Tales of 9/11 Truthiness

Crimes of the State

It's pretty damned near impossible to get to the bottom of the September 11th lies we have been told by the United States federal government. This is not an easy task, and conflicting stories abound.

Given that, there remain some serious deficiencies within the self-proclaimed "9/11 Truth Movement," as I will explain.

The "truthers" have a general guiding priniciple, that they are only seeking answers to questions. In practice, however, this is not usually the case. In practice, they subscribe to various dogmas handed down from a handful of leaders, people like David Ray Griffin, Kevin Barrett, James Fetzer, Steven Jones, Alex Jones, Webster Tarpley and others. Over time, the opinions of the leaders become accepted as "the truth" and beyond question. It's the beyond question that I will not accept, ever, and this has landed me in the middle of quite a few nasty battles.

Since 2002, I have sent in corrections to print and media news organzations over their shameful coverage of September 11th issues. I also send corrections to the 9/11media which has sprung up. It's pretty hard to maintain credibility as a "truth" movement if you are spreading demonstrably false claims. Nevertheless, 9/11 website editors are about as intractable and infallible as their corporate counterparts.

Credibility is the key to the kingdom. That is why corporate attack media always smears the movement. They seek to deny credibility to anyone who challenges their place in society, the role of the truth teller. Immediately, 9/11 "skeptics", like myself, are relabeled as "conspiracy theorists," which they tell us are "conspiracy nuts," and that we are "crazy," and "lunatics," and should be wearing "tinfoil hats."

This tired tactic eats up a percentage of the time alloted for broadcast/print space. They have framed the issue (non-credibility), and set the debate on a certain course before any evidence has even been discussed. The 9/11 skeptics are put in a defensive position at the beginning. This is predictable and expected.

Next, the corporate media cherry picks absurd sounding claims in order to further damage the credibility of the movement. Some of these absurd claims are simple mistakes made by untrained "journalists" across the web. Other absurd claims are from disinformation agents, intentionally put out into the public sphere for the purpose of being mocked and attacked. The last category of absurd sounding claims are unresolved issues, where the government has not proven its side of the story, and therefore competing explanations struggle to fill in the void.

Another category: corroborated facts which conflict with the U.S. government's story, are a different animal altogether. At this late date, I must add that the government's stories are many, and have changed over time. NORAD, for example, has presented three different conflicting excuses for why no jet fighter interceptors managed to protect Washington DC, even though they had more than an hour and twenty minutes to show up.

So, as this article is getting bigger and more unwieldy, so does the large body of facts and theories about September 11th. This works against the "truth movement," because established media remains hostile to the credible and corroborated facts, and they promote the numerous and more absurd sounding soundbites in order to discredit all skeptics.

The 9/11"truth" movement shares the responsibility for this credibility gap. And I'll demonstrate why, now.

In a September 2002 PBS documentary called "America Rebuilds," they interviewed Larry Silverstein, the "owner" of the World Trade Center complex.

Because of one remark, made by Silverstein regarding building 7, most of the "truth" movement has concluded that Silverstein, in a phone conversation to the New York "fire department commander" ordered that building 7 be demolished by explosives.

If you are aware of this "pull it" cliam, you probably take it on faith that's what Silverstein meant. If you aren't aware of this claim, it probably sounds specious and inaccurate. Here is the exact quote:

"I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull, and we watched the building collapse." (PBS, 2002)

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