The 9/11 Truth Movement's Dangers

Nation: Dishonest Government Leads To Cynical Theorists

(The Nation)  To the extent that there is a unified theory of the nature of the conspiracy, it is based, in part, on the precedent of the Reichstag fire in Germany in the 1930s. The idea is that just as the Nazis staged a fire in the Reichstag in order to frighten the populace and consolidate power, the Bush Administration, military contractors, oil barons and the CIA staged 9/11 so as to provide cause and latitude to pursue its imperial ambitions unfettered by dissent and criticism. But the example of the Reichstag fire itself is instructive. While during and after the war many observers, including officials of the U.S. government, suspected the fire was a Nazi plot, the consensus among historians is that it was, in fact, the product of a lone zealous anarchist. That fact changes little about the Nazi regime, or its use of the fire for its own ends. It's true the Nazis were the chief beneficiaries of the fire, but that doesn't mean they started it, and the same goes for the Bush Administration and 9/11.

The Reichstag example also holds a lesson for those who would dismiss the very notion of a conspiracy as necessarily absurd. It was perfectly reasonable to suspect the Nazis of setting the fire, so long as the evidence suggested that might have been the case. The problem isn't with conspiracy theories as such; the problem is continuing to assert the existence of a conspiracy even after the evidence shows it to be virtually impossible.

In March 2005 Popular Mechanics assembled a team of engineers, physicists, flight experts and the like to critically examine some of the Truth Movement's most common claims. They found them almost entirely without merit. To pick just one example, steel might not melt at 1,500 degrees, the temperature at which jet fuel burns, but it does begin to lose a lot of its strength, enough to cause the support beams to fail.

And yet no amount of debunking seems to work. The Internet empowers people with esoteric interests to spend all kinds of time pursuing their hobbies, and if the Truth Movement was the political equivalent of Lord of the Rings fan fiction or furries, there wouldn't be much reason to pay attention. But the public opinion trend lines are moving in the truthers' direction, even after the official 9/11 Commission report was supposed to settle the matter once and for all.

Of course, the ommission report was something of a whitewash — Bush would only be interviewed in the presence of Dick Cheney, the commission was denied access to other key witnesses, and just this year we learned of a meeting convened by George Tenet the summer before the attacks to warn Condoleezza Rice about al Qaeda's plotting, a meeting that was nowhere mentioned in the report.

So it's hard to blame people for thinking we're not getting the whole story. For six years, the government has prevaricated and the press has largely failed to point out this simple truth. Critics like The New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann might lament the resurgence of the "paranoid style," but the seeds of paranoia have taken root partly because of the complete lack of appropriate skepticism by the establishment press, a complementary impulse to the paranoid style that might be called the "credulous style."

In the credulous style all political actors are acting with good intentions and in good faith. Mistakes are made, but never because of ulterior motives or undue influence from the various locii of corporate power. When people in power advocate strenuously for a position it is because they believe in it. When their advocacy leads to policies that create misery, it is due not to any evil intentions or greed or corruption, but rather simple human error. Ahmad Chalabi summed up this worldview perfectly. Faced with the utter absence of the WMD he and his cohorts had long touted in Iraq, he replied, "We are heroes in error."

For a long time the credulous style has dominated the establishment, but its hold intensified after 9/11. When the government speaks, particularly about the Enemy, it must be presumed to be telling the truth. From the reporting about Iraq's alleged WMD to the current spate of stories about how "dangerous" Iran is, time and again the press has reacted to official pronouncements about threats with a near total absence of skepticism. Each time the government announces the indictment of domestic terrorists allegedly plotting our demise, the press devotes itself to the story with obsessive relish, only to later note, on page A22 or in a casual aside, that the whole thing was bunk.

In August 2003, to cite just one example, the New York dailies breathlessly reported what one U.S. official called an "incredible triumph in the war against terrorism," the arrest of Hemant Lakhani, a supposed terrorist mastermind caught red-handed attempting to acquire a surface-to-air missile. Only later did the government admit that the "plot" consisted of an FBI informant begging Lakhani to find him a missile, while a Russian intelligence officer called up Lakhani and offered to sell him one.

Yet after nearly a dozen such instances, the establishment media continue to earnestly report each new alleged threat or indictment, secure in the belief that their proximity to policy-makers gets it closer to the truth. But proximity can obscure more than clarify. It's hard to imagine that the guy sitting next to you at the White House correspondents' dinner is plotting to, say, send the country into a disastrous and illegal war, or is spying on Americans in blatant defiance of federal statutes. Bob Woodward, the journalist with the most access to the Bush Administration, was just about the last one to realize that the White House is disingenuous and cynical, that it has manipulated the machinery of state for its narrow political ends.

Meanwhile, those who realized this was the White House's MO from the beginning have been labeled conspiracy theorists. During the 2004 campaign Howard Dean made the charge that the White House was manipulating the terror threat level and recycling old intelligence. The Bush campaign responded by dismissing Dean as a "bizarre conspiracy theorist." A year later, after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge retired, he admitted that Dean's charge was, indeed, the truth. The same accusation of conspiracy-mongering was routinely leveled at anyone who suggested that the war in Iraq was and is motivated by a desire for the United States to control the world's second-largest oil reserves.

For the Administration, "conspiracy" is a tremendously useful term, and can be applied even in the most seemingly bizarre conditions to declare an inquiry or criticism out of bounds. Responding to a question from NBC's Brian Williams as to whether he ever discusses official business with his father, Bush said such a suggestion was a "kind of conspiracy theory at its most rampant." The credulous style can brook no acknowledgment of unarticulated motives to our political actors, or consultations to which the public is not privy.

The public has been presented with two worldviews, one credulous, one paranoid, and both unsatisfactory. The more the former breaks apart, the greater the appeal of the latter. Conspiracy theories that claim to explain 9/11 are wrongheaded and a terrible waste of time, but the skeptical instinct is, on balance, salutary. It is right to suspect that the operations of government, the power elite and the military-industrial complex are often not what they seem; and proper to raise questions when the answers provided have been unconvincing. Given the untruths to which American citizens have been subjected these past six years, is it any surprise that a majority of them think the government's lying about what happened before and on 9/11?

Still, the persistent appeal of paranoid theories reflects a cynicism that the credulous media have failed to address, because they posit a world of good intentions and face-value pronouncements, one in which the suggestion that a government would mislead or abuse its citizens for its own gains or the gains of its benefactors is on its face absurd. The danger is that the more this government's cynicism and deception are laid bare, the more people — on the left in particular and among the public in general — will be drawn down the rabbit hole of delusion of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

To avoid such a fate, the public must come to trust that the gatekeepers of public discourse share their skepticism about the agenda its government is pursuing. The antidote, ultimately, to the Truth Movement is a press that refuses to allow the government to continue to lie.

[lyingliars]

Golly, you would think those poll numbers might warrant a PRIMETIME expose on national television pitting Official Government Experts vs. the Scholars for 911 Truth. You know, a genuine point-counter point debating the issue. Or here's a novel idea...genuine and open hearings in Congress spearheaded by a truly Independent Citizens Counsel in a PRIMETIME slot.
Until this is done the controversy will never
be put to bed. Once the truth as percieved by millions is out it can never be stuffed back into the bottle. Until the "Fourth Estate" does it's job there will be a snowball effect that culminates in what...a Revolution? A Civil War? It "IS" that freaking serious.
Americans are slow to act, but will not stand for the loss of our National Sovereignty (North American Union), much less the COLD BLOODED MURDER of it's citizens.
Mainstream Media...are you listening? "If" there are traitors in high places, we need to deal with it.

[saturn-v]

usmczoo1 you asked:

No mention of building 7?

What do you mean? It's pretty obvious what happened.

WTC7 wasn't hit by any planes.

It didn't have raging fires.

It was of an entirely different construction than the Twin Towers yet it collapsed in the exact same way.

The firefighters were ordered out of it just for the heck of it.

It collapsed into a tidy little pile without seriously damaging the two buildings on either side because it was the polite thing to do.

The molten metal found underneath the rubble wasn't strange at all unlike the molten metal found under the other two towers.

If you add this all together along with all the other unexplained, unprecedented, bizarre facts and observations the reason it fell down is obvious:

WTC7 was under a lot of stress that day and unfortunately it went completely insane and committed suicide.

That's why we don't mention building 7. It's bad taste to talk about a building's personal problems.

[usmczoo1]

No mention of building 7? The scolars involved in the 911 truth movement are rational old school thinkers that research in true academic form.They have researched almost all angles, which should have been done by the 911 commission if a solid investigation was done.This reasearch brings many questions.The 911 commision would have had these same questions if a solid investigation was done.The facts point to government knowledge at minimum.
It would be a benefit to American citizens and the rest of the world if CBS and the other news medias would engage in rational debate and look at 'All' the facts of this event.Were not being fooled so easily and know 911 needs a true investigation.

[onlyonevoice]

"What kind of absolute, irrefutable, in-your-face proof would be required in order for you conspiracy types to give it up? Seriously, what would make you guys concede the obvious? Or are you all so blinded by your Bush-hating that is there nothing, nothing at all, no physical evidence, no independent witnesses, expert analyses, etc that could ever sway you?
Posted by erichsh at 12:20 AM : Dec 12, 2006"

Mr Erichsh, I ask of you this? Wean yourself from the MSM echo and go beyond Loose Change. Many of us out here watched it. Many of us think it is an excellent start. But I recommend you go to your local book store and buy Crossing the Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert. It is by far the best and most complete investigation I know of. Complete with 49 pages of end-notes so that you can verify the sources he used. If you would like a warm up watch this...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4046564743329239954&q=ruppert&hl=en

be sure and paste the entire web address in.

Be prepared to have your outlook forever changed.
This is not exclusively about 9/11. It gives you the reasons behind the cover-up and what the future has in store of us.

[brjohnson789]

I do not know what is more shameful, the fact that many people may read this article and believe it, or that it was printed in the first place. Mr. Hayes writes as if he has studied human history for the last 5 years. He lives in a magical world where only this latest US administration has possibly told some untruths, and that in fact at no time in the past has any government ever done anything illegal and lied about it. Nor has any past government created situations that benefited it, and lied about it. Nor would the US government intentionally harmm its own citizens. I wish I lived in that world too. It would be great to think that 'Yeah, things have been pretty rough recently, and maybe the government has sort of fibbed about a couple things, but they would never hurt me. Tuskegee experiments? Never happened. Gulf of Tonkin a big lie to get us into Vietnam? Nahh. But dang that silly media, they're just not being cynical enough recently so the filthy unwashed masses are starting to question what my precious media is presenting to them. Maybe I'll be out of job spewing my take on history! Oh No!!'

Did that hit a little too close to home Mr. Hayes?? Let me help you about a bit there. Do some research on what our founding fathers said about trusting our government. In your current state of mind they'd sound like conspiracy theorists, right?

[onlyonevoice]

And I'm wondering why Demolition Companies spend so much time and money when all they need is a few hours and 10,000 gallons of jet fuel. The buildings seem to fall remarkbly into thier own footprint. With the exception of 110 story buildings. 50 story buildings would be worth it. I've considered starting my own business but with my outspoken "theories" I would surely be labeled a terrorist.

[onlyonevoice]

It would be easy to diminish the "Movement" had the only event been 9/11/01. Whats not being said in this article is that since 9/11/01 as a result of an incredibly fast and seemingly (officially) accurate investigation, large numbers of the American population are looking into the ties our elected officials have with various entities around the world. Some of which are so beyind belief, they are safe from scrutiny for that reason only. When you have CIA and ISI connections to drug smuggling, money laundering, the list goes on. The liniing of our government officials pockets e.g.(Cheney and Haliburton or Bush, Carlyle group, and Saudi bin Laden Group (SBG)) the list goes on. The total abuse of power in Washington is beyond corruption. BCCI? Citigroup and Alwaleed and the financial devastation this man could wage agaisnt this country? How is this protecting us?
9/11/01? You think that is all we know about? CBS do your homework! You have more experiance and resources than the people that find this stuff. The reason there isn't 100% that debunk the offical story is the total helplessness of knowing and being able to do nothing. Its time the media did thier job and the Evening News numbers might be what they used to be when we got 1/2 the truth!

[martymary1]

I stopped reading this article when I saw the words "Popular Mechanics" on the page. The jet fuel burned for only a few minutes. Had it burned for many hours, it might have WEAKENED the steel.
The problem is that steel framed skyscrapers are OVER designed - the perimeter beams were 20 times
stronger than the design load and the huge central columns were 6 times stronger than their design load. Thus, if the steel beams had been weakened by 50%, (virtually impossible in the time allowed), they would still have been, respectively, 10 times and 3 times stronger than what was needed to support the entire structure! Besides, the steel glowing red for weeks at the bottom of the pile was MELTED, not weakened!

[martymary1]

I read this article as far as the mention of Popular Mechanics. The claim that jet fuel
burns hot enough to WEAKEN steel would be
correct if it burned for many hours. But the
steel beams in the outside perimeter were 20 times
stronger than the design load. The huge central columns were six times stronger than their design load. So even if the strength of the steel beams were reduced by 50% (unlikely) they would still be 10 times, or 3 times, rspectively, the strength needed to continue supporting the entire structure. Besides, the steel glowing red at the bottom of the pile had been actually melted, not just weakened. The Popular Mechanics article was
a joke. I'm told most of their staff had to be fired before it could be printed!

[joeblytsflk]

"If you actually believe that the government did it then move to Canada. If you really did believe that our government did something that horrific you would do whatever it took to move out of this country."
------------------------------------------------

Sorry. Americans don't work that way.

George Washington, Tom Paine, Ben Franklin and the rest of the boys didn't skip out because they didn't like the ways things were being run.

Did they.

They stayed right where they were, and they fixed the problem.

And that's what we intend to do. We are going to stay right here, and we are going to fix this little problem about public officials lying to us, committing crimes, helping their buds cover up THEIR crimes, and the so-called press helping them to do it.

The "government" is made up of individuals. Individuals who collect paychecks from the American people. Those individuals are EMPLOYEES of the American people. They work for us.

Not the other way around.

If public employees had a hand in this crime, they deserve to be held accountable for their actions. If public employees had a hand in committing the worst mass murder in American history, those public employees need to be held accountable for that crime.

Americans do not run away from their problems. They do not run away from criminality in government. They fix it.

[B.Lokry]

It's too bad I am limited to 1500 characters. I would like to explain blow-by-blow how myopic the vision of this article's writer is as he attempts to debunk the 9-11 Truth Movement and put it in a bad light. It is almost as though he said, "Okay, so you see a man with a smoking gun still pointing at a dead man's head. And okay, you saw the man fall down dead just after hearing the report of the still smoking pistol at about the same time you saw a hole appear between the dead man's eyes, with brains gushing copiously out the hole in the rear of the head. How bizarre that you would conclude that the man with the gun just shot the other fella! Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. YOU WRONG-HEADED CONSPIRACY THEORIST, YOU! The man with the gun may not have done the job." It was a real transparent attempt at propagandizing the reader. I am amazed that there are such foolish human beings walking around sporting brains in their heads of generally the same physical quality as my own.

[jt6]

It's condescending to complain that 911 Truthers somehow spoil the waters of dissent. How pompous it is put forth as more legitimate "their" battles involving torture, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, the removal of habeus corpus, a gutted treasury and Iraq. Every one of these items were shoved down the public's throat in the name of 911.

I wonder how we can trust Hayes and other Nation writers to handle these issues when they allow Popular Mechanics, the NISB and Nova to submit a few stress formulas, temperature coefficients and computer animations to reassure us of the following preposterous assertions:

1. Gravity and Kerosene provided enough energy to create pools of molten steel in the basements of both towers.

2. The time of ground impact of pancaking Twin Tower buildings could match that of dropping a billiard ball from the same height in a vaccum. (A billiard ball in our earth's atmosphere would take 21 seconds to hit the ground from that height).

3. Gravity and kerosene fires contain enough energy to completely anihilate both towers and their contents. (No keyboards, no drawer panels, no telephones, no fax machines were found whole. The largest any one piece that could be found was approximately 4"x 4" wide).

Everyone that sells to us as legitimate the assertions of the 911 Commission should pay for the cost of peeling every last finger back from this executive power-grab.

[liars_all]

To CBS: Why ot try some real investigative reporting and get to the bottom of all the 9/11 lies...is *** like this what you got into journalism for? Stand up and be REAL reporters, instead of lemmings.

[gideon524]

Hey, these silly 9/11 reports just keep popping up. Here's a former employee of yours on 9/11 saying a 4th explosion rocked the remains of the World Trade Center AFTER both towers collapsed!

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1546964260

[gideon524]

Uh oh, I found another CBS report with one of YOUR reporters mentioning a fireball she saw at STREET LEVEL when the south tower collapse after seeing the tower itself "blow"!

one thing, when you're copying these links, you have to paste them piece by piece because it only copies the first line of the link.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1546668296

[gideon524]

Hey, hey lookie what I found; another CBS report of an explosion preceding the collapse of the South Tower on 9/11...

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1370738299

[gideon524]

You know, that's a really cute, ironic story, especially the part when you say how the movement is a waste of time when your very own TV reporter, Bob Orr, said himself on the very day of 9/11 that "It could've been an inside job." Don't believe me? Here's the link!

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1547231321

[linux4ever]

[continuation of previous post]

Some theories propagated by people in the 9/11 truth movement are obviously nonsense ("there were no planes", "the planes were replaced with drones", probably the "pod theory"), but the events cannot be explained without some theories propagated by [parts of] the 9/11 truth movement.

Some examples:
- (lack of) reaction of the Secret Service: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/9-11secretservice.html
- The collapse of WTC7, which was not hit by a plane (http://www.wtc7.net/)
- Larry Silverstein (owner of the WTC complex) admitted demolishing WTC7 (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/cutter.html)
- It takes several weeks to set up a controlled demolition on the scale seen in WTC7, so how could this be done one one day?
- What about the insider trading of airline put options prior to 9/11? Is it a coincidence that almost all put options were traded by a former CIA director?

I don't know what happened on 9/11 - but one thing is clear: The official story isn't complete, and all attempts to fill its gaps point at members/associates of the Bush administration.

[linux4ever]

I fully agree with the basic point of the article -- but it fails to address the issue of 9/11 really not being what we're told it was.

The Popular Mechanics debunking article referred to in this article has long since been debunked by the 9/11 Truth movement, and the debunking does have better points than the Popular Mechanics article (which was, by the way, written by Ben Chertoff, cousin of the Homeland Security chief at the time -- Michael Chertoff).

(For the debunking of the debunking, see e.g.
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/reply_to_popular_mechanics.htm
http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Feature-Article.htm?InfoNo=009309
)


[continued]

[truthshall]

Thanks ! It's when i read *** like this that i'm inspired to get more truth out to people. I really like all the big words and little jabs he used to write this propaganda garbage article. Lord of the rings ? Ha you are pathetic. I surf , ride motorcross , wakeboard, work hard , and get more a?s then you could ever imagine , so don't try labeling us TRUTHERS so fast. Next time you write a piece come correct or stay home loser.I gotta go talk to about a hundred or so people real quick and give em some truth . Bye !