2020-

2020-09-11 g
9/11, THE CONTROLLED DEMOLITION OF THREE BUILDINGS, OUR FREEDOMS, AND OUR NATION - VI

The title of this book, 9/11 Contradictions, refers entirely to internal contradictions within the public story about 9/11. The book deals, in other words, with issues on which one person, agency, institution, or official body that has helped articulate the public story about 9/11 has contradicted another such person, agency, institution, or official body. In some cases, the contradiction is a self-contradiction, in which people contradict what they had said at an earlier time.

To give a few examples: In Chapter 1, we see that the White House has told two radically different stories about President Bush’s behavior in the classroom in Florida. The second and third chapters show that Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta’s testimony about Vice President Cheney’s whereabouts that morning contradicts the account given by the 9/11 Commission. In Chapter 7, the contradiction is between Richard Clarke, on the one hand, and Donald Rumsfeld and the 9/11 Commission, on the other. In Chapters 8 and 17, we see that two of the government’s claims—about Barbara Olson’s calls to Ted Olson and about evidence of Osama bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11—are contradicted by one of its own agencies, the FBI. Chapters 12 and 13 show that the 9/11 Commission’s main claims about United Flight 93, made in 2004, are contradicted by statements made in previous years by many US military officers. In Chapters 21 and 22, we see that statements made by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which was given the task of explaining the destruction of the World Trade Center, are contradicted by numerous statements made by members of the Fire Department of New York.

In several chapters, the contradictions involve the mainstream media. (These contradictions are considered “internal” because the mainstream media, while perhaps challenging this or that detail of the story told by government officials, have supported all this story’s main elements.) Chapter 16, for example, shows that stories about cell phone calls from the flights, which have appeared in the media from the beginning, were contradicted by the FBI’s report on phone calls from the four flights, which was presented at the Moussaoui trial in 2006.

As its subtitle indicates, this book is addressed to Congress and the press. It is especially suitable for them for two reasons.

In the first place, most reporters and members of Congress are busy people, with little time to study complex issues. This book, besides being easy to read, requires no technical expertise in order to form a judgment about the issues involved.

Most other books about 9/11 revolve around various matters—such as FAA and military procedures, the conditions needed to cause steel-frame buildings to collapse, and the kind of damage that would be caused by an airliner striking the Pentagon—about which most people do not feel equipped to make a judgment.

In the present book, by contrast, no judgments requiring expertise are required, because each chapter revolves around a simple contradiction, which anyone can recognize. If Jones says “P” and Smith says “not P,” we can all recognize that something must be wrong, because both statements cannot be true.

In the second place, many members of Congress and the press have been reluctant to look into any possible difficulties about the public story for fear of being labeled “conspiracy theorists.” Although this may be unfortunate, it is understandable, because the most important asset of both journalists and politicians is their credibility. If they lose that, they lose their effectiveness, even their jobs. We can understand, therefore, that they are unwilling to risk being saddled with the dreaded “conspiracy theorist” label—one of the surest ways to lose credibility—by showing sympathy with people questioning the official account of what happened on 9/11.

Why is this—that anyone questioning the official story is almost automatically labeled a conspiracy theorist? It is because in most critical treatments of 9/11, the official account is rejected in favor of an alternative theory, which usually involves the idea that the 9/11 attacks resulted from a conspiracy within our own government.

The present book, however, contains no theory about what really happened. It provides simply an exposition of various facts. If Mineta said “P,” that is a fact. If the 9/11 Commission said “not P,” that is a fact. And it is a fact that “P” and “not P” cannot both be true.

Here, then, is the point of this book: 9/11 has clearly been the most important event in recent history. The accepted story about 9/11 has been used to increase military spending, justify wars, restrict civil liberties, and exalt the executive branch of the government. And yet there are serious contradictions within this accepted story: this book documents 25 of them. The existence of so many contradictions within such an important story is intolerable. Congress and the press are the two principal institutions with the power and the responsibility for looking into such matters.

This book is intended as a tool to help them fulfill this responsibility.

In doing the research for this book, I relied most heavily on the Complete 911 Timeline produced by Cooperative Research. This timeline, drawn entirely from stories in the mainstream press, aspires to identify and, when possible, provide links to all reports dealing with events related to the attacks of 9/11. This timeline, which is surely one of the greatest journalistic feats of all time, is an indispensable resource for serious discussions of 9/11. Many of the chapters in this book would have been simply impossible without it.

I also relied heavily on the help of three wonderfully unselfish people: Matthew Everett of England, who is one of the managers of the Complete 9/11 Timeline; Elizabeth Woodworth of British Columbia, a writer and former research librarian; and Tod Fletcher of California, who would regularly spot problems the rest of us had overlooked. These three individuals, besides improving this book immensely with their good advice and proofreading skills, alerted me to the existence of dozens of reports I would have otherwise missed. Insofar as this book is easy to read and its references are useful to other researchers by virtue of being complete and up to date, gratitude should be directed primarily toward them.

Enormous additional thanks go to Elizabeth: after serving as my virtual assistant in the production of this book, she did most of the work for the preparation of the index.

I also wish to thank Hilary Plum of Interlink Books, for excellent work in editing this book, and my wife, Ann Jaqua, making it possible, in so many ways, for me to engage in the research and writing required for this book. (read the html book)

______________________

Permission is hereby granted to any and all to copy and paste any entry on this page and convey it electronically along with its URL,
______________________

...