tawny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 22:42:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: tawny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: David Ray Griffin's address at the National Press Club
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This is a very good brief summary of the many gross and egregious problems with the official version of 9/11 and of the media's total complicity in covering up the story of the century.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 18:28:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: David Ray Griffin's address at the National Press Club
Dear 9/11 truth activists and concerned citizens,
Below is Dr. David Ray Griffin's address last month to the National Press
Club in Washington D.C. (distributed with permission). The National Press
Club, according to its own website (http://npc.press.org) is "the largest
and most prestigious press club in the world." That Dr. Griffin was even
invited to speak there may be a sign that the tide is turning for 9/11
truth.
And let's not forget C-Span II (bookTV) will be airing Nafeez Ahmed,
author of "The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of
Terrorism" on Saturday, July 30 at 8PM, Sunday, July 31 at 1PM, and
Monday, Aug 1 at 1:15AM (all times East Coast).
Towards peace and truth,
Emanuel Sferios
Webmaster, SeptemberEleventh.org
For an online version of Dr. Griffin's address below:
http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-07-29-pressclub.php
For DVDs of Dr. Griffin's C-Span talk and other 9/11 truth DVDs:
http://www.septembereleventh.org/donations.php
For photos of last weekend's 9/11 truth event in DC, with images of Dr.
Ray Griffin, Nafeez Ahmed, Paul Thompson, Ray McGovern, Danny Schecter,
Jenna Orkin, Charles Key, Gael Murphy, Peter Phillips and many others
(photos by Jan Hoyer, John Gannon, Chris Emery, Jonathan Gold):
http://truthemergency.us/PhotoAlbum/EmergencyTruthConvergence%20version%201/index.html
===============
9/11 AND THE MAINSTREAM PRESS
Address at the National Press Club
June 22, 2005
David Ray Griffin
After the attacks of 9/11, I accepted the blowback thesis, according to
which the attacks were payback for US foreign policy. About a year later,
a colleague suggested that the attacks were orchestrated by our own
government. My response was that I didnt think the Bush
administration---even the Bush administration---would do such a thing. A
few months later, another colleague suggested that I look at a website
containing the massive 9/11 timeline created by Paul Thompson. This
timeline, I found, contained an enormous number of reports, all from
mainstream sources, that contradicted the official account. This started a
process that led me to publish The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions
about the Bush Administration and 9/11, which summarized much of the
evidence that had been discovered by previous researchers---evidence, I
concluded, that provided a "strong prima facie case for official
complicity."
In a criminal trial, once the prosecution has presented its initial case,
the defense asks the judge for a dismissal on the grounds that a prima
facie case for guilt has not been presented. However, if the judge
declares that such a case has been made, then the defense must rebut the
various elements in the prosecutions case. The defense cannot simply
ignore the prosecutions case by stating that it is "too outrageous to be
dignified by a response." If the defense fails to offer a convincing
rebuttal, the prima facie case is presumed to be conclusive.
The Bush administration responded to the charges against it as a defense
attorney would, declaring them too outrageous to be taken seriously.
President Bush himself advised people, perhaps especially reporters, not
to tolerate "outrageous conspiracy theories." What the president really
meant is that people should not tolerate any outrageous conspiracy
theories except his own, according to which 19 Arab Muslims defeated the
most powerful and sophisticated defense system in history and also
defeated the laws of physics, bringing down three steel-frame building in
a way that perfectly mimicked controlled demolition.
In any case, what was needed at that stage was someone to play the role of
the judge, determining, from an impartial perspective, whether a prima
facie case for the guilt of the Bush administration had been made.
This role should have been played by the press. But the mainstream press
instead offered itself as a mouthpiece for the administrations conspiracy
theory.
The role of the impartial judge has, nevertheless, been played by civil
society, in which tens of millions of people in this country and around
the world now accept the 9/11 truth movements contention that the Bush
administration was complicit in the attacks.
The fact that the president was finally forced to appoint a 9/11
commission provided an opportunity for the Bush administration to rebut
the allegations made against it. You might assume that the 9/11 Commission
would have played the role of an impartial jury, simply evaluating the
evidence for the competing conspiracy theories and deciding which one was
more strongly supported.
The Commissions investigative work, however, was carried out by its
staff, and this staff was directed by the White Houses man inside the
Commission, Philip Zelikow, a fact that the mainstream press has not
emphasized. Under Zelikows leadership, the Commission took the role of
the prosecution for the Bush administrations brief against al-Qaeda. In
doing so, it implicitly took the role of the defense for the Bush
administration. Accordingly, an important question to ask about The 9/11
Commission Report, especially since we know that the Commission had many
copies of The New Pearl Harbor, is how well the Commission rebutted the
prima facie case against the Bush-Cheney administration, which was
summarized in that book.
In a second book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I
showed that the Commission simply ignored most of that evidence and
distorted the rest. I will summarize a few of the 115 sins of omission and
distortion that I identified.
The New Pearl Harbor reported evidence that at least six of the alleged
hijackers are still alive. David Harrison of the Telegraph interviewed two
of the men who supposedly died on Flight 93, which crashed in
Pennsylvania, one of whom said that he "had never even heard of
Pennsylvania," let alone died there. The Associated Press reported that
Waleed al-Shehri, supposedly on Flight 11, contacted the U.S. embassy in
Morocco about two weeks after 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report,
nevertheless, suggested that al-Shehri was responsible for stabbing one of
the flight attendants shortly before Flight 11 crashed into the North
Tower.
The New Pearl Harbor cited reports that although Mohamed Atta, the
supposed ringleader, had been portrayed as a devout Muslim ready to meet
his maker, he actually loved alcohol, pork, and lap dances. Zelikows
commission, however, said that Atta had become "fanatically" religious.
They also claimed that they could find no credible explanation as to why
Atta and the other hijackers went to Las Vegas.
The mainstream press has let the Commission get away with these obvious
contradictions.
People who have seen Michael Moores Fahrenheit 9/11 know that President
Bush was in a classroom in Sarasota when he was told that a second plane
had struck the World Trade Center, a sign that the country was suffering
an unprecedented terrorist attack. And yet the president just sat there.
Many critics have asked why he did not immediately assume the role of
commander-in-chief, but the more important question is why the highly
trained Secret Service agents did not immediately rush him to safety.
Bushs location had been highly publicized. They should have worried that
a hijacked airliner was bearing down on them at that very moment. And yet
they allowed the president to remain at the school another half hour,
thereby implying that they knew the president was not a target.
The 9/11 Commissions only response was to report that "[t]he Secret
Service told us they . . . did not think it imperative for [the President]
to run out the door." The Commissioners evidently accepted the implied
suggestion that maintaining presidential decorum was more important than
protecting the presidents life. The mainstream press has had no comment
on this remarkable response to that remarkable incident.
Another big question created by the official story is how the hijackers,
by crashing planes into the Twin Towers, caused them and Building 7 to
collapse. One problem is that Building 7 was not struck by an airplane,
and steel-frame buildings had never before been caused to collapse by fire
alone, even when the fires had been much bigger, hotter, and
longer-lasting. The Commission avoided this problem by simply not
mentioning this fact or even, incredibly, that Building 7 collapsed.
Another problem, which I mentioned earlier, is that the collapses had all
the standard features of controlled demolitions. For example, all three
buildings came down at virtually free-fall speed. The Commission even
alluded to this feature, saying that the "South Tower collapsed in 10
seconds." But it never explained how fire plus the impact of an airplane
could have produced such a collapse.
Controlled demolition was also suggested by the fact that the collapses
were total, with the 110-story Twin Towers collapsing into a pile of
rubble only a few stories high. The core of each tower had consisted of 47
massive steel columns, which extended from the basements through the
roofs. Even if we ignore all the other problems in the official "pancake"
theory of the collapses, those massive steel columns should have still
been sticking up a thousand feet in the air. Zelikows commission handled
this problem with the audacious claim that "[t]he interior core of the
buildings was a hollow steel shaft."
James Glanz, a science writer for the New York Times, co-authored a book
in 2003 entitled The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center. This book
contains an extensive discussion of the construction of the towers around
the 47 interior columns. And yet when the Commission in 2004 published its
incredible denial that these columns existed, the Times did not protest.
Another example: Breaking those massive steel columns would have required
very powerful explosives. Many survivors of the towers have reported
hearing and feeling explosions. But the 9/11 Commission failed to mention
any of these reports. William Rodriguez told the 9/11 Commission behind
closed doors about feeling and hearing a huge explosion in the
sub-basement of the North Tower, then rescuing people from its effects,
but neither his name nor any of his testimony is found in Zelikows final
report.
The mainstream press has also refused to report Rodriguezs story, even
though NBC News spent a day at his home taping it.
The Commission also failed to address the many reasons to conclude that
the Pentagon was not struck by Flight 77. The Commission in particular
failed to subpoena the film from the video cameras, confiscated by the FBI
immediately after the attacks, which could at least clear up one of the
questions---whether the attacking aircraft was a Boeing 757.
The Commission did allude to one problem---the fact that Hani Hanjour, the
alleged pilot, was known to be completely incompetent, incapable of flying
a Boeing 757, let alone performing the remarkable maneuver reportedly
executed by the aircraft that hit the Pentagon. The Commission handled
this problem simply by saying in one place that Hanjour was considered a
"terrible pilot" while saying elsewhere that he was given the assignment
to hit the Pentagon because he was "the operations most experienced
pilot." The mainstream press has not pointed out this contradiction.
The Commission also failed to discuss the considerable evidence that
Flight 93 was shot down by the US military, perhaps when passengers were
about to wrest control of it. The Commission dealt with this problem only
indirectly, by claiming that Vice President Cheney did not give the
shoot-down order until 10:10, which was at least four minutes after Flight
93 crashed. In support of this claim, the Commission said that Cheney did
not enter the Operations Center under the White House until almost 10:00
that morning. To make this claim, however, the Commission had to
contradict all prior reports. It also had to delete Secretary of
Transportation Norman Minetas testimony, given during the Commissions
public hearings, that when he got down there at 9:20, Cheney was already
in charge.
Even such an obvious lie, supported by such blatant suppression of
evidence, has elicited no murmur from our mainstream press.
There are dozens of other omissions and distortions the press has allowed
the Commission to get away with. For example, the Commissions endorsement
of the claim by General Richard Myers that he was on Capitol Hill that
morning ignores Richard Clarkes report, in Against All Enemies, that
Myers was in the Pentagon, participating in Clarkes videoconference.
Also, the Commissions account of why the hijacked airliners were not
intercepted contradicts the account that had been told since shortly after
9/11 not only by the U.S. military but also by the press, in thousands of
stories. But the press now, like Gilda Radnor, says "Never Mind."
In any case, as these illustrations show, the 9/11 Commission, which had
the opportunity to rebut the prima facie case against the Bush
administration, failed to do so. This means that the publication of The
9/11 Commission Report needs to be recognized as a decisive event, because
it was the moment at which the prima facie case against the Bush
administration became a conclusive case.
What we need now is a press that will let the American people in on this
development---which is most important, given the fact that the official
story about 9/11 has provided the pretext for virtually every other
horrible thing this administration has done.
__________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
