The Complete No Planes on 9/11 Timeline
history of the hoax
inspired by the Complete 9/11 Timeline, the definitive research guide
to understanding what happened when
www.cooperativeresearch.org (now historycommons.org)
with assistance from From the Wilderness
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060706_questions_grave.shtml
www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/puzzlePieces.html
Extra Pieces of the Puzzle of 911 Published Passenger Lists
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001
From: John JudgeLet's just stick to the evidence, it will lead us where we need to go if we ever get to see it. For now the lack of it is enough for me. Good luck on a great puzzle. As my old pal Penn Jones used to say, "Take any one piece and research the hell out of it. It will eventually show you the whole."
Meyssan and Rumsfeld manufactured missile hoax |
The "no Boeing hit the Pentagon" claim is the most important and widespread 9/11 hoax. It was probably set up before the event since government agents seized surveillance camera videos within minutes of the crash (which is tentative evidence for foreknowledge, but not for “no plane”). It is extremely likely that the conspirators who allowed (and assisted) 9/11 would have created misdirecting hoaxes before the "attack," since they are aware that segments of the population would have suspicions about the events and therefore they would "need" to disrupt skeptical inquiry with red herrings, hoaxes, false dichotomies, etc.
The "no plane" claim is based on misrepresentation of photos taken shortly after the crash, ignoring of physical evidence and documented reports from hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw the plane.
There is NO credible, verifiable evidence in support of ANY of the many and varied "theories" pretending that Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon, and therefore, 9/11 was an inside job.
It was first floated in early October 2001 by French author Thierry Meyssan and US War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Monsieur Meyssan started a webpage that suggested a plane did not hit the Pentagon on October 7, and Rumsfeld gave an interview to Parade magazine on October 12 where he said a "missile" hit the Pentagon. That "missile" quote was then used by many no plane advocates as part of the campaign to draw attention to this claim. Meyssan went on to create the "Hunt the Boeing" website and then published two books "The Horrifying Fraud" (published in English as "9/11 The Big Lie") and Pentagate. These books have been translated into a total of 28 languages, which ensures that they are the dominant version of the claim suggesting complicity or conspiracy that is seen around the world.
On September 4, 2004, two months before the Bush / Kerry pseudo Presidential election, Parade magazine claimed that this quote was a mis-statement and the sole source for the no plane hoaxes, thus dismissing 9/11 "truth" to an audience of millions of voters.
www.pentagate.info/revue-en.html
Chronologie
Lundi 8 octobre 2001 : le Réseau Voltaire publie sur son site internet « Les mystères de l'attentat contre le Pentagone ».translation: Monday October 8, 2001 - the Voltaire Network published on its internet site “The Mysteries of the attack on the Pentagon.”
This was the first website to suggest that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon.
www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t11182001_t1012pm.html
Friday, Oct. 12, 2001
Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine
(Interview with Lyric Wallwork Winik, Parade Magazine)
Q: This is a question that's been asked by many Americans, but especially by the widows of September 11th. How were we so asleep at the switch? How did a war targeting civilians arrive on our homeland with seemingly no warning?
Rumsfeld: There were lots of warnings. The intelligence information that we get, it sometimes runs into the hundreds of alerts or pieces of intelligence a week. One looks at the worldwide, it's thousands. And the task is to sort through it and see what you can find. And as you find things, the law enforcement officials who have the responsibility to deal with that type of thing -- the FBI at the federal level, and although it is not, it's an investigative service as opposed to a police force, it's not a federal police force, as you know. But the state and local law enforcement officials have the responsibility for dealing with those kinds of issues.
They [find a lot] and any number of terrorist efforts have been dissuaded, deterred or stopped by good intelligence gathering and good preventive work. It is a truth that a terrorist can attack any time, any place, using any technique and it's physically impossible to defend at every time and every place against every conceivable technique. Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center.
www.parade.com/aol/current/columns/intelligence.html
Parade magazine, September 4, 2004
In this week's "Intelligence Report," Lyric Wallwork Winik writes that 9/11 conspiracy theories are growing and that people from all walks of life believe them. How do these theories get started? ....
The Internet, too, is a potent tool for spreading conspiracy theories. PARADE found this out after Lyric Wallwork Winik interviewed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Oct. 2001. In a transcript of Winik's interview with Rumsfeld, which was published on the Department of Defense's Web site, Rumsfeld seemed to indicate that the Pentagon was hit by a missile on 9/11 instead of a plane. It turns out that a transcription error led to the confusion, but conspiracy theorists latched onto Rumsfeld's supposed admission and spread it over the Internet.
If this was a “transcription error,” then the official Pentagon news service would not still have this quote on their website. It is likely that Rummy’s “missile” quote was bait to set up the “no plane” hoax.
The Complete "No Planes on 9/11" Timeline |
note: this timeline does not list every twist and turn of the "no plane" story, just some of the most important pieces of the puzzle
Five years of how the media highlighted hoaxes and ignored best evidence should be sufficient to show how this part of the coverup operates.
1998
Sandia National Laboratories, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, conducts
a test where a F-4 fighter plane is flown into a reinforced concrete structure
to test the impact of a plane crash into a nuclear power station containment
dome. Video
of the test shows that planes that fly at full speed into concrete shatter
into countless small parts.
September 2000
The Project for a New American Century, a neo-conservative
think tank, publishes "Rebuilding America's Defenses." This report
advocates global military dominance by the United States, but observes that
a "new Pearl Harbor" was a necessary prerequisite for this goal to
be implemented. Most of the supporters of PNAC wind up in the Bush / Cheney
administration after they steal the 2000 election. One of the authors of this
report was military industry official Dov Zakheim, whose System Planning Corporation
developed remote control transmitter systems for planes (among other products).
Mr. Zakhem was appointed Comptroller of the Pentagon (in charge of the money)
in 2001 and served through 2004.
March 4, 2001
Fox Television broadcasts the pilot episode of the Lone
Gunmen, a sequel to the X-Files show. The Lone Gunmen's plot concerns a
group of computer hackers who try to stop a terrorist attack upon a domestic
airliner that is perpetrated by a small faction in the US government under the
cover of a war game exercise. The attack, in the story, involves remote control
hijacking of a plane and flying it into the World Trade Center in order to boost
military spending. Most of the acting in this show was atrocious, which served
to associate the concepts of an inside-job terror attack using war games and
remote control with a bad science fiction television show.
Spring 2001
The National Energy Policy
Development Group (Cheney Energy Task Force) meets to plan energy policy for
the Cheney / Bush administration. While the full details of the discussions
remain secret, some of the information from the task force has been disclosed
-- and it includes lists of oil fields and corporations active in the Persian
Gulf region. Journalist Michael Ruppert hypothesized in his book "Crossing
the Rubicon" that the deepest secrets of 9/11 lie in this group's records,
since it seems obvious that they were discussing the imminence of Peak Oil,
who had the remaining oil, who needed to be bought or invaded in order to control
the oil. (9/11 was allowed to happen in order to create the pretext to grab
that oil.) One of the task force's participants was investment banker (and friend
of George W. Bush) Matthew Simmons, who has become a prominent voice urging
Corporate America to pay attention to the implications of Peak Oil.
September 10, 2001
War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld holds a press conference to admit that $2.3
trillion (not billion) is missing from the Pentagon's financial system.
This received mainstream media coverage (it is still mentioned on CBS's website)
but events the next day superceded this astonishing revelation. The Republican
media experts are skilled at burying damaging news behind other stories, or
releasing inconvenient truths in ways that they do not get the attention they
deserve.
September 11, 2001
35 minutes after the second WTC tower was hit - removing any doubt or excuse
anywhere in federal military / intelligence bureaucracy about what was going
on - Flight 77 flies into the Pentagon. The plane makes a complicated three
quarter turn spiral dive and crashes into the sector undergoing renovation to
strengthen it against terrorist attack, killing 125 people on the ground plus
everyone on the doomed plane. Some of the victims included 34 of the 65 staff
of Resource Services Washington, an Army office of civilian accountants, bookkeepers
and budget analysts. Military officials tell the media in the coming days that
they are relieved the other, less reinforced, fully staffed parts of the Pentagon
were not hit instead.
October 2, 2001
USA Today publishes an Associated Press article about remote
control Boeing planes, Remote
piloting: Solution or disaster-in-the-making? The article notes that
"technology that could prevent hijackers turning a commercial jet into a weapon — could soon be feasible. Whether it's a good idea or not is another question. Raytheon is one of several companies looking to use new satellite technology that could someday allow jets to be landed by people on the ground, in much the same way that hobbyists bring in their model airplanes by remote control. The company announced Monday that its technology had guided a Federal Express 727 to a safe landing on a New Mexico Air Force base in August — all without the need of a pilot. Raytheon says the technology, primarily designed to help navigation, could be useful in a remote landing system."
October 7, 2001
French political activist Thierry Meyssan posts a webpage claiming that no plane
hit the Pentagon on 9/11. His initial claim was that the attack involved a truck
bomb, not a plane, and the no-plane claim started off his book The Horrible
Fraud (published as 9/11 The Big Lie in English). The Horrible
Fraud was an instant best-seller in French in early 2002, and its success
led to a sequel later in 2002, Le Pentagate. These two books were translated
into 28 languages, ensuring maximum distribution around the world. (Few books
manage to be translated into more than a couple of languages.) Meyssan uses
photos taken between the impact and the collapse of the facade to base his "no
plane" claims - but the photos on his website are carefully selected, with
most of the damage to the building obscured by firefighting foam and smoke.
While it is true that the fuselage made a fuselage sized hole on the second floor of the building, the wings and engines made a much wider
hole on the ground floor (and the wingtips caused damage but not a complete
hole at the very end). Photos show that the
damage was the size and shape of a 757, thus refuting all of the no plane variations:
no plane, other plane, Global Hawk, cruise missile, plane plus missile. Most
revealing is the fact that Le Pentagate's cover highlights a photo from the
inside of the Pentagon that includes obvious plane debris, an indicator the
"no plane" claim is just a mean joke.
October 12, 2001
War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview
with Parade Magazine, uses the word “missile” to describe
what hit the Pentagon. This was probably a deliberate intent to mislead gullible
researchers. In military parlance a missile can be anything from a bullet, to
an airliner striking a building, to a real missile. The first dictionary definition
listed for missile states, “An object or weapon that is fired, thrown,
dropped, or otherwise projected at a target; a projectile.” Thus the airliners
were used as missiles and Rumsfeld’s choice of words was literally correct.
How could anyone who understands the rudiments of evidence consider that as
proof of anything? The same interviewer for Parade highlighted the "missile" mis-quote in a September 2004 article that
debunked the no-plane claim, suggesting that the whole episode was just
a carefully planted piece of bait.
Fall 2001
Remotely piloted drones - unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) are deployed in Afghanistan
and receive lots of mainstream press. There are also several mainstream articles
about remote control technologies that could be used
in the future to override hijackers, but those articles avoid the more delicate
suggestion that it might have been used on 9/11 to steer the planes. A couple
fringe websites publish stories claiming the use of remote control, but with
fanciful parallel claims that the planes were flown to deserted military bases
where the passengers were supposedly killed.
November 2, 2001
Michael Ruppert publishes timeline of 9/11 attacks, turning up early evidence of U.S. complicity by focusing on
actions by individuals, agencies, and corporations as evidenced in public media,
legal proceedings, and government documents. His publication From
the Wilderness publishes many of the best early analyses showing full foreknowledge
of the attacks. This timeline, published as "Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta
'Splainin To Do" generates a lot of controversy but its detractors avoid
the evidence that allied governments provided very specific warnings to the
U.S. government that the attacks were imminent. This timeline is later expanded
by the Center for
Cooperative Research into the Complete 9/11 Timeline (an enormous database
of over 1,000 mainstream media articles) and a book, "The Terror Timeline:
Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute."
November 25, 2001
At an annual meeting of the Coalition
on Political Assassinations, John Judge and T. Carter make a presentation
regarding 9/11 in which Carter, an AA flight attendant, claims to have recovered
from Pentagon wreckage the bracelet of a colleague killed in the crash of AA77.
November 28, 2001
Michael Ruppert makes his first speech about 9/11 at Portland State University
in Oregon before a crowd of about 1,000. He started his presentation with a
showing of the "Zapruder film" which showed that President Kennedy
was shot from the front (and therefore not by Lee Harvey Oswald) yet this piece
of "physical evidence" did not succeed in making political change
over the past four decades. This speech is the basis for the film "The
Truth and Lies of 9/11," which becomes an underground sensation. The
points highlighted in the film have not been substantially challenged, despite
a non-stop barrage of smear attacks from left gatekeepers and hardcore conspiracy theorists.
January and February, 2002
Vision TV in Toronto, Ontario airs a six-piece commentary "The
Great Deception" by journalist Barrie Zwicker. This was the first documentary
to show the now famous footage of George W. Bush reading "The Pet Goat"
to second graders after being told the second plane had crashed into the WTC
South Tower.
May 20 through June 5, 2002
Unknown News publishes a series "The
9/11 Evidence Which May Hang George Bush" by Cheryl Seal -- a comprehensive
survey of the evidence for the use of remote control on 9/11.
Spring 2002
The Pentagon releases five frames from a surveillance camera which purport to
show the crash of Flight 77. Despite the presence of countless cameras in and
near the Pentagon complex, this is the only video that is made public, and many
observers note that the sole frame that shows the plane looks like it is really
a missile, complete with an exhaust trail that is not indicative of a Boeing.
A few observers note that the Pentagon is not to be trusted and the date stamp
on the video of "September 12"
suggests that the images have been altered to boost the "no plane"
meme.
Monsieur Meyssan revises his Pentagon theory in the wake of this release and
starts promoting Rumsfeld's "missile" theory.
October 23, 2002
John Judge publishes Flight
of Fantasy: Flight 77 Didn't Hit the Pentagon, which warned that
"There is no question that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Remaining agnostic on this point also gives ammunition to the perpetrators of the stand-down and serves to discredit the other good work that continues to be done about the reality of what happened that day. It is my feeling that this thesis was actually part of an intentional disinformation campaign that spreads red herrings to discredit the real findings."
October 2002
The first edition of the "Deception Dollar"
is published with a 10,000 copy print run. They are quickly distributed at a
large peace rally in San Francisco. Over six million Deception Dollars were
printed between 2002 and 2005, but virtually no media dare to mention this campaign.
The Deception Dollars are extremely popular and easy to distribute at large
crowds, especially peace events, music festivals and other "alternative"
type gatherings. Most of the best websites on 9/11 complicity are included on
the Deception Dollars, although a few websites promoting the no plane claim
were included on each edition.
2003
Eric Hufschmid produces a movie Painful Deceptions, which claims a Global Hawk
robot plane hit the Pentagon. The facts that hundreds
of people saw the plane and that tons of plane parts were recovered were
not mentioned in the film. Absolutely no one saw a Global Hawk in the vicinity
of the Pentagon that day, and the debris did not match of Global Hawk, but that
did not prevent the film from developing a substantial following in the 9/11
truth movement. His website also promotes the idea that the moon
landing(s) did not happen, in 2006, expressed support for Holocaust
denial.
Ironically, this film helped persuade this author that the "no plane"
claim was wrong, since the film highlights Thierry Meyssan's original "truck
bomb" claim that is obvious disinformation.
2003?
A website called "webfairy" floats the idea that a plane did not hit
the WTC North Tower, probably in response to growing popularity of the Pentagon
no-plane theories. This website offers a science fiction story that a missile
really hit the WTC while masked by a giant hologram of a plane. The fact that
a lot of people saw and heard the plane (even if only one low-quality video
of it exists) is irrelevant to the campaign. While few people claim to accept
this idea, it does serve to portray 9/11 skeptics as delusional hallucinators.
Summer 2003
At least two websites (in England and Spain) float the idea that Flight 175,
which hit the South Tower, had an anomaly under the plane that they called a
"pod." This "pod" claim is supposedly
proof of plane substitution in mid-flight and therefore 9/11 was an inside job.
Few people notice that this claim exists, at least for a few months.
November 26, 2003
Michael Ruppert publishes “The
Kennedys, Physical Evidence, and 9/11,” an essay that attempts to
warn the 9/11 Truth Movement not to over-invest its energies and its credibility
in questions of physical evidence which invite sabotage by U.S. counterintelligence
programs (COINTELPRO).
March 26 to 28, 2004
The International Inquiry into 9/11 is held at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.
By most accounts, this event was a success, with most of the leaders of the
9/11 truth movement gathered into one spot to hear the best speakers and authors.
In a surreal coincidence, the partial revelations of Richard Clarke dominate
the media during the weekend of the conference. The organization 911truth.org
evolved from a strategy session held after the conference in a nearby suburb.
If government agents were monitoring the event, they probably noticed a growing
consolidation and sophistication to the 9/11 skeptics, which could have made
it difficult for the Republican Party apparatus to steal the 2004 Presidential
election.
Spring 2004
The "pod" claim gets a big boost shortly after
the San Francisco conference with promotion from a new, heavily promoted website
(letsroll911) that has a video clip purporting to show the "pod" under
the plane firing a missile at the South Tower a split second before impact.
In reality, the "pod" was merely a shaded photo of the "fairing"
bulge that connects the wing to the fuselage, nothing more than that.
Some of the "no plane" promoters begin to promote the idea that claiming
9/11 was perpetrated to provide an excuse to seize the Middle East and Central
Asia oil fields as the world reaches Peak Oil is somehow oil company propaganda.
Many of these voices echo theories developed before the understanding of plate
tectonics that petroleum is supposedly abiotic (not
the result of fossilized ancient plants) and therefore virtually unlimited.
It is likely that these twin memes (no planes on 9/11 and abiotic oil) were
promoted heavily to distract dissident opinion as the Presidential election
grew closer.
May 25 to 30, 2004
International Citizens Inquiry into 9/11 held in Toronto, Canada. No Plane theorist
Thierry Meyssan is scheduled to speak, but fails to show up. Rumors circulate
through the audience that he was supposedly missing, but later in the week participants
are told that he's fine, at home in France. More importantly, at the conclusion
of the Inquiry, Michael Ruppert gives a keynote speech where he unveils some
of his new, original research on the role of the wargames in paralyzing the air defenses on 9/11. The conference was in some ways a success,
with lots of good speakers (and a few not-so-good presentations pushing "no
planes" and "no phone calls"). However, publicity for the event
was apparently inadequate, since a very large auditorium (over 1,000 seats)
was rented but only slightly more than 100 people attended the final plenary
sessions. This resulted in the organizers being deeply in debt and vulnerable
to those offering money to promote the no-plane claims.
May 26, 2004
Democracy Now! holds a debate between David
Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor, and professional anti-conspiracist Chip Berlet. Griffin began his presentation focusing
on several compelling claims for complicity, but Berlet and host Amy Goodman
steered the discussion toward the no-plane and demolition claims, placing Griffin
on the defensive. The issues of the warnings and the Air Force non-response
got drowned out by this shift in focus, and the war games information was completely
ignored.
July 2004
A website for the film In Plane Site is posted by the Power Hour, a right wing fundamentalist internet radio show
in Missouri. OilEmpire.US posts a rebuttal to some of the claims on that website
and is attacked "for not having seen the film." The primary thesis
of the website and the film is the discredited "pod"
claim, but the film also promotes "Pentagon Missile" and a video montage
claiming a dust cloud from the South Tower collapse was really a large explosion
at the base of the towers (among other false claims). The only 9/11 "truth"
website mentioned in the film is LetsRoll911.
The front cover of the film includes a photo posted to the 9/11 Truth Alliance
e-mail discussion list in May 2004 debunking the "pod" claim as merely
a photo of the normal "fairing" under the fuselage connecting the
wings to the plane's body -- suggesting that the film's makers were subtly indicating
that the film is disinformation, a bad joke hidden
in plain sight.
late summer 2004
A short video Pentagon Strike is
published on the internet. It is only a few minutes long and focuses solely
on the no-plane claims, avoiding the more controversial and absurd pod nonsense
(which never was as popular as the Pentagon missile claim). It was a very successful
piece of propaganda and supposedly has millions of viewers around the world.
Pentagon Strike quotes eyewitnesses out of context to imply they saw a missile
(when all of them actually reported seeing a twin engine jet). Even more outrageous,
it superimposes some of this text over pictures of the impact zone, making it
impossible to see the ground floor damage that was the width of the plane.
September 4, 2004
Parade Magazine runs an article attacking 9/11 conspiracy
theories, claiming they are based solely on a transcription error in Parade's
October 2001 interview of Donald Rumsfeld (which suggests Parade's alleged misquote
of Rumsfeld was used deliberately to help create the no plane hoax).
September 9, 2004
The Citizens Commission on 9/11 holds a hearing in New York City. This event
is chaired by Representative Cynthia McKinney,
and includes Michael
Ruppert, Paul
Thompson, John Judge, Indira Singh, Jenna
Orkin, Kyle Hence, Barrie
Zwicker, Nicholas Levis and others. Each of the presenters were at their
very best, and the program included some of the most compelling testimoney to
date while avoiding the various no plane hoaxes. (Those speakers who still believe
in "no Pentagon plane" did not mention this belief during their presentations.)
This event was turned into a DVD that received virtually no promotion by the
9/11 Truth Movement or even by the speakers who made their presentations.
In 2005, the sponsors of the In Plane Site film (which promoted the "no plane" hoax) created a booklet also called
Citizens Commission on 9/11 that promoted the no plane claim but did not mention
this event, making it even more difficult for 9/11 skeptics to learn that this
event happened.
September 11, 2004
Millionaire Jimmy Walter sponsors "Confronting the Evidence" in New
York City. This event includes authors and investigators who have done excellent
work documenting the lies in the official story, but also includes the narrator
of In Plane Site. At that event, Walter reportedly told a mainstream media editor
who attended the event (who had come to think that there was truth to the 9/11
truth movement) that the twin towers were destroyed by nuclear explosives -
and this editor declined to further investigate the issues after hearing this
assertion. Walter claims to have distributed hundreds of thousands of free DVDs
of this event. No one has offered to make similar quantities of the Citizens
Commission on 9/11 DVD, perhaps because the no-plane claims were absent from
that footage.
September 13, 2004
CIA veteran Robert Baer reviews David Ray Griffin's "New Pearl Harbor"
for The Nation and focuses on "no plane"
claim to discredit the entire topic of inquiry.
September 17, 2004
The white-supremacist publication American Free
Press writes an article claiming the plane crash
in Pennsylvania did not happen (which ignores the fact that a lot of people
saw the plane and debris from the plane was scattered over eight miles, implying
that it was actually shot down). With this article all four plane crashes have
campaigns to deny that they happened.
Around this time, the American Free Press's sibling publication Barnes Review,
which is more focused on Holocaust denial, publishes an editorial that Hitler
supposedly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Most of the blatant neo-Nazi propaganda
is "segregated" to the Barnes publication, but American Free Press
and Barnes are the same operation, sharing staff and office space. These efforts
work closely, by their own admission, with KKK leader David Duke and other hard
core racists.
October 1, 2004
New Society Publishers releases Michael C. Ruppert’s Crossing
the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.
This book is the most complete, early, logical and legally actionable case against
American authorities – chiefly Dick Cheney – for complicity in the
9/11 attacks. It made almost no reference to the physical evidence issues, precisely
because they are so easily distorted. The book quickly becomes an underground
best seller even though no mainstream newspaper, magazine, radio show or television
talk show dares to cover it. While many mainstream media organizations order
copies, none mention it, not even to attack its allegations.
October 7, 2004
In response to the growing popularity of 9/11 truth and the book "New Pearl
Harbor" in particular, the CIA-linked Washington
Post publishes “Conspiracy Theories Flourish on the Internet.” This article "sandwiches" a book review of New Pearl Harbor in-between
the authors of Pentagon Strike, who are a group of people who who claim to talk
to alien beings in other dimensions from their European palace. The article
does not mention that there are any other claims in New Pearl Harbor beyond
"no plane hit the Pentagon." New Pearl Harbor was the first "9/11
Truth" book to receive critical acclaim from liberal voices who had previously
avoided these topics (such as historian Howard Zinn), so the Post felt it necessary
to discredit it just before the alleged Presidential election.
March 2005
Popular Mechanics, a division of the Hearst
Corporation, published "9/11 Lies," a cover story claiming to debunk
9/11 skepticism. The article leads with the "pod" claim, promotes
In Plane Site and LetsRoll911, highlights the "no-plane" straw man.
The article failed to mention Crossing the Rubicon or the Complete 9/11 Timeline,
and ignored the issues of the war games and the motivations (to create a pretext
to grab Middle East oil fields).
2005
Morgan Reynolds, chief economist for
the Labor Department in 2001 and 2002, publishes an article on LewRockwell.com
claiming that none of the plane crashes happened on 9/11 (which makes the no plane hit Pentagon claim seem almost sane in comparison) and promoting the demolition theory. The only
media institution that picks up this story is the Rev. Moon media empire (Washington
Times and UPI), but it becomes widely spread on the internet ("Bush official
says 9/11 was an inside job" was a compelling meme to many, despite the
absurdities sprinkled throughout his article). Eventually the Boulder Weekly
runs a follow-up story about Reynolds' claims, but ignores the wargames and
does not mention the flaws in the no plane claims.
Spring 2005
Jimmy Walter has a tour of several European countries with 9/11 truth activists,
a mix of those who've done excellent research and writing but also Monsieur
Meyssan and the lead journalist for the American
Free Press (the largest Holocaust Denial publication in the United States).
A 9/11 truth activist who complained about the presence of a white supremacist
publication was dis-invited from the tour.
July 2005
The US State Department posts "Identifying Misinformation,"
a guide to 9/11 claims that promotes the no plane claim while ignoring the issues
of the warnings and the wargames.
summer 2005
The first edition of the movie Loose Change is released. It promotes "Flight 77 did not hit Pentagon" and the
WTC "pod" plane. The second edition, released a few months later drops
the pod claim but adds the "no plane crash in Pennsylvania" hoax.
November 2005
Professor Steven Jones of Brigham Young University self-publishes a technical
paper examining arguments for demolition of the twin towers and concludes they
have validity. Separately, Jones states that In Plane Site alienated him from
looking at the issues of 9/11 complicity and does not believe the no plane claims.
In response, James Fetzer, a philosophy professor and conspiracist in Minnesota
creates a group called Scholars for Truth about
9/11, which ostensibly has Jones as a co-chair. The "Scholars"
website promotes the least scholarly claims and avoids mention of websites,
books and movies that stress the best evidence. Jones reports that he has no
control over the material on the website and gets abuse from prominent no-plane
supporters who berate him for disagreement with their claims.
December 27, 2005
From the Wilderness publishes contributing writer Mark Robinowitz article “‘Identifying
Misinformation’: The State Department’s Rosetta Stone for understanding
9/11 disinformation promotes 9/11 conspiracy hoaxes while ignoring Crossing
the Rubicon and other authentic investigations.” This article focuses
on the reverse psychology used by the State Department and other defenders of
the official story who highlight the false claims (no planes) and ignore the
best evidence.
January 2006
The group 911truth.org publishes a statement that claims people saw a missile
hit the Pentagon while waiting for a train in the Pentagon metro station. However,
this train station is underground, something that is immediately obvious to
anyone with experience with the DC Metro system (which presumably does not include
the editors who screen statements for posting to 911truth.org).
February 21, 2006
The Village Voice profiles the 9/11 Truth Movement
in a negative article focused on the “no-plane” story. Again, there
is no mention of Crossing the Rubicon even though the Village Voice is known
to have obtained at least one copy. In 2004, the Village Voice wrote a sympathetic
profile of the Complete 9/11 Timeline, but in 2006 the paper was bought by more
conservative publishers.
March 20, 2006
In an interview by radio host Alex Jones, Charlie Sheen disputes the 9/11 Commission
Report on grounds that include the no-plane hypothesis.
March 25, 2006
Sheen makes similar claims on CNN Headline News’ “Showbiz Tonight.”
March 29, 2006
San
Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford writes about 9/11 skepticism,
promoting the Loose Change film the day before David Ray Griffin gives a presentation
in Oakland to a large audience. Morford's sly pseudo-support for the issue does
not mention that Griffin is going to give a presentation. A previous Morford
column on 9/11 before the 2004 election also purported to support the inquiries
yet directed readers to websites that promote the no plane hoax and other discredited
assertions while avoiding the best websites stressing provable evidence.
April 21, 2006
Divorce court proceedings appear in the news, accusing Sheen of dangerous mental
instability and an addiction to pornographic images of “very young girls.”
The stories about Sheen proliferate through the major media for several days.
April 29, 2006
USA Today reviews “no-plane” based
film “Loose Change,” which its supporters
think is a breakthrough accomplishment for the 9/11 truth movement. In reality,
several USA Today reporters and editors saw Flight 77 while they were commuting
to work on 9/11 (the USA Today building is not far from the Pentagon) and they
presumably know that Loose Change is promoting fake claims (and some real ones).
The article began by profiling a somewhat rude participant in the "truth"
movement in the San Francisco area, which suggests that the media is watching
the truth movement closely in order to highlight its weakest points.
May 16, 2006
The Pentagon releases images which it claims are proof that a Boeing 757 did indeed hit the Pentagon, discrediting
the large portion of the 9/11 Truth Movement that had embraced the “no-plane”
hypothesis.
May 19, 2006
From the Wilderness publishes “It’s
the Timing, Not the Film: New Frames from Pentagon Crash Video Show Langley
Embarrassing the 9/11 Truth Movement.”
June 5, 2006
The New York Times publishes a long profile
of the 911truth.org conference in Chicago that promotes Loose Change and ignores
the issues of the warnings and wargames.
July 2006
C-Span runs film of the June 2006 Alex Jones "Scholars" event in Los
Angeles that was yet another mix of real evidence and nonsense. C-Span has not
run video of the Citizens Commission on 9/11 nor the June 2002 Unanswered Questions
press conference at the National Press Club. It is unlikely they will show footage
of anyone stressing the issues of the warnings and wargames who avoid"no
planes."
August 9, 2006
National Public Radio Morning
Edition profiles Loose Change plus a professional
anti-conspiracist. NPR's webpage for this story links to Loose Change, the State Department and Popular Mechanics - no mention that many 9/11 truth activists understand that
most of Loose Change is not real
September 11, 2006
For the fifth anniversary, a massive onslaught against 9/11 truth was spread
throughout many media mouthpieces. Time, The Washington
Post, MSNBC, Democracy Now!, San Francisco Chronicle, the London Guardian, Telegraph
(UK) and others ran profiles of the 9/11 truth movement that all focused on
the "no plane" hoaxes and demolition theories while avoiding serious
examination of the military and intelligence wargames,
suppressed warnings from allies, suppressed FBI
agents who tried to stop the attacks, the Peak Oil and police state motivations to allow the attacks,
and the subsequent anthrax attacks on the Democratic
leadership and the media.