Towers of Deception

Media & 9/11

exposes half of the media’s role in the 9/11 coverup
misses media strategy to highlight hoaxes to avoid best evidence

on this page:

 

An important examination of the media suppression of 9/11 truth - one of the most important issues of our time.
It is curious that it avoids the media campaign to focus on strawman false claims of complicity that avoid (or discredit) the best evidence.
The author was the narrator for the documentary "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream" yet does not mention the suggestion that 9/11 was allowed to happen (and/or engineered) in order to provide the excuse to grab Middle East oil fields as the world approaches Peak Oil.
Hopefully the second edition will mention that truth-seeking on these issues is a two front war: confronting both the "limited hang outs" and the no-planes disinformation in order to focus on reality.

 

summary

Barrie Zwicker’s book Towers of Deception focuses on one of the most critical issues of our times - how the media helped coverup the truths about 9/11. It exposes several ways that corporate media - and even some "alternative" publications - went out of their way to ignore gigantic problems with the 9/11 official story. This self-censorship was one of the key factors that made the US invasion of Iraq possible, since if the scandal had been adequately exposed there could not have been needed public support for the current wars.

Towers has the potential to be incredible in its second edition.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of errors in the first edition of "Towers," some small, some huge.

Towers does not mention the issue of petroleum supplies or Peak Oil as a motivation for allowing / enabling / organizing the 9/11 attacks, which is an astounding oversight from the narrator of "End of Suburbia" and New Society, publisher of many of the best books on the topic of Peak Oil. Barrie Zwicker's first film The Great Deception (January / February 2002) had an episode highlighting the importance of petroleum decline as a motivation to create a pretext to invade the Middle East oil fields.

Towers of Deception ignores the fact that since 2004 the media has begun to focus on the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement - to focus on the false claims to avoid the best evidence. Nearly every mainstream publication has run articles focusing on the alternative explanations, sometimes in front page stories, a development undercuts the thesis of “Towers," since the media is now giving lots of attention to the cause of “9/11 Truth.” The Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, Popular Mechanics, CNN, C-Span, Fox, Parade, National Public Radio and many others have focused on 9/11 truth, but their coverage has not been a compliment. These media institutions are following a predictable pattern: highlight the strawmen claims and bypass mention of the best evidence.

Ideally, the second edition of "Towers" will mention the "two front war" aspect of 9/11 truthseeking. The best evidence lies in between the limited hang outs (fall back to the official story) and the increasingly wild nonsense claims (no planes at all on 9/11).

Towers also contains false promotion of the "no plane crash at Pentagon" and even "no plane crash in Pennsylvania" memes, which are remarkably incorrect. It even gives credence to the (false) claim that "no phone calls" were made on 9/11 from the planes, which was a brilliant tactic to ensure that the 9/11 family members would be hesitant to work cooperatively with the independent investigators. The footnote referencing this assertion references independent investigator Jim Hoffman's website (despite the fact this website points out the claim is not "truth") and that Mr. Dewdney, the sole source for this accusation, allegedly proved airphones (which definitely do work in planes) were not used (without mentioning even a scintilla of evidence for this extraordinary claim). A careful fact checking review would have screened this and other falsehoods from the final draft.

Curiously, New Society's Judith Plant told this reviewer that they understand the "no plane" claims are not real yet was unable to explain how they passed a fact checking process. (Disclaimer: New Society rejected my book proposal, but this review is not directly correlated to this rejection. The facts speak for themselves, even if they are ignored by the "no plane" and the "no conspiracy" points of view.)

 

Zwicker timeline

The Great Deception, January - February, 2002

Barrie Zwicker's film The Great Deception was a six part television commentary for Vision TV of Toronto that was the first documentary to highlight the video of George W. Bush reading to second graders after he was told the second tower was hit (Great Deception aired more than two years before Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11). The transcript of the film is reposted at www.oilempire.us/great-deception.html
Great Deception was an amazing profile of the basic issues of complicity, one of the earliest serious efforts to document the truth behind the official story. It is a nice compliment to Michael Ruppert's November 2001 speech recorded in the film The Truth and Lies of 9/11. The only problem with Great Deception is the argument that there was a "stand down" order -- when the effect of a "stand down" was more likely paralysis induced by multiple, overlapping war game exercises by parts of the military and intelligence services that morning. The follow-up film Great Conspiracy: the 9/11 News Special You Never Saw discussed this deeper understanding (which was not publicly known that soon after the events).

The psychological trick at the heart of September 11th, by the way, is that people confuse their compassion for the victims with their certainty about who the perpetrators are. The public was presented with instant perpetrators. The trick will most likely continue working for all future planned invasions – looks as if Iraq is next – so long as the public remains blindfolded by the media.
-- Great Deception, Episode 4

 

Reichstag Fire analogy, April 2003

Zwicker made these comments on April 21, 2003 at the premier showing of "Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11" in San Francisco, California.

My offering is that 9/11 was what the anarchist Bakunin called "the propaganda of the act." That it was "Reichstag Fire 2001." That it was the greatest deception of its kind ever foisted. And that's saying something, in light of the long and totally-neglected history of this kind of war-triggering deception perpetrated by powerful special interests to sway public opinion in favour of deadly agendas that almost always result in serious grief for just about everyone.
My offering is that 9/11 was arranged to jump start the so-called war on terrorism, which in turn is the cover and heat exchanger for hot wars, these being the toxic tip of the machinery for world domination. At the levers is a clique of neocons that has hijacked this country's foreign policy at the behest largely and to the benefit mainly of Big Arms and Big Oil, with the rest of the worst at the top, giving the thumbs-up and boarding the gravy train.

 

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, 2004

Barrie Zwicker was the narrator for the critically acclaimed 2004 documentary The End of Suburbia, a feature length film about Peak Oil. This film was probably the first focused on this subject, and was relatively successful for an independent film tackling controversial topics. (It has been shown in numerous movie theaters, church basements, university classrooms, living rooms, neighborhood association meetings and many other locations.)

The first public showing of End of Suburbia was a short excerpt at the March 2004 International 9/11 Inquiry in San Francisco. The full film debuted at the International Citizens' Inquiry in Toronto two months later. While End of Suburbia does not discuss the details of 9/11 complicity, it does feature Mike Ruppert discussing the global situation of Peak Oil that was a primary motivation for allowing (and assisting) the attacks.

 

International Citizens' Inquiry into 9/11, May 2004

Zwicker was primary organizer of the International Citizens' Inquiry into 9/11, held May 25 to 30, 2006 in Toronto. The event was a mix of success and failure, great speakers, low turnout and not much political visibility (at least on the surface). Some of the best writers and investigators on these issues made presentations (which were recorded for future dissemination). Perhaps the high point of the Inquiry was Michael Ruppert's presentation toward the end of the week about the role of the military and intelligence war games on 9/11 which included new information that he had uncovered through careful investigatory journalism.

However, Ruppert's presentation (and the other speakers who spoke on the weekend) was made to a small audience in a very large auditorium (Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto), and without any media coverage. Many in the audience were privately sad (and embarrassed?) to see a huge hall virtually empty despite the tremendous importance of the topics. One of the speakers, John Gray, has written books that sold millions of copies (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus), and presumably would have attracted a large crowd had there been adequate publicity about the event. The weekday presentations were in a much smaller location that would have been adequate for the weekend plenary conclusion session. Perhaps the low turnout was merely a case of Canadians being less directly interested or affected by the 9/11 issues. Perhaps it was a consequence of expensive tickets for the whole event, but one-day-only tickets were reasonably priced given the size of the event. Perhaps it was someone working surreptitiously to ensure that the Inquiry would be a money-losing event by renting the largest possible location and then "forgetting" to adequately publicize it. Whatever the cause(s) of the low turnout, the conference was deeply in debt afterwards.

 

www.museumofhoaxes.com/tuck.html
Dick Tuck
Dick Tuck was a legendary political hoaxer who made a career out of making life miserable for Richard Nixon.
In 1950 both Nixon and Tuck were near the start of their careers. Nixon was running for a California senate seat against democratic opponent Helen Gagahan Douglas, and Tuck was working for Douglas's campaign.
Nixon was running an extremely dirty campaign, making every effort to portray his opponent as a communist-sympathizer. This red-bashing had already worked successfully for him in a 1946 congressional race against the democrat Jerry Voorhis, and had propelled him to national fame as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Tuck decided that he would undermine Nixon by getting himself hired as a campaign worker in Nixon's campaign, where he would secretly operate as a mole for Douglas.
As a campaign worker for Nixon, Tuck was responsible for organizing campaign rallies. He organized one such rally at UC Santa Barbara, and he booked the largest auditorium possible. However, he purposefully booked it on a day that few students would be able to attend, and then he barely publicized it at all. Therefore, when Nixon showed up to speak there were only 40 students waiting to hear him in a 4000 seat auditorium.

 

Citizens Commission on 9/11, September 9, 2004

Barrie Zwicker was a participant in the Citizens Commission on 9/11, an all day event in New York City chaired by Representative Cynthia McKinney. This forum highlighted most of the best investigators and commentators on 9/11 issues, including Michael Ruppert, John Judge, Michael Springman, Indira Singh, Jenna Orkin, Nicholas Levis and others. A DVD video of this event is probably the single best, most comprehensive presentation on these issues that will ever be made - everyone involved was at their best. However, few 9/11 truth activists chose to promote awareness of this video footage, and it languishes in obscurity.

A transcript from the event is at http://911citizenswatch.org/September-Hearings.pdf

free downloads of the Citizens Commission event are at
911busters.com/911-Commission.html
911 busters has a lot of great information on line, but it also pushes the no plane hoax (so be careful!).

The DVD can be ordered at www.911truth.org/store/dvd34.htm

The Citizens Commission forum should not be confused with "Confronting the Evidence" - an event in New York City on September 11, 2004 that mixed good and bogus material (a DVD of that event is being pushed by reopen911.org, a hoax site trying to hijack the 9/11 truth issue with fake claims).

Hoaxers involved with the film "In Plane Site" created a booklet in mid-2005 purporting to be the "9/11 Citizens Commission" although their booklet does not mention the September 9, 2004 event and pushes the "no plane hit Pentagon" hoax.

 

The Great Conspiracy: the 9/11 News Special You Never Saw, Fall 2004

The Great Conspiracy was a sequel to The Great Deception. It was a much more polished production than the first film, yet never received much attention from the media or even much of the 9/11 truth movement. A free copy of the DVD is included with each copy of Towers of Deception.

Hopefully, a future version will remove the short segment showing a photoshopped image purporting to be evidence that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon.

 

Jimmy Walter 9/11 truth "megatour" with white supremacist publication, June - July, 2005

In 2005, Zwicker was invited on a 9/11 truth "megatour" through several European countries with millionaire Jimmy Walter, who has spent many millions promoting "no plane hit the Pentagon." Most of the other speakers who were selected for the tour were excellent writers -- but a couple of people promoting nonsense were also included in the mix (apart from the fact that Walter's "reopen911" website had highlighted the claim that "nukes blew up the towers"). The worst offender against "truth" on the tour was Christopher Bollyn of the white supremacist American Free Press, whose Barnes Review subsidiary claims the Holocaust was a hoax and Hitler deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. American Free Press works closely (by their own admission) with KKK leader David Duke, who is not known for his accuracy or compassion.

It was curious that a leftist dissident who eloquently describes the parallels between the Reichstag Fire and 9/11 would be part of an international speaking tour that included a famous Holocaust denial publication. A fellow invitee to the tour who raised objections to the inclusion of white supremacy was disinvited from the tour. None of the other speakers made public statements about avoiding neo-Nazi newspapers spewing a mix of real evidence and hoaxes.

 

911truth.org Chicago conference, May 2006

"We should always have mutual respect among ourselves when we're discussing anything... because then it's not so easy for someone to sow discord in our midst. We should never engage... in name-calling... there's a certain person who says, 'Anyone who says that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon is a 'hoaxter'.' ... the more of us who do not call names the more the name-callers will stand out like sore thumbs."
www.911blogger.com/2006/07/barrie-zwicker-on-agents-of-state_01.html

 

In reality, most of the people who still believe in any of the "no plane" claims are sincere -- but that sincerity does not make them any less wrong in their assertions.

None of the activists, writers, investigators, eyewitnesses, etc. who point out this claim is wrong argue for Zwicker's assertion that "anyone who says a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon is a hoaxer."

However, the ORIGIN of this claim was a deliberate hoax from Donald Rumsfeld, even if most of those who promote it have merely swallowed the bait without double-checking the facts.

 

Barrie Zwicker and From the Wilderness

www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/091106_official_conspiracy.shtml
I know Barrie Zwicker and respect him greatly.
While FTW and Barrie have parted company in regards to what we feel is and is not the best evidence to prove official U.S. government complicity in the crimes of 9/11, my hat goes off to the man for recently recognizing the incredible importance of Mike Ruppert’s work with respect to the crimes of 9/11.
So many individuals investigating 9/11 who once held Mike in high esteem have completely turned their backs on him – and FTW – because we hold a different position regarding what hit the Pentagon and the dangers of relying on physical evidence in 9/11 investigations. It’s good to see that Barrie remembers who was there first, and best.
Barrie has also educated people on the dangerous reality of Peak Oil, and there is no more valuable service to the world that a media critic can provide. – Michael Kane]

THE OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY IS THE BIGGEST CONSPIRACY, By Barry Zwicker
[Originally published at: www.commonground.ca/iss/0609182/cg182_Zwicker.shtml

Michael C. Ruppert, although he has, unfortunately, made some negative and unnecessary remarks about the 9/11 truth movement, remains a giant of the movement in my eyes nevertheless. He was about the earliest out of the gate, and when he spoke in Toronto in January of 2002, he pried my eyes open much wider than they were at that time. He connected the dots between the CIA, Wall Street, the illegal drug trade, corruption in the US government and 9/11. I believe his video, Truth and Lies of 9/11, was the first of its kind, based on a talk he gave in Portland, Oregon, in November 2001. He now focuses almost exclusively on Peak Oil and again, not only was he early on that, but he has also helped boost the visibility of the coming end of the age of oil, which will be civilization-shaking.

 

note: the allegedly "negative remarks" pointed out how the movement got diverted into speculation. It is difficult to understand how Zwicker's 2006 book did not mention Peak Oil at all, given the fact that New Society publishes more books about Peak Oil than any other publisher, and Barrie's narration of the film End of Suburbia shows he has an excellent understanding of the topic and its role as a motivation for 9/11.

Curiously, the profiles of 9/11 truth activists in Towers of Deception did not include Michael Ruppert's work, which is curious considering that he actually did original investigative reporting, unlike most of the other activists mentioned in two page profiles in the book.

 

conversation between Barrie Zwicker and Emanuel Sferios, 9/11 Visibility Project

from Emanuel Sferios:

Hi Barry,
Thanks for responding. I knew you would eventually. And thanks for reading my long email. It took a long time for me two write.
Now I'm thinking we should have a phone conversation, because I just realized you've never *really* heard the argument of those of us who believe Flight 77 did, in fact, hit the Pentagon. Your email indicates you aren't really following our line of thought here.
Please let me quickly respond to some of your comments, but then I'd really like to talk to you about it when you have some time to pay attention.

Barrie:
how could Hani Hanjour, denied the right to rent a Cessna, have piloted a giant airliner at ground level after coming out of a 270-degree spin descent.

Emanuel:
Of course Hanjour didn't pilot the plane. All the planes were being operated by remote control. Nobody disagrees about this.

Barrie:
If it was a Boeing, why doesn't the Pentagon release a picture or two showing -- or alleging to show -- the airliner?

Emanuel:
Because they are purposefully trying to make the 9/11 truth movement look foolish, especially in the eyes of folks in the DC area, many of whom saw the plane hit themselves, and/or have relatives/friends who saw the plane hit. If they released clear images of the airliner, the 9/11 truth movement would stop believing the kooky missile theory, and we might start focusing more on remote-control, the wargames, and other issues that would improve our credibility.

Here's a quote from Jeff Wells who runs the Rigorouos Intuition blog, explaining it another way:

"... consider the Pentagon crash, and the confiscation of the video from the service station security camera. That the video has never been released is regarded by many as damning evidence that authorities are trying to hide the true nature of the crash: that the video must reveal that it wasn't Flight 77 but a missile, or a fighter jet. But think: perhaps the video remains hidden because some people are quite happy to mindfuck the conspiracists and perpetuate an erroneous line of inquiry. Would they want to lay to rest a mistaken hypothesis, when it misdirects the efforts of so many? It may be that the question is not What have they got to hide? but rather, Why do they want us to think that they're hiding something?"

That said, there *are* in fact clear photos of flight 77 plane wreckage inside the Pentagon. Here they are:

http://rense.com/general32/phot.htm

Barrie:
Re the "DC professionals..." I need to know who exactly they are. DC is filled with operators.

Emanuel:
You're missing the point here. The idea is that the perpetrators of 9/11 are promoting the "no plane" theory in order to make us look bad in the eyes of others, and especially professionals in the DC area, because these are the people that matter the most. Congresspeople, senators, their staff, prosecuters, judges, etc. These are the people who might be able to bring enough political clout to the issue to get a real investigation, and so what better way to make sure that these people don't listen to us than by making them think that we believe no plane hit the Pentagon, when they saw it themselves, or their relatives and friends did, because hundreds of people saw it.
Do you understand what we're saying now? It's a psyop. Many good people have fallen for it (like I did for years), but it is part and parcel of the whole campaign to muddy the waters and make us look bad.
I hope you now see that our rational powers are not in doubt here. The argument has all along been much more simple and rational than I think you have realized. It's too easy to dismiss the argument quickly, assuming that those who believe that flight 77 hit the Pentagon must believe the official story. Heck no! The plane that hit the Pentagon was being flown by remote control! Hanjour could never have flown it.
Ok I didn't mean for this email to be so long. I really think it's better if we have a conversation about it. So many nuances get lost in email, which has clearly happened many times around this issue.
... And again, this is only important to me because you are so important to me. Honestly I have lost hope for justice around 9/11. I don't think it's going to make a bit of difference now whether you and everyone suddenly realized the "no plane" theories are psyop campaigns. But I do think it will enhance your own understanding of how we have all been manipulated, and this I feel I owe to you, since you have been such an inspiration to me.

 

detailed review of Towers of Deception

Here is a detailed review of the excellent points and mistakes in "Towers" that show how many sincere leaders of the 9/11 Truth Movement have been steered into traps.

 

pp. vi - vii

"What is your take on the events of 9/11?"

"The Four-Box 9/11 Questionnaire" ....

Box 1 equates to the Official Story of 9/11
Box 2 equates to The Incompetence Theory
Box 3 equates to the Let It Happen On Purpose (or LIHOP) theory and
Box 4 equates to The Inside Job theory, or Made It Happen On Purpose (MIHOP) theory.

 

This list of four scenarios overlooks a hybrid perspective -- the attacks were allowed to happen and then given technical assistance to ensure that they did happen. Clearly, there is overwhelming evidence that the attacks were deliberately allowed to happen (LIHOP), but LIHOP alone is an inadequate explanation. However, claiming that it was completely a Bush-Cheney conspiracy is also not probably correct (see "Peeling the Onion," archived at www.oilempire.us/qaeda.html for an intriguing theory of how the various players were manipulated). LIHOP alone does not explain the "coincidence" of the military / intelligence war game exercises that morning which apparently confused the air defenses, nor how Flight 77 flew into the nearly empty, recently reconstructed and strengthened sector of the Pentagon (which suggests some sort of remote control / computer piloting system was used).

The hybrid scenario (allowed to happen and given technical assistance) could be called "Hijacking the Hijackers with remote control," and it is the closest parallel to the Reichstag Fire that Zwicker repeatedly cites. Here are a few summaries that explain this paradigm:

www.oilempire.us/understanding.html
A hybrid scenario that fits the known evidence is "hijacking the hijackers."In this view, the hijackers were allowed to finish their preparations, board the planes, hijack the controls but then remote control technology was used to ensure that the planes not only completed their missions but also did not strike targets that would have caused even more damage. Flight 11, the first hijacked plane, flew over Indian Point nuclear power station, just north of New York City (an attack there would have been much, much worse than 9/11). And if Flight 77 had hit any other part of the Pentagon, thousands of people could have been killed. This hybrid scenario is speculative, but remote control flight technology is commercially available.

from Nicholas Levis, summeroftruth.org:
"Staging 9/11 as an inside job is going to work best (in fact, is likely to work only) if there actually exists an active network of anti-American terrorists who are deeply committed to killing Americans in response to U.S. policy. In other words, those who would blame Qaeda need a (relatively) real Qaeda. A partly-real enemy is much better than an entirely fabricated one.
"The most robust way for insider masterminds to stage 9/11 and get away with it is to arrange for their agents to infiltrate among "real foreign terrorists." Let them come up with their own plots (or plant plots among them), choose a plot that will produce the results desired by the masterminds, and see that through to fruition. At some point, the masterminds and their agents will hijack the plot from the would-be hijackers, to make sure it happens. You won't risk the whole game on the ability of amateurs to get away with it, you will help them along or even replace them (with a remote control hijacking, for example). But it's best to have "real terrorists" in play. They leave a more solid trail of evidence internationally. Cops and agents and academics of two dozen countries can honestly confirm the existence of an al-Qaeda network. That way there is less need to initiate outside observers into the plot and you don't have to hope they are all stupid, as they would have to be to fall for a complete fabrication of "Qaeda." (Qaeda at this point is just a term of convenience for the Islamist extremist networks.)
"The best result would be for a whole bunch of Islamist extremists running around believing that their crew pulled off 9/11 all by themselves (how inspiring for them!). The patsies should believe they actually did it. This was the case with the Reichstag Fire and Marinus van der Lubbe: the patsy believed he had done it."

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/10/skinny-on-osama.html
I've long thought that if we assume a decision had been taken to let it happen, then we should expect that measures were be taken to ensure it happened precisely as desired, and spectacularly so. With so much at stake, nothing would be left to the skill and luck of the 19 hijackers. Flight 77's 270 degree turn to hit the ground floor of the virtually unoccupied side of the Pentagon, while supposedly piloted by the grossly incompetent Hani Hanjour, is the most striking example. The recent report that the WTC black boxes were recovered after all, is suggestive of the same: that the data conflicted somehow with the received fiction. Perhaps the hijackers were themselves hijacked.

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/07/more-on-london-bombs.html
Friday, July 08, 2005
More on London bombs:
I prefer the hybrid model for all these attacks, by which I mean the involvement of real Islamic terrorists guided by an intelligence agency. The intelligence agency funds much of the operation, chooses the targets and the time, and provides technical assistance. The Islamic terrorists provide most of the manpower. In some cases the terrorists are completely fooled into participating (probably what happened in Madrid, a Spanish police operation with Muslim men tricked into being in the wrong place at the wrong time), and in some cases they go along with the promptings of the intelligence agency as the operation fits into their own agenda.


p. 25

Towers lists a number of claims for complicity that are correct, but there are two pieces of bait included in the rest of the mix.

The claim that "pull it" is a synonym for "demolish" in the demolition industry is not true -- Larry Silverstein's widely forwarded statement that they made a decision to "pull" Building 7 was just a nice piece of bait to lure the 9/11 truth activists and distract from much better evidence about the collapse of WTC 7 that is not subject to linguistic interpretations.

Towers alleges that "all pictures of the Pentagon after teh event showed a hole much smaller than would be made by a 757." However, this claim has been debunked ever since it was first alleged (even debunked by 9/11 truth activists!). The photos taken shortly after the impact clearly show (if you look) damage on the ground floor as wide as the wings (which is where they hit). The engines and bulkier parts of the wings gouged out a hole, the wingtips merely damaged the outside of the facade -- but the full impact on the building matches the cross section of a 757. The section that was struck had been reinforced during the previous three years, which is why the building largely withstood the impact for the first half-hour or so.

Towers notes that the WTC steel was rushed out of the country, stating that "an examination of that steel would show whether it had been exposed to demolition explosives." Other commentators have suggested an alternative explanation for the tampering with the physical evidence - the alleged substandard construction of the building was in part responsible for the collapse, and covering up that scandal would have been sufficient motivation to literally shred the evidence. There are some compelling claims for demolition, but some compelling claims against it, too -- and the demolition theories are for many reasons not the best evidence for complicity.


p. 29

"David Ray Griffin's New Pearl Harbor has been reviewed to his knowledge by only two daily newspapers in the English-speaking world, The Vancouver Sun and the conservative Daily Mail of London."

 

In March 2005, the last time I talked with Barrie Zwicker in person, I asked him if he had read the October 7, 2004 Washington Post review of New Pearl Harbor -- which focused solely on the "no plane" claims and ignored the rest of the book. He replied that he was not familiar with it. Despite sending the article via email to him shortly afterwards, the fact of this review was not mentioned here in the book. It seems obvious that the Washington Post, which has extensive ties to official Washington, focused on the false part of the book in order to avoid the rest of the book.

 

"Recently the Daily Mail ... published a fair review of the just released book 9/11 Revealed: Challenging Facts behind the War on Terror by Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan."

It is also likely that the book 9/11 Revealed was reviewed by the right-wing "Daily Mail" tabloid in Britain because the book offers a confusing mix of real evidence and nonsense. Jim Hoffman's 9/11 Research website has a detailed review that shows the book is not a reliable source.

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/911revealed/index.html
Revealed OR Concealed?
A Critical Review of 9/11 Revealed
by Victoria Ashley and Jim Hoffman


p. 43

"In his introduction to The New Pearl Harbor ... David Griffin makes a distinction ... between cumulative and deductive arguments ... Only one exhibit needs to be proven true (beyond a reasonable doubt) for the "Inside Job" theory to be strengthened, or even proved (the "smoking gun"). If more than one holds up, the case for an Inside Job becomes even more substantive. If a clear majority hold up, the argument for Inside Job becomes nearly invincible.
"What if, on the other hand, one exhibit (or a part of one exhibit), fails to hold up ... It simply means that particular exhibit can be set aside for further scrutiny or turn out to be entirely wrong."

While it is true that the claims for complicity can be established if some of the arguments are disproved, it is also true that the media is now highlighting those that have been disproved so that the best evidence can be safely ignored. If an advocate says ten smart things and one dumb thing to a hostile reporter, the dumb thing is the one that will be shown on the television news. Recognizing this media strategy would require an admission of how the "truth movement" was led astray and some collective self-examination of how many could fall for something that was blatantly false.


p. 45

"Best evidence includes photographic, so long as it has not been tampered with. Evidence that has been tampered with constitutes powerful evidence in itself ... When the tampering reveals the pattern of cover-up, the likelihood of guilt for the crime in question escalates.
"Fresh oral testimony is better than later oral testimony."

 

Despite this, a photoshopped compound pseudo-picture is on page 82 that was generated by the propaganda campaign to persuade the 9/11 "truth" movement that a plane did not crash into the Pentagon. All of the people interviewed shortly after the event who had a good view of the crash stated that they saw a large twin engine jet fly into the building. A couple people who were farther away were more confused, but everyone who was closest to the scene agreed on what they saw.


p. 47

Exhibits A-Z

26 primary exhibits are listed as evidence of complicity and conspiracy. Most of these are accurate and are critical pieces of evidence, but a few of them are without merit (in particular the pseudo-evidence alleging that there is a question about what hit the Pentagon and the false claim that the phone calls from the doomed planes were faked).


p. 51

On p. 51, the "pull it" quote from WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein is mentioned (again) as evidence for demolition, even though the evidence shows that "pull" is a demolition industry term for pulling over a damaged building with cables (as was done to WTC Building 6, which was massively damaged by the towers falling onto it). As stated above, the "pull it" statement was merely bait for the 9/11 truth movement.


p. 76

The profile of William Rodriguez doez not mention that he filed a lawsuit against President George Walker Bush alleging that missiles were fired at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which makes his other allegations difficult to accept without independent corroboration. Others have suggested that the elevator shafts acted as conduits of airplane fuel and blast waves (from the impact and subsequent explosion) into the basement levels, which explains the alleged damage to the basement immediately after each plane hit each tower.


p. 82

Jim Hoffman and Don Paul are cited as providers of a photoshopped montage of pictures of the Pentagon impact zone, a composite image that has been used to promote the "Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon" hoax. Hoffman in particular was astonished to be given credit for this doctored photo, since he has been explicit in discussing how the “no plane” theories are not real.


p. 84

In a discussion of the inadequate video images of Flight 77 that were released by the military, Zwicker asks:

"Since these totally unrevealing images cannot end legitimate conjecture by anyone, the larger question raised is what game the Pentagon is playing in its using disinformation as a weapon."

Zwicker's question is easily answered: the hiding of the visual evidence of the plane hitting the Pentagon is just reverse psychology to ensure the success of Rumsfeld's "Pentagon Missile" hoax. We don't need the videos to know that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon -- hundreds of people saw it happen, hundreds more were involved in the cleanup of the plane parts (and it is not possible for them to all be co-conspirators with Cheney and Rumsfeld). The damage to the building is consistent with a 757 (the "small hole" claim is refuted by looking at pictures of the impact zone)


p. 88

A chart is provided that alleges that cell phone coverage would not have been possible from the hijacked planes. However, this chart does not show where this alleged data was generated (although it was in a different country than the events in question, which suggests its evidentiary value is worthless). Zwicker claims that

"Over countryside such as rural Pennsylvania, without cell phone transmitters, service is unavailable at any altitude."

This is an extraordinary claim that has no citations.

How does the author know there is not any cell phone coverage in the Flight 93 crash area? It crashed near the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which probably has continuous cell-phone service despite the rural area (like most busy interstate highways in the United States).

The first footnote for this "Exhibit" (see p. 374) cites Jim Hoffman, whose website points out the "no cell phone calls" is a hoax.

The claim that the phone calls could not have been possible and therefore were faked by the military was an effective way to ensure that the 9/11 families and the truth movement would not be able to work together. This false claim is perhaps the most offensive of the myriad 9/11 hoaxes, since it is a sly way to accuse the families of the victims of lying when they say they talked with their relatives in their final moments.


p. 89

"In a series of experiments ... in London, Ontario, Canada ..."

A cell phone call in Ontario cannot determine whether reception is possible in another country. A real experiment to verify the reality of the calls would have had to test cell-phone reception at the same locations and altitudes of the doomed planes. Otherwise, the claim of impossible phone calls is without merit.

"all aircraft from which calls were allegedly made were at verified altitudes of more than 25,000 feet. Under these conditions, the cell phone calls were physically impossible."

In reality, many of the calls are known to have been placed after the airplanes had already started to descend to lower altitudes. Even if the alleged cell phone experiments cited were accurate, the cell phone calls could easily have been made at the lower, actual altitudes.

"expert opinion within the wireless telecom industry is unequivocal."

No list of experts within the industry is provided to justify this assertion (the footnote does not provide documentation).


p. 90

The profile of Kee Dewdney, the source for the "no phone calls" claims, states that "He has also ruled out Airfones as the source of the calls." However, there is not a scintilla of evidence provided for this, not even a link to Mr. Dewdney's website. Airfones definitely do work in commercial jet planes at cruising altitude (that's why passengers sometimes pay money to use them).

At the May 2004 International Citizens Inquiry in Toronto, he argued that the truth movement should develop theories and then work to find facts to fit them. A much better approach would be to triple-check pieces of evidence, and then see how the best documented facts fit together to determine the truth.

Dewdney's website "Physics911" is a key promoter of the "No Planes on 9/11" claims, stating that Flight 77 wings could not have broken off and folded into the alleged small hole at the Pentagon, and therefore Flight 77 could not have hit the building. (In reality, the wings shattered when they hit the outside and gouged a 90 plus foot wide hole on the ground floor. The lightest parts of the wingtips only scored the outside but did not create a hole in the heavily reinforced structure.

Dewdney's early 9/11 theorizing included a fanciful scenario of "plane substitution" theories that confused the issue of how remote control technology could have been used to hijack the four Boeings. It claimed that the four planes all landed at a single site with the passengers loaded onto a single plane, with substitute planes flown into the targets. This obviously convoluted (and wrong) scenario makes for entertaining science fiction for some readers, but it ensured that many others would be turned off to the possibility that the planes were electronically hijacked.

Dewdney's Physics911 website contains the science fiction story "Operation Pearl," which theorizes that the passengers on the four planes were all escorted onto Flight 93, perhaps in Harrisburg, PA, and then Flight 93 then was shot down while the other three planes were dumped into the Atlantic. The odds of this being true are about the same as winning the lottery, since this would have made it much less likely to keep the operation secret and compartmentalized to the minimum number of people possible. Physics911 states that they prefer to invent hypotheses and then see if there's evidence that fits their story (although there isn't actually any evidence to support "Operation Pearl"). However, it is more scientific to stick to the best evidence (which is triple checked) and then see what scenario could possibly fit the provable evidence.

Physics911 has attacked 9/11 Research's Jim Hoffman, a story detailed at Hoffman's site at http://911research.wtc7.net/re911/adhominem.html Physics911 falsely promoted the claim that Hoffman was claiming to be a medical doctor and was part of SPINE's advisory board. It took a long time for Physics911 to remove their false claims from their site despite numerous requests from Hoffman.

The Towers profile of Mr. Dewdney states that he is calling for a "scientific jihad," an inflammatory term that a good editor should have removed before publication.

It is curious that Mr. Dewdney, whose "research" is easily debunked," got a two page profile as a leading truth activist while those who've done original quality investigations such as Michael Ruppert, John Judge and Daniel Hopsicker were not similarly profiled.


p. 108

A minor fact check error: Zwicker cites Zbigniew Brzezinski as the source for the claim that a "New Pearl Harbor" would be needed to control Asian energy resources. This famous statement was part of the Project for a New American Century report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" published in September 2000. Brzezinski's 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" stated that the US should control the world's energy supplies by controlling the Middle East and Central Asia, but he was not directly part of the PNAC. Mike Ruppert was the first person after 9/11 to highlight the significance of "The Grand Chessboard" book in the context of 9/11.


p. 114

"why has the public not been informed on the three black boxes ... found at the WTC site, and then confiscated by the FBI? Why have the video tapes of the Pentagon confiscated by the FBI from the CITGO gas station and Sheraton Hotel across the road from the Pentagon not been released?"

This is easily explained. The "black boxes" were allegedly retrieved by all three crash sites (WTC, Pentagon, Pennsylvania), and that data would refute or confirm the remote control hypothesis. If the data supported the official story, it likely would have been made public.
In contrast, the suppression of the many surveillance videos of the crash of Flight 77 is just reverse psychology - to bait overly paranoid conspiracists unfamiliar with the geography of Arlington, Virginia that the "no plane" claims were real. We don't need these videos to know the plane hit the building - hundreds of people saw the plane, tons of plane debris were recovered, passenger remaiins were recovered, the black boxes were found and the damage to the building was the width of the 757 cross-section. Why the plane was not intercepted (even after the towers were hit) and how the plane was steered into the nearly empty part of the Pentagon are real issues that show how 9/11 happened.


p. 127

The "Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11" is mentioned on this page. It would be interesting to know how many Christians and Jews are actually involved with this organization, since the coordinator sent this author a vitriolic screed supporting Holocaust denial. While there are many Jews who bitterly object to Israeli military policies and the American Jewish lobby's influence in Washington, it is unlikely that any Jews anywhere support Holocaust denial.

This Alliance also wrote a nasty attack on Michael Ruppert (From the Wilderness) just before FTW's offices were burglarized in June 2006.


p. 131

"Even firmly-planted fictional stories, however, can be cracked open if a sufficient number of questions about them are permitted to prosper ...."

 

p. 132

"when data and belief come into conflict, the brain does not automatically give preference to data. This is why beliefs -- even bad beliefs, irrational beliefs, silly beliefs, or crazy beliefs -- often don't die in the face of contradictory evidence."

This applies to the disinformation supporting the official story and the disinformation purporting to expose the official conspiracy.


p. 134

Towers references JFK truth veteran Vince Salandria in the context of the psychological difficulty of understanding the truth of official conspiracies. Salandria has an excellent commentary about the JFK coup, stating that WHY it was done is far more important than HOW (yet the mechanics of how it was done got most of the attention). It is archived at www.oilempire.us/911why.html

It is also useful to compare how the JFK "truth" movement was sabotaged with similar strategies that were used against 9/11 truth.


p. 138

The discussion of psychological manipulations avoids the dual nature of this campaign (official story - best evidence - discrediting disinformation).


p. 139

"What if security camera footage of the attack on the Pentagon was forced into public and showed something other than a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon?"

As mentioned elsewhere, this hiding of the videos is just a clever psychological warfare operation against the 9/11 skeptics. Every piece of evidence shows that Flight 77 really did crash into the Pentagon, even if some who were fooled by this claim are now unable to admit making a mistake. It was a professionally executed hoax, and most of those who believe it are sincere - but that sincerity does not make the claim any less offensive to the eyewitnesses, the 9/11 families, etc. While it does motivate many to believe in conspiracy, it alienates more than it motivates - and most important, it alienates those in official Washington who are probably the only people in this society with the power to actually do anything about the crimes.


p. 142

"The mass of 9/11 coverage, when accessible through a good index (as in the case of Paul Thompson's book The Terror Timeline) can be useful for purposes of analysis. But as coverage comes at the public on a daily basis, it is less than useless in providing a coherent picture."

This is one of the most important observations in the book, and it would be good for the second edition to expand on this point.


p. 148

The discussion of the NORAD, et al, war games needs more documentation.


p. 149

Towers cites Ruppert's conclusion that Cheney was running the war games without mentioning his effort to try to document who was the "maestro" coordinating the various wargames on 9/11.


p. 178

Towers promotes Greg Szymanski, a writer who allegedly "can manage to uncover more substantial bits and pieces of the puzzle of 9/11" than mainstream media editors. This writer promotes a variety of "no plane" claims who publishes in Arctic Beacon, Rense and American Free Press. Rense is a notorious promoter of Holocaust denial, and the American Free Press works closely (by their own admission) with KKK leader David Duke. It is strange that this book, which compares 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire, would promote websites that promote Holocaust denial.


p. 186

The profile of author Webster Tarpley omits the most important biographical information - that he was a key part of the Lyndon LaRouche political cult for many years. Tarpley's book on 9/11 is another mix of very good information and easily discredited claims. While it is not a surprise that his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror promotes the false "no Pentagon plane" story, perhaps more disturbing for the context of "Towers" is the fact that Tarpley claims that Peak Oil is a myth, a major contradiction to Zwicker's excellent reporting in "The Great Deception" and "End of Suburbia." The profile includes a quote from Tarpley promoting Jeff Rense (Holocaust denial), Alex Jones, the Dave von Kleist Power Hour (producers of the "In Plane Site" hoax film), among other unreliable sources.


pp.208 & 209

The chapter about Noam Chomsky is daring, important analysis about a pattern of cover-up of official conspiracy. Unfortunately, dozens of pages that contain excellent analysis about Professor Chomsky's support for the official stories of the JFK assassination and 9/11 conclude with a hoax.

Towers reprints a conversation between a 9/11 truth activist and Chomsky where the professor was asked to look at a photo of the Pentagon damage, which allegedly had a “pattern of destruction inconsistent with 757.” However, the photo, reprinted on page 209, has most of the damage caused by the plane obscured by emergency vehicles and a highway guardrail. The damage caused by the right wing on the ground floor is not visible due to the photographer's location and emergency vehicles. A small part of the damage caused by the left wing is visible in the lower left of the photo, but there are better photos that show the full impact of Flight 77.

It is not a good strategy to attack Noam Chomsky for ignoring 9/11 complicity and include a false claim first uttered by Donald Rumsfeld.


p. 211

Towers cites Robert Stinnett's book "Day of Deceit" about the true story of Pearl Harbor. However, his book was not the first on the topic. Military historian John Toland wrote the excellent "Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath" 1982. The allegation that Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen by President Roosevelt was raised by some Republicans in Congress during the war, although their charges were largely dismissed as partisan politics (even though they were correct).

"My belief is that General Short and I were not given the information available in Washington and were not informed of the impending attack because it was feared that action in Hawaii might deter the Japanese from making the attack. Our president had repeatedly assured the American people that the United States would not enter the war unless we were attacked. The Japanese attack on the fleet would put the United States in the war with the full support of the American public."
-- Admiral Kimmel, 1958 interview


p. 212

"False flag operations are unopposed military operations, involving all the resources of the state."

Actually, false flag operations by definition are covert operations that require the number of participants be kept as small as possible to avoid detection.


p. 212

Zwicker discusses what he calls the "Q factor" - the likeability of a particular spokesperson. He correctly notes that Chomsky's high "q factor" is a distraction from his support of the official stories of JFK and 9/11. However, he overlooks the fact that some people creating new falsehoods about 9/11 truth (as bait) have a high likeability factor. This is a different issue than those who unwittingly bought into the bait -- but rather those who create new hoaxes for dissemination. Some of those creating and spreading these falsehoods are absurdly obnoxious, but others are carefully respectful and diplomatic even while they lie with a smile.

The politeness or rudeness of any particular person is not related to whether their claims are accurate or not.


p. 213

"the most powerful disinformation is 90 per cent true."

This truism also applies to the "no plane" campaign, which wraps real evidence of complicity with the "no plane" poison pill.


p. 218

The list of "left gatekeepers" on this page includes David Zupan of the Northwest Media Project, which shows that Zwicker has read through the "gatekeepers" section of Oil Empire.US, the only internet site that has discussed his "gatekeeping" in regards to 9/11 truth. Zupan has been an employee of Norman Solomon, who is much more widely known for his attacks on journalists investigating the details of 9/11 complicity.


p. 222

The precise role of foundation grants in limiting discussion of the most controversial topics (such as 9/11) is complicated by psychological motivations and fears. It is certainly true that foundation money is given to some of the leading "gatekeepers" who have ridiculed serious efforts to investigate 9/11 complicity. However, some of those who have received these funds are willing to look at deep politics, and some of those who aggressively attack such investigations don't receive any grants.

Towers profiles Alternative Radio's David Barsamian, who does not receive any foundation grants yet has loudly attacked those who say that 9/11 was not a surprise attack. Foundation funding is a factor, but psychological denial, fear, groupthink among establishment liberals and a desire to maintain alleged credibility are equally important.


p. 223

The "Left Gatekeepers" chart is a mix of good and not. It is fascinating to see the flow of funds to the establishment liberals who ignore 9/11, Peak Oil (and sometimes stolen elections). However, the chart ignores how many opinion leaders ignore these issues yet go unfunded. Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange, which is in this chart, is fearless in supporting the deep political understanding (talking about 9/11 complicity and other scandals) and has expressed outrage that the chart paints with an overly broad brush.

A deeper understanding of the "left gatekeeper" phenomenon would focus more on psychology than funding.


p. 237

The description of 9/11 as the "propaganda of the act" is brilliant. If there is ever a second edition of "Towers" that is fact checked to remove the false parts, this section should be expanded upon to replace the no-plane claims.

It is hard to understand a rational explanation why a commentator who compared 9/11 to the Nazi Reichstag Fire would accept an invitation to go on an international tour that included the reporter for a neo-Nazi newspaper (American Free Press, whose Barnes Review subsidiary is on record stating that Hitler should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize). At least the "AFP" is not directly mentioned anywhere in "Towers."


p. 238

"completely made in the USA inside job"

It is more likely that it was a partially made in the USA inside job. As described above (see the description of p. vi) an inside job requires at least partly real terrorists so the vast majority of military officials, police agents, media experts and others in the establishment not part of the conspiracy to permit the "attacks" will genuinely think that it was a real terrorist attack that was a complete surprise. The exact level of involvement of agents provocateurs and other types of double agents in the alleged terrorist groups involved will probably never be known, but they would have been instrumental in helping to shape the "attack."


p. 268

"according to wikipedia"

Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. It contains vast amounts of good material but also a lot of crap -- and there is no mechanism to ensure quality control. Wikipedia was caught in a nasty scandal involving a mean-spirited contributor who falsely accused a friend of the assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy of being a suspect in his murder -- a smear that remained on that site for months until media pressure embarrassed Wikipedia into removing it.

Inserting numerous references to wikipedia in the footnotes for the book is sloppy scholarship. Many college professors will flunk students if they rely on wikipedia as a primary source.


p. 287

The discussion of the Beslan school massacre is sourced to four places:

  1. the Wikipedia website,
  2. Prison Planet (a website that promotes a large number of claims but rarely makes efforts to do original journalism to check facts),
  3. Webster Tarpley (a former associate of Lyndon LaRouche based in the Washington, D.C. suburbs) and
  4. Russian President (and former KGB agent) Vladimir Putin. It may be true that Beslan was some sort of false flag terror, but some primary, credible evidence would be required to document this claim.

Wikipedia is not a source for anything, since anyone can post anything to it without peer review or fact checking by an editor. Prison Planet and Tarpley have histories of mixing accurate and inaccurate material (for example, both deny the reality of finite oil reserves). Putin's assertions may or may not be correct (even dictators sometimes tell the truth) but they cannot be trusted without corroboration. Without doing original research in Russia, determining the truth of the false flag claim is not possible.

The false flag terror attacks of 9/99 are much better documented but not mentioned in Towers. 9/99 involved a series of apartment bombings in Moscow that were blamed on the Chechen separatists yet were probably conducted by Russian "state security." An excellent website documenting the 9/99 false flag terror is http://eng.terror99.ru/explosions/


p. 312

This page contains a graphic of a David Ray Griffin speech that was broadcast on the C-Span network. Zwicker suggests that this coverage was "breakthrough" into the media, yet those writers and investigators who steer clear of the "no plane" false claims don't even get coverage on C-Span. Zwicker then states that the term "breakthrough" should be reserved for the time when the major media cover 9/11 truth issues -- while ignoring the fact that all of the institutions he highlights (The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, ABC) have all covered the issue, albeit in the tried and tested pattern of highlighting "no planes" and ignoring war games and suppressed warnings.

It is interesting there is a whole chapter in the book about David Ray Griffin but very little on investigators who actually did primary research (Michael Ruppert, John Judge, Daniel Hopsicker, Michel Chossudovsky, etc). There is a big difference between being a popularizer of other peoples' work and doing original investigative journalism. Both are needed, but if one bases their writing on others work, it's generally polite to acknowledge who did the initial efforts.


p. 315

This page excerpts a report about a David Griffin presentation on 9/11 that was posted to rense.com, a website that promotes Holocaust denial and other absurdities along with some real evidence of governmental malfeasance. It is somewhat comical to suggest media disinterest in wild “conspiracy theories” when sourcing the claim to a website (rense.com) that promotes holocaust denial and UFO conspiracies on its homepage!


p. 319

"Griffin has become a mentor to the 9/11 Truth movement, connecting people to each other, passing about significant information, encouraging effective, principled non-violent action. Without accepting any office within the 9/11 Truth movement he's nevertheless a major leader of it."

It is unknown if Griffin has previous political organizing experience that he could share with the "movement," but he has been uninterested in the fact that fake claims are being seeded into the literature to provide an easy means for the media to debunk the claims for complicity, even though his work has been attacked repeatedly in the media via this strategy.

An article in a New Hampshire publication in March 2006 contrasts the two main thoughts in the 9/11 truth movement in how to cope with the hoaxes:

The fact that the mainstream media and "alternative" media highlight the false claims and avoid the best evidence suggests that Ruppert's analysis is the correct one.

 

www.wirenh.com/Features/Cover_Stories/system_breakdown_200603291183.html

System Breakdown
by Larry Clow
The Wire
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

.... Ruppert said he's trying to distance himself from the 9/11 movement. The one subject he doesn’t tackle is physical evidence--the why and how of the Towers’ collapse, the strangeness surrounding the destruction at the Pentagon and the debris left behind by Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. This is the one area where the 9/11 movement is focusing most of its energies now, he says, and physical evidence arguments are "absolute minefields when you get into the legal arena," with discussions devolving into a competition between whichever side can provide the most experts.
The greater danger, according to Ruppert, is that the 9/11 movement has been "heavily, heavily infiltrated … by government disinformation operatives" who have put proverbial "poison pills" into its debates.
Sounds paranoid, right? Not really. In the 1960s and 1970s, federal programs like COINTELPRO used undercover operatives to infiltrate the anti-war movement and discredit it, and the practice apparently continues today. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union released data confirming that the government has been spying on anti-war groups since the conflict in Iraq began in 2003.
[David Ray] Griffin, on the other hand, is skeptical of talk about disinformation and infiltrators.
"I really haven’t had any strong suspicions about anybody," he said. "Even if there is some truth to it, I don’t think it’s a very important concern."
Some of the more outlandish theories--like French writer Thierry Meyssan’s claim that a cruise missile, not an airplane, hit the Pentagon--are only diluting the waters, Ruppert said. There are other theories, too: that there were no planes at all, only holographic projections of planes (used in conjunction with explosives planted by some shadowy group); or that one of the planes that hit the WTC had some sort of anomalous "pod" attached to it that caused extra damage. But this is all "bullshit," Ruppert said, and is either intentional disinformation or sheer stupidity.
The research conducted by the movement itself is getting lazy, as well, according to Ruppert. Most of the Web sites reference previous research done by Ruppert and others, or they simply reference themselves, which hardly makes for a compelling case.
"My job is to keep my case pure, so if I've fallen out of the mainstream with 9/11, so be it. But if 9/11 ever gets opened in a meaningful way, my book is where (people) will have to come to," Ruppert said.


pp. 321 - 328

Chapter 9 "You and the Media: Ways Forward" is the strangest part of Towers of Deception. This conclusion focuses on peace activists in Eugene, Oregon who staged protests against a military recruiting center as part of efforts to raise public awareness of the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq. Towers profiles these demonstrations but did not mention a much bigger story that is actually related to the thesis of the book: how 9/11 truth information was covered up in the media, both mainstream and alternative.

Eugene has been a node in the 9/11 truth network. Zwicker's films "The Great Deception," "The Great Conspiracy" and "End of Suburbia" have been shown countless times. Michael Ruppert has spoken in Eugene twice since 9/11 (April 2002 and May 2005). David Ray Griffin gave his second public presentation in Eugene to a crowd of nearly 500. Numerous smaller events on 9/11 truth issues have been organized. Nearly 100,000 "Deception Dollars" were distributed in the Eugene area from 2003 to 2005. However, all of this agitation and fermentation never percolated into the local peace movement, which has done its best to ignore the topic. It's a long story, some of which is summarized at www.oilempire.us/solomon.html How the "leaders" of this local peace movement ignored 9/11 complicity would have been much more relevant to the conclusion of "Towers." (One of the people mentioned personally agrees about 9/11 and Peak Oil, yet the group she works for refuses to touch the topic.)


p. 326

The profile of Carol Brouillet, publisher of the infamous "Deception Dollars," could use some deeper reflection. The "Deception Dollars" are one of the most brilliant outreach tools ever created (few groups ever have made flyers that people in crowds rush to grab). Over six million Deception Dollars were published, and despite their extreme popularity no national "alternative" media dared to even mention the campaign.

Unfortunately, every edition of the Deception Dollars has included websites that promoted lots of false claims. Some of these misdirections were merely mistakes, but a few examples almost certainly were not. Perhaps the most notorious was the early edition that included the white supremacist American Free Press. A number of backlashes to the Deception Dollars and the 9/11 truth movement in general have been predicated on the presence of far-right liars promoting obviously false claims.

In the spring of 2006, Brouillet helped with a showing of Loose Change in Oakland, California that featured the spokespersons for the film. This prompted a front page story in USA Today focused on the 9/11 truth movement -- which of course highlighted the "no plane" claims. Several USA Today reporters saw Flight 77's crash into the Pentagon while driving to work, which is why they mentioned this film and ignored the credible evidence.

In June 2006, Brouillet's website reposted the nasty smear against Michael Ruppert written by the alleged "Muslim Jewish Christian Alliance for 9/11 truth" just before his office was attacked and the computers smashed.

A truth teller focuses on the truth regardless of its popularity. A politician is more focused on pleasing everyone, regardless of truth.

Brouillet is running for the House of Representatives on the 2006 ballot. Her campaign website includes a letter from the incumbent Representative dismissing all evidence of 9/11 complicity by debunking the "no plane" hoax ...


p. 330

It is curious that "Share the Truth," a company that sells a mix of very good and not-so-good books, movies and stickers is profiled and From the Wilderness (which generated much of the original best evidence documenting 9/11 complicity) is not.

Share the Truth has hosted (as have many other sites) the Pentagon Strike hoax film, and sells a variety of information resources that range from very high to very low quality, which merely confuses the audience and provides an easy method for defenders of the official story to attack the weak points.


pp. 344 - 346

This section downplays the significance of "Able Danger," a military intelligence program that was tracking some of the 9/11 hijackers years before the attack. Military whistleblowers who have publicly stated that Able Danger existed have suffered significant harassment -- but "Towers" claims that this is merely a fall-back to cement the official story that we were attacked. However, it is more likely that Able Danger was actually part of the effort to track the participants (on the "Islamist" side) and that the whistleblowers figured out part of the truth. Whoever the patsies were, they would need (from the US covert apparatus perspective) to be monitored, handled, however it was done. The fact that the would-be hijackers were at the very least monitored long before 9/11 does not mean there was not official complicity to let it happen (and provide technical assistance).. The best compilation of information about Able Danger is from the Center for Cooperative Research at www.cooperativeresearch.org


p. 348

Towers profiles millionaire heir Jimmy Walter who has spent millions to promote the "no plane" claims.

Walter sponsored an event in New York City on September 11, 2004 that included some of the best writers but also the creator of the In Plane Site movie (which promoted "no plane"). A much better event two days previous called 9/11 Citizens Commission was moderated by Cynthia McKinney and included Barrie Zwicker, Mike Ruppert, John Judge, Indira Singh, Jenna Orkin, Nicholas Levis, Kyle Hence and other experts. Walter had hundreds of thousands of DVDs made of his event, while video of the 9/9/2004 Citizens Commission event remains obscure, even among the 9/11 truth movement activists. The jacket for the Walter event ("Confronting the Evidence") shows an image of the second tower being hit that includes an almost certainly photoshopped "flash" allegedly from an explosion when the plane hit the tower (the claim is that this alleged explosion was supposedly needed to open the structure of the towers to allow penetration of the 100 tons of plane travelling over 500 miles per hour). Other footage taken that day but publicized before this "flash" claim was promoted did not show the alleged flash - a caution about relying on "new images" released years after an event. The final part of this chapter of the story was in 2005 when the "In Plane Site" creators made a booklet titled "9/11 Citizens Commission" that did not mention the September 9, 2004 event, ensuring it would be even more difficult for anyone to track down the information from that effort.

In 2005, Mr. Walter organized a "megatour" of several European countries that included Zwicker, but also Thierry Meyssan (the first popularizer of Rumsfeld's "no plane" claim) and the main reporter for American Free Press (the largest neo-Nazi newspaper in the United States).

Subsequently, Walter flew to Venezuela to try to persuade the government there to believe in his theories of what happened on 9/11.

Walter's "reopen911" website has even promoted the claim that nuclear explosives took down the World Trade Center, which is probably the most bizarre nonsense to date masquerading as 9/11 truth.


p. 352

Again, the profile of Global Outlook misses how it has not made efforts to separate the real from fake claims. A lot of good material has been published in that magazine, but a lot of falsehoods have also been reprinted. Global Outlook has not, to this writers knowledge, published anything showing how the "no plane" claims were just hoaxes inserted into the truth movement.


p. 355

"debris from Flight 93 was found over 13 square kilometers ... the plane [went] straight down into that 'crash site' too small for such a plane, where no bodies and not a drop of blood were found."

This concluding section of the book is inconsistent - either Towers is arguing for the shootdown of Flight 93 or for some fanciful story of plane swapping. The fact that debris was found over 13 square miles strongly suggests the plane broke apart in mid-air, presumably from an air to air missile fired by an Air Force fighter plane. The claims that body parts were not found are not true, easily debunked and originally sourced to the hoax publication American Free Press. Full speed crashes into the Earth shred large planes into small pieces, and the unfortunate victims are equally shredded into bits (one hopes their trauma ended quickly).

The reality that the plane was probably shot down is evidence that the government is lying, not necessarily that they allowed it or engineered it. The public could probably cope with the "Sophie's choice" to shoot down the plane to prevent a worse catastrophe (a crash into the US Capitol, perhaps), but that understanding would then force a further question - why Flight 77 was not similarly prevented from reaching its target when it was over the West Virginia / Ohio border at 9:03 am, when the second (South) tower was hit and the entire military / intelligence system had no doubt about what was underway (a terror attack, not an "accidental" crash in New York).