My apologies for not writing for quite a while; there is something about me that I occasionally have to take a vacation from writing to recharge my batteries.
Today I pulled a DVD off the shelf, dusted it off, and popped it in. It has two pieces on it, an address by David Ray Griffin on 9-11 and the American Empire, given on April 18, 2005, and one on Eric Hufschmid's analysis of the 9-11 attacks. Both are part of what is known as the 'conspiracy theory' that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job. The conspiracy theory has largely dried up and disappeared by now.
My degrees are in a social science. I am trained to look critically below what is happening or what is being said to determine if the content matches the process. If it does, fine. If it doesn't then something is going on underneath that we aren't being told.
Dr. Griffin and Mr. Hufschmid offer example after example to question the Official Version of what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that day. Their points are hard to argue. For example, we all accept that WTC Buildings 1 and 2 were hit by airplanes and came down. But why did Building 7, of steel contstruction, which was not hit by an airplane, had minor fires on two floors, and was not hit by either other building falling, also fall that day? Why couldn't the intelligence offices of our government find a reason, when the landlord of WTC stated on a PBS interview that he had requested the NYC Fire Department 'pull' the building that day? 'Pulling' a building means a controlled demolition, which takes weeks or months to plan, test, plant charges, test, and execute. Besides, the NYC Fire Department doesn't do controlled demolitions. That's done by private companies. The landlord, Larry Silverstein,by the way, obtained the WTC properties just two months prior to the attacks, replaced security with his own people, and made upwards of seven billion dollars in insurance reimbursement following the attacks.
This is just one hole in the 9-11 Commission report. That report concluded the cause of Building 7 coming down was unknown. It also concluded that the central core of Buildings 1 and 2 were hollow steel shafts that housed elevators and stairwells, when in fact there were more than forty thick steel beams that supported the buildings from the inside, designed to withstand the impact of 160 mps winds (on the full surface of one side of the building this amounts to oodles more force than an airplane hitting it). The Commission reports simply ignored the design of the buildings (what would motivate them to ignore it?). The idea that jet fuel melted the steel in the buildings is disproven: most of the fuel was spent in the initial contact blast, burning jet fuel isn't hot enough to melt steel else airplane engines would melt down on the runway, and there were people standing in the gaping holes left by the planes after the fire had died down (photographic evidence). The 'pancake theory' of how the buildings came down has been debunked by computer modeling. Buildings 1, 2, and 7 all appear in video as controlled demolitions.
The Pentagon attack is likewise suspect; a Boeing 757 would have had to skim just feet off the ground at 400 mph after turning 270 degrees in a tight pirouette to hit as is alleged. One wonders why there weren't hundreds of people who saw the airplane skimming just over the adjoining buildlings and highway without hitting so much as one of the highway signs or light poles thirty feet above the ground. The strike profile on the building looks more like a missile or drone hit it. More photographic evidence: there were no parts of a 757 at the crash site. At the Pentagon as with the WTC, evidence was removed from the scene before investigation could be properly conducted.
On and on, there are questions that have never been answered. At least not in the Official Version (and remember that there were three Official Versions of the military response to the attacks in the week after). Heck, it's possible that Dick Cheney was at the helm ordering a stand-down of Air Force interception of hijacked jets, or sending the intercept fighters the wrong direction so that they were 150 miles away when the WTC was hit.
The conservative media in the nation went on high energy to back up the Official Version. As is necessary with propaganda a term had to be assigned to the package of questions that brought up the inconsistencies of the Official Version, and thus we had 'conspiracy theory'. It worked. It makes anybody who uses the questions into nutcases, into shadowy characters who are really unpatriotic and bad.
Again, I'm trained in the sciences. If a theory exists, it will remain a theory until it's investigated and either confirmed or refuted. There has been a lot of research on the probabilities of the Official Version and the 9-11 Commission report, and has come up with a lot of inconsistencies and improbabilities. Even impossibilities. But what happened to the research? Shouldn't the exposure of what amounts to lying be a cause for concern to the American public? Lying that covers up likely government actions that resulted in the deaths of more than three thousand Americans? Lies that were further employed to start a war that to date has resulted in more than three thousand American military deaths and possibly a million Iraqi military and civilian deaths? Until I hear a credible refutation to the questions of the conspiracy theory I cannot help but think it could be true.
That the conspiracy theory has died out even with research to support it says a lot.
