Which Is the Silly 9/11 Conspiracy Theory?
Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, by contrast, have provided evidence -- an enormous amount of evidence, in fact -- showing that the official conspiracy theory is simply not believable. I will give six examples:
- Long before 9/11, the standard operating procedures for intercepting
airplanes with in-flight emergencies had been finely tuned, so that planes experiencing
such emergencies were usually intercepted within about 10 minutes. But on the
morning of 9/11, we are told, these standard procedures failed four times in
a row, even though the airliners were flying 20 or 30 minutes after they showed
clear signs of experiencing in-flight emergencies. Especially unbelievable is
the idea that the Pentagon, surely the most well-protected building on the planet,
could have been struck by a hijacked airliner over 30 minutes after it had shown
signs of being in trouble, and also over 30 minutes after both of the Twin Towers
had been struck. If the Bush administration and the Pentagon had believed that
America was under attack by terrorists using hijacked airliners as weapons,
the airspace over the nation's capital would have been heavily protected
by fighter jets. 32
- The very idea that the airliners were hijacked is rendered unbelievable
by a conjunction of many facts: First, all the evidence for the presence of
hijackers on the airliners falls apart upon examination. For example, the best-known
evidence consisted of the alleged phone calls from passengers and crew members,
but the FBI now says that the two phone calls from Barbara Olson on American
Flight 77 reported by her husband, US Solicitor General Ted Olson, never happened,
and the FBI also now denies that any of those reported high-altitude cell phone
calls occurred. Second, in addition to the lack of evidence for hijackers, there
is even positive evidence that there were no hijackers: neither the autopsy
report for Flight 77 nor the passenger manifests for any of the four flights
contained the names of the alleged hijackers, or any Arab names whatsoever;
and although it takes only about two seconds for pilots to use the plane's
transponder to "squawk" the standard hijack code, not a single pilot
did this, even though it supposedly took the hijackers some time -- about
30 seconds on United Flight 93 -- to break into the cockpit. 33
- The claim that the planes were taken over by Muslim hijackers is further
disproved by the absurdity of the claim that Hani Hanjour took control of
American Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon. Hanjour was known to be
a terrible pilot. One of Hanjour's instructors, reported the New York
Times, said: "He could not fly at all."34 Only a couple of months before
9/11, moreover, a flight instructor refused to go up with Hanjour a second
time in a single-engine plane, considering it too dangerous. 35 According to
the official story, nevertheless, Hanjour flew a giant airliner with almost
superhuman skill. The trajectory reportedly taken by Flight 77 -- "execut[ing]
a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver," said
the Washington Post36 -- would have been so difficult for a Boeing 757
that pilots with years of experience flying these planes have said they could
not have done it. Russ Wittenberg, who flew large commercial airliners for
35 years after serving in Vietnam as a fighter pilot, says it would have been
"totally impossible for an amateur who couldn't even fly a Cessna" to have
flown that downward spiral and then "crash into the Pentagon's first floor
wall without touching the lawn."37 Ralph Kolstad, who was a US Navy "top gun"
pilot before becoming a commercial airline pilot for 27 years, has said: "I
have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757's and 767's and I could not
have flown it the way the flight path was described."38
- Although NIST claimed that it found no evidence that explosives were
used to bring down the Twin Towers and WTC 7, what it really did was simply
ignore a huge amount of evidence, including: (i) testimonies about explosions
in the buildings by over 150 credible people, including police officers, journalists,
WTC employees, and more than 100 members of the Fire Department of New York;39
(ii) particles of iron, molybdenum, and other metals in the WTC dust that could
have been produced only by temperatures much hotter than the buildings'
fires could have reached;40 and (iii) particles of nanothermite, a high-explosive,
in the dust. 41
- Even with all of that denial, NIST's explanations of the collapses of the
Twin Towers and WTC 7 violate elementary laws of physics. A recent essay in
one of our leading social science journals, discussing the fact that physicist
Steven Jones was forced to resign because of his conclusions about the World
Trade Center, says: "Professor Steven Jones found himself forced out of [a]
tenured position for merely reminding the world that physical laws, about
which there is no dissent whatsoever, contradict the official theory
of the World Trade Center Towers' collapse."42
- NIST's most obvious violation of physical laws occurred in its final report on WTC 7, which appeared in November 2008. In the draft version of this report, which had appeared in August, NIST had denied the claim made by scientists in the 9/11 Truth Movement that this building had come down in virtual free fall. NIST claimed instead that its descent had taken "approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time."43 NIST even explained -- while presupposing its own theory of the collapse, according to which it was caused by fire, not explosives -- why a free-fall, or even virtual free-fall, collapse would have been impossible. 44 But after physicist David Chandler demonstrated, in a YouTube video, that the top floor had come down in absolute free fall for over two seconds,45 NIST acknowledged this fact in its final report, but without changing its theory. 46 NIST thereby affirmed a miracle, in the sense of a violation of laws of physics -- a fact that NIST implicitly admitted by removing all its previous assurances that its explanation of WTC 7's collapse was "consistent with physical principles."47 The fact that Building 7 came down in absolute free fall for over two seconds, thereby forcing NIST to affirm a miracle, has shown, more clearly than any other feature of the official account of 9/11, that the government's conspiracy theory is the silly one.
The obvious falseness of NIST's accounts of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 is shown by the fact that some 1200 licensed architects and engineers have already joined Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which is calling for a new investigation of the World Trade Center. 48
In describing my position as silly, of course, IRD does not mention the existence of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. It also does not point out that there are many other organizations of professionals expressing disbelief in the official theory, including Firefighters for 9/11 Truth,49 Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth,50 Journalists and Other Media Professionals for 9/11 Truth,51 Lawyers for 9/11 Truth,52 Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth,53 Pilots for 9/11 Truth,54 Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth,55 Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth,56 Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice 57 and Veterans for 9/11 Truth. 58 Although one would never suspect this from reading the IRD press release, the weight of expert opinion -- among people in the relevant professions who have examined the evidence and are not dependent upon the government for their livelihood -- is almost entirely on the side of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Among these professionals, it is the official conspiracy theory, endorsed by IRD, that is considered silly.
It is possible, of course, that Tooley and Walton are unaware of these developments, because their new press release is, except for a little updating, a word-for-word repetition of their 2006 attack on my work, and most of these 9/11 professional organizations have been formed since 2006. So it is possible that they have simply not kept abreast of the developments of the past four years.
Further Errors and Distortions
In any case, besides getting the big issue entirely wrong, the new IRD press release contains several other errors and distortions.
For example, referring to the fact that I had earlier documented the fact that the US government had in previous decades used false pretexts to go to war -- such as the Tonkin Gulf attacks (which everyone now agrees never happened 59) and the lie on which the Mexican-American war was based (which a congressman named Abraham Lincoln denounced as the "sheerest deception"60) -- Walton and Tooley claim that I thereby make "the entire nation complicit in the [9/11] attack." However, as Tooley, with his CIA background, surely knows, the fact that the US government has used false pretexts to start wars and overthrow governments is no longer a debatable issue, but is instead recognized by mainstream authors. 61 Also, to acknowledge that our government has engaged in such activities in no way makes the "entire nation," much of which protests these activities, complicit in them. I certainly do not see myself as complicit in the 9/11 attacks or the other crimes of the Bush-Cheney administration. (Whether Tooley and Walton, as supporters of the neoconservative movement, regard themselves as complicit, only they can answer. 62)
Even presuming to inform people about my theological beliefs, although neither of them apparently has a theological degree, Walton and Tooley, repeating a statement made in their 2006 attack, say: "Griffin is a process theologian who believes that God is constantly evolving." This is a one-sided description of process theologians commonly used by defenders of traditional theism to imply that we are ethical relativists. Whether that was Walton and Tooley's intent, I do not know. But if they had checked any of the books in which I discuss the nature of God, they would see that I, like all Whiteheadian-Hartshornean process theologians, affirm a "dipolar theism," according to which, on the one hand, God interacts with the world and hence constantly has new experiences, but that, on the other hand, God's nature -- as omnipresent, compassionate, and supportive of justice -- is unchanging. 63
Walton and Tooley also claim -- simply repeating a statement made in their 2006 critique of my Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11 -- that I hold Jesus' "real agenda" to be "the overthrow of the Roman Empire." But as anyone who actually reads that book can see, I say no such thing. What I do say, following New Testament scholar Richard Horsley, is that Jesus preached "an anti-imperial gospel," which was critical of Rome's economic and political oppression of the Jewish people and anticipated a time in which the Roman Empire would be replaced by a decent political-economic order, in which everyone had their "daily bread." But neither I, nor Horsley, nor any of the other New Testament scholars I cited believe that Jesus was a revolutionary in the sense of one who proposed taking up arms against Rome. 64 Tooley simply read an inflammatory -- even silly -- meaning into my discussion of Jesus' message as based on recent New Testament scholarship.
To compound the silliness, Tooley and Walton then add that "Griffin," like his Jesus, "wants to overthrow the American 'empire.'" What in the world might this mean? I have certainly written against American imperialism and the American empire. 65 And I certainly do not, like Walton and Tooley, put "empire" in scare quotes to suggest that there is no such thing as an American empire (the existence of which even some of their fellow neocons, such as Max Boot and Charles Krauthammer, acknowledge 66). I have certainly said I would like to see the present anarchical world order, in which disputes between nations can finally be resolved only by power (whether military or economic), replaced by a democratic world order, in which disputes between nations would be resolved -- like disputes between states in the USA -- in courts of law. 67 But I have no idea how Walton and Tooley imagine I might try to "overthrow the American empire."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
6
5
5
