and clean-up point to this fact as well. Cars were burnt out for blocks around the site, people reported that the dust cloud was “hot”, tens of thousands of trusses were simply missing after the “collapse”, and the lack of any metal artifacts and clearly melted ones… all of this proves, scientifically, without any question that massive amounts of heat were present in the “collapse” of the Twin Towers.  In the official story of 9/11, the collapse scenario, there is absolutely no explanation for levels of heat and pressure of this kind. The heat caused by the use of high explosives which NIST and FEMA both refuse to test for.

Take a look at this video…

2. What do you see?


 

You see what certainly looks like a picture perfect controlled demolition of a building that was not hit by a plane and that happened many hours after the first two towers “collapsed”. It took NIST over 5 years to create their official explanation for this one and once they did, they had to modify their story to accommodate simple proof that a high-school physics teacher, David Chandler, showed them. Mr. Chandler proved that Building 7 fell at pure free-fall acceleration for nearly half of its complete collapse time. This is simply impossible without explosive controlled demolition.

Add to what you see here the other facts about CDI and the scientific evidence of extreme levels of heat present in the “collapse” of the Twin Towers. A clear picture starts to develop without any knowledge of the volumes of circumstantial evidence surrounding 9/11.  That’s just what is clear to the naked eye.

And while we are on the subject, let’s talk about the dirty little unmentionable… the Pentagon.

3. What do you see?


Do you see the wreckage of a massive 100 ton 757-200?

This is a shot of the Pentagon prior to the collapse of the section that housed the offices looking for the missing 2.3 trillion dollars that Donald Rumsfeld just happened to mention to the press and the American people on Sept. 10th 2001.  The “terrorist” hijacker, rather than flying straight into the building nearly 30 minutes after Flight 175 hit the south tower and everyone knew that planes were being used as weapons, for some reason, that hijacker took the dangerous step of flying 270 degrees all around the well defended Pentagon so he could hit the one fortified wall in the Pentagon’s exterior and the one office that accountants were busy looking for the missing money.

That said, where is the Boeing? Where is the plane crash? Does this look like any plane crash you have ever seen?

How about this one taken after the building collapsed but while it was still on fire?


Does this look like the crash site of a massive 757-200 to you?

April Gallup was in that building when it was hit. She was one floor above the impact zone and she and her child escaped right out of the damaged area in the wall that you are looking at right now.

According to April Gallop, she didn’t see any plane parts inside that hole in the building, inside the office that was hit, that she and her child crawled through to safety.

Now compare these photos with other plane crash sites…



 

 


Do these scenes look even remotely similar? Is that a fair question? I think it is. The Truth movement used to think it was.

The video, if you want to call it that, which the Pentagon finally released after 5 years of legal fighting, shows what appears to be a small airborne vehicle, flying nearly level with the ground, into the Pentagon. The FBI (remember what we talked about concerning them and the anthrax attacks?) ran around immediately after the Pentagon was hit collecting videos from the over 80 video cameras surrounding the Pentagon. To this day, they refuse to release all but two of them on the basis of “national security”

Take a quick peek at Flight 77 in it’s better days.

 

Flight 77 and the fragment

What we have here are photos of Flight 77 and the one famous fragment that was found on the lawn of the Pentagon after the crash. Pay attention to the scale of the American airlines logo in relation to those doors next to it and the engines.  Heres a photo of one of the engines like those used on Flight 77. This might give you a better understanding of the scale of those letters painted on the side of the plane.


Now, take a look at that famous fragment from a slightly different angle. Again… what do you see? Click on the image for a larger view…


Do you notice that the scale of the letters and white outline? Does it look the same as what is pictured on the side of Flight 77?

Now take a look at this…

What you see here are two pieces of evidence that were found at the scene. One is purportedly a section of wing and the other is a rotor part on the engine (or now that debunkers know that it is too small for that, they try to call it part of a smaller engine from the tail section). But what you will notice is the shape of the “wing” is wrong for the 757-200 and the size of it is all wrong when you compare it to those orange cones behind it.


757 Parts?

These pieces of evidence, like the lettering on the part found in the grass, are just too small and don’t fit the shape of the 757 that was Flight 77.  However, there is something that does seem to fit these rough dimensions and parts… notice the shape of the wings and the single, small, turbine fan.


Yes, the evidence shows that a massive 757-200 did not hit the Pentagon but something did. 

Many witnesses say they saw an American airlines plane hit the building. How would they identify such a plane? The paint and the logo. But many other witnesses reported seeing a “small business class” jet hit the Pentagon. 

Both of these types of statements and the evidence that is readily available tend to lead us to the conclusion that something made to look like Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

The physical evidence, the witness statements, the circumstantial evidence… it all points to a deeply flawed official story about the Pentagon and honestly, it was one of the first and most obvious problems with the official story that brought many people into the Truth movement. Therefore it was the first to be attacked by the people we are about to discuss next.

Part 2 – 9/11 Blogger and the Beneficial Cognitive Diversity of LIHOP

All that said, I hope have shown that even the most cursory of examinations of the evidence (visual, witness statements, scientific, circumstantial) surrounding the official story of 9/11 leads one to the conclusion that something is seriously wrong with it. 

Without delving into the complicated history of the lead-up to 9/11 or the extensive efforts they went through to cover-up the facts of the event, I hope I have shown that a simple examination of what is readily available to anyone should be enough to bring others to the point where they at least understand why many people have come to the conclusion that something other than 19 angry Muslims attacked us on that day.

This is why the Truth movement was infiltrated almost from the beginning; because these problems with the official story were glaring from the onset. Remember Bush telling us not to “tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories”? Clearly they knew that the official story had many holes in it and that was one reason they resisted an official investigation for over days and when they finally had to agree to it, they put a Bush administration member in charge of it, Philip Zelikow.

This brings us to what is happening right now at 9/11 Blogger and other fake Truth sites set up all over the blog-o-sphere.

The controlled opposition elements in the Truth movement have been accelerating their efforts recently. Their relative success with the Pentagon/CIT story and their BYU paid for distraction called “nanothermite” has emboldened them to the point where they are viciously attacking David Ray Griffin in the open on Blogger and elsewhere. Dr. Griffin is sick and so I guess they figure it’s a great time to try to drive a wedge between him and the movement.

What we see here is an attempt to push what is commonly referred to as LIHOP on the Truth movement and to force others out as best they can. LIHOP means “let it happen on purpose”, which basically is the official story plus a few over-zealous neocons. The evidence simply does not support this story and it has nothing to do with the Truth movement.  It’s simply an effort to bring the members of the Truth movement, piece by piece, back into the fold so to speak and to get them to accept the official story of 9/11. They attack from within, the obvious evidence at the Pentagon, the evidence of  controlled demolition, and leaders of the Truth movement who have not yet sold-out as many have done in the past.

Cass Sunstein wrote this process.

“We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”

 ”We suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers (1)by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby (2) introducing  beneficial cognitive diversity.”

… government agents “might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”  Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s regulatory czar

“Beneficial cognitive diversity” in a nut-shell is presenting Truth advocates with carefully scripted messages designed to drive them back to the official story of 9/11.   

People like Jim Hoffman, Victoria Ashley, Gregg Roberts, Jon Gold, and others have been doing this for years. To do this, they use flawed logic, evidence supplied by the FBI of all things and an emotional appeal to both a sense of belonging to the Truth movement as well as the family members of the victims of 9/11. Jon Gold is especially famous for that little trollish trick.

But the also set up foils; people and theories that are designed to be exposed as frauds in order to make their other agents more appealing to the Truth movement in general. Early examples of this was the “Ray Beams from Space” theory put forward by Judy Wood and Morgan Reynold’s “No Planes theory”.  This approach was relatively successful at the time because it set up Steven Jones’ “thermite” theory as a reasonable alternative. That theory has finally morphed into “nanothermite” which is just as ridiculous and is actually losing credibility in the Truth movement especially since both Steven Jones and Gregg Roberts both refused to test for residue of high explosives in the Ground Zero dust they still have.

A more recent example of this foil technique was the creation of CIT and the “fly over” theory. This was designed to make Jim Hoffman’s “Believe the official story of the Pentagon” seem like the rational choice, even though it’s clearly straight out of the Cass Sunstein playbook.

But this effort turned out to be wildly successful motivating many well-meaning Truth sites to either avoid mentioning the Pentagon at all or even outwardly supporting the official story in leu of engaging in any CIT type of debate. So with this recent success, it looks like these contractors have decided to go after a long-standing favorite in the Truth movement, David Ray Griffin.

Now I can tell you from first hand experience that I saw this coming a year ago.  I had occasion to speak directly with some of these LIHOP Sunstein contractors on the phone back when I was calling out Gregg Roberts and Steven Jones (back when I was regularly called a disinfo agent for doing that at sites who now know I was right).  I had these guys dropping little hints about “questionable” behavior from Griffin and even Gage back in those days so I know from where this push is coming from. And more importantly, I know why.

A recent story broke about 3 different large defense department contractors planning to undermine certain liberal bloggers and websites on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big business interests in America.  It’s a remarkable story in that we see confirmation of what some of us have known for years; that part of the counter-terrorism industry in the United States is actively working to discredit and undermine various left-wing researchers, bloggers, writers, and websites. But one thing that struck me as very telling appeared in an article by Glenn Greenwald the other day. He seemed to understand it, but didn’t really elaborate.

The plans involved several options but mainly they centered around getting two agents into a group, pitting the one against the other so that the first is exposed and the second is left with credibility and even leverage enough to become a leader in the movement. Fake documents are mentioned and other plans, but the most important aspect is what I just mentioned. Does it sound familiar?  Now consider this…

 ”… it turns out that the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation’s largest private corporations (as but one example, see this email from a Stanford computer science student about Palantir).  Moreover, these kinds of smear campaigns are far from unusual; in other leaked HB Gary emails, ThinkProgress discovered that similar proposals were prepared for the Chamber of Commerce to attack progressive groups and other activists (including ThinkProgress).  And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams was recommended to Bank of America’s General Counsel by the Justice Department — meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks.” 

“As creepy and odious as this is, there’s nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns.   The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous’ hacking.  That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is.” Glenn Greenwald

It was the Department of Justice that suggested to Bank of America this course of action. They had a plan in place and even the contractors to do it. There appears to have even been a per-existing structure, several big-time contractors, and a multi-faceted game-plan already in place as well.

I wonder where they developed that particular business model.

Part 3 – Conclusion

It would be irrational to think that what they will do to progressive/liberal websites and writers who are making their efforts more difficult they haven’t already been doing to the Truth movement.

In one conversation I had with one of these guys, he became incensed when I claimed that these are contractors simply working for a buck and that I didn’t hate them for their efforts.  These are simply people, usually young people, who believe the official story of 9/11 and they are doing what they see as fixing the “crippled epistemology of believers” by playing roles in the Truth movement. Some of them certainly know the truth, like Jones and Roberts and Hoffman, their writing and their logic is so convoluted, self-conscious and dishonest that there is no other possibility but that they are actively taking part in a deception. But the average yes-man in the “amen chorus” on display at Blogger right now certainly doesn’t know what it is they are really doing. Not yet anyway.

I won’t take the time to rehash the crippled epistemology of those currently attacking David Ray Griffin as that Kevin Ryan, Gretavo, and many others have already done a superb job of that.

What I want to suggest is that we reaffirm our commitment to this effort in light of what is clearly a defacto admission from this government that we were and are on the right track. Because if we weren’t, these contractors would not be fake “Truthers”.

We need to reclaim what was stolen from us in such a way as to do justice to an honest interpretation of the word “investigation” because, no matter what we hope for and claim is our ultimate goal, the fact is, we may be the only real investigation that takes place and so we had better do it right.

We need to re-examine Dr. Jones’ “nanothermite” paper and have it reviewed by as many independent scholars that we can. We know it’s flawed and if it is as bad as some Truth advocates say (I am one of them) then it needs to be publicly dismissed by our movement as flawed.  Can these tests be repeated? Will Dr. Jones present his findings to a review board and a full presentation?

We need to test for explosive residues in the Ground Zero dust just like any investigation where high explosives are suspected. Contacting RJ Lee for a sample would be a good start. They can at least confirm the legitimacy of all samples tested. These tests are not expensive and they can prove conclusively whether or not high explosives and massive amounts of them were present when those buildings came down.

This is just the beginning.  A new beginning.  But I think we have to take comfort in the fact that so many people, so many real Truth advocates have stepped up and defended David Ray Griffin from this obviously poor timed attack by these contractors. These Sunstein contractors over-reached their grasp because of their inflated egos and now we have to make them pay for it. Now we have to look back over everything they have been pushing and re-evaluate it, re-examine it. Now we have to undo the damage they have done. It’s not enough for us to simply shun them from future discourse in this movement, we have to fix the damage they have already caused. And that might be touchy and it might make for some heated discussions, but this is, after all, the Truth movement and anything less would be an insult to those who have come before us and those who will continue on after we are done.

This is a watershed moment for the Truth movement. It’s good that so many have now come to understand that these elements exist within our structure but now we have to rebuild the Truth movement and undo that damage which we have allowed to take place. 

These are the consequences, this is the real world.

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