59

Seventeen Years on: what really happened on 9/11?

Philip Roddis

Introduction

On Friday, August 31, I had an email from OffGuardian editor Catte:

How do you feel about reviewing a new 9/11 book for the anniversary? I know you’re a sceptic but that is why I’d value your input …

Two years ago, on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, OffGuardian ran my review of Dylan Avery’s Loose Change. Except it wasn’t a review but a pouring of vitriol on the film’s central assertion that the events of September 11, 2001 were an inside job.

Reception below the line was hostile. But among the cat-calls were voices I could not ignore: voices of reason from dudes who’d done their homework and whose tones were sober; friendly even. I promised to re-assess the truther case and return either to concede and apologise or reaffirm my views with better arguments. I gave no date but strongly and at the time sincerely implied it would be a few months tops. Not two years.

Why the delay? I’m not afraid of saying, I was wrong. I’ve had practise and should I find it was me, not the 911 truthers, who’d been deluded it wouldn’t be personally implicating in the way coming out as an active paedophile or closet tory would. As fess-ups go, it would be at the egg-on-face as opposed to long custodial sentence end of the scale. I can do egg on face. Like I said, I’ve had practice.

The delay is due – I’m not offering this as excuse but as reason – to my aversion to what looked a right royal rabbit hole. Investing scores if not hundreds of hours sifting a mire of claim and counter claim did not appeal. Now if you say this was too big a question to be back-burnered on such flimsy grounds, I’d agree, though I’ve not been idle. I’ve had much to go at with mendacious narratives on Syria, Russia and Corbyn, while trying to convey, mainly to those on the left, that capitalism’s deep unfairness is the least of it; that its innermost laws of motion pose an existential threat.

But a promise is a promise, especially one made from a hole of my own digging. If I resented the diverting of time and energy, I hadn’t far to look for the culprit.

Within minutes of reading Catte’s email I’d hit send on this reply:

Could be an opportunity…What kind of turnaround time are you thinking?

But a further apology is in order. Regardless of whether I still thought truthers wrong, I was always going to have to say sorry for the sneering tone of my 2016 piece. So sure had I been of the logic of my case, a logic I’ll return to, I’d seen no need to address the empirical underpinnings of theirs.

(At the time, my exposure to truthism had come from armchair conspiracists too idle or brain fogged to put together a decent argument but happy to bang out link-heavy emails with a simple subtext: you’re wrong – read this and this and this … Plus, of course, Avery’s film: so bad that some truthers saw it as part of the cover up; a false flag in its own right to damn by its very shoddiness their case against the official narrative. Indeed, one BTL critic of my 2016 piece picked up on this point to accuse me of straw-mannery.)

So … apologies, mea culpas and attempts at self analysis duly offered, let me turn to 9/11 Unmasked, by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth. I’ll start with what we can agree is the ‘official narrative’.

September 11, 2001: the official account

This has two threads. One is the popular perception, framed by media coverage at the time, of what happened. The other is the combined wisdom of later government reports, most importantly that of the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) in 2005. Both threads assert that nineteen devout Muslims hijacked four airliners to fly them at high profile targets in separate but coordinated acts of mass murder and suicide.

  • New York’s World Trade Centre (WTC) Towers 1 and 2 took devastating hits to, respectively, floors 93-99 and 75-85. On impact the two planes, both from Boston Logan with tanks full for long haul flight, sprayed tons of aviation fuel (kerosene aka paraffin) whose ignition triggered an inferno so intense as to melt the steel skeletons of both towers[1] and cause not only their spectacular freefall but, ten hours later, that of WTC 7, which no plane had struck. No plan was in place to stop such an attack because no military scenario had envisaged transcontinental airliners as missiles.
  • A third plane was flown so low as to bury itself in the first and second floors of the Pentagon Building, across the Potomac from Washington DC.
  • The fourth was brought down in Pennslyvania by passengers – knowing themselves doomed but alerted by phone calls of the New York attacks – bent on thwarting the hijackers and saving other lives.

Before turning to the methodology used by Griffin and Woodworth to query this official narrative, a word about its ‘popular’ and ‘formal’ threads. The authors do a good job of showing that, where the two are in contradiction on matters of fact, we needn’t be 24-carat conspiracy freaks to suppose a tidying up – by revision, withheld evidence and refusal to acknowledge glaring inconsistencies – of contemporaneous accounts. Nor to suppose that such airbrushing on the part of subsequent inquiries goes beyond what we’d expect of officialdom covering up incompetence. Rather, to suppose airbrushing on this scale to have only one conceivable purpose: removing hostages to fortune and threats to overall narrative coherence and credibility.

9/11 Unmasked: the methodology

[we] decided … to form a panel of twenty-some independent researchers well-versed on 9/11 with a broad spectrum of expertise. Dubious claims embedded in the official account of 9/11 would be presented to the panelists separately to see if they, with no consultation among themselves, would reach consensus on whether there was sufficient basis to declare the claim false.

In response to our invitation to potential members, a panel of twenty-three people with varying professional backgrounds came together to apply disciplined analysis to the verifiable evidence about the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 Panel includes people from the fields of physics, chemistry, structural engineering, aeronautical engineering, piloting, airplane crash investigation, medicine, journalism, psychology, and religion. The members are named on the Acknowledgments page.

– Introduction, pp vii-viii

I’m not happy with this. People from the fields of … leaves too much scope for cherry picking a-priori truthers who may not represent their disciplines, or even have relevant expertise. As for that in response to our invitation … what would we make of a trial, for black-on-white capital murder in fifties Alabama, whose jurors had responded to a call for home-owning volunteers?

Finally, the authors don’t say what steps they took to safeguard no consultation.

In peer reviewed scientific work these would be terminal flaws[2], while a criminal defence team would have a field day discrediting the prosecution’s expert witnesses. But here? Given the context, are they fatal? That rather depends on whether this ‘methodology’ is crucial to the authors’ case, or gimmick in an otherwise sober presentation of evidence too compelling to need such treatment. I think the latter.

Structure and tone

Here I’m more impressed. The tone is lucid, free of sensationalism and to a high standard of literacy. These are good writers, too confident in the strength of their case to go in for flashy phrasing, cheap shots or intellectual short cuts. As a bonus, proof reading is to a high standard and that’s significant given the intricacy of argument and supporting detail.

But what about structure? Here 9/11 Unmasked manages the conflicting pulls of clarity, and engagement with complex detail whose significance could easily be lost on the most attentive reader. It does so by the tried and tested method of layering content – never less than three tiers; four in labyrinthine arguments – to present sub-claims, micro-points and supporting factoids without their obscuring the bigger picture. I dived in seas of minutiae without fear of drowning.

(Two carps. My PDF version could and should have hot-linked its 875 inline references to footnote text, enabling sceptics to make fast random checks as to whether a footnote really does the job implied in the main text. Given such controversial content, and high standard of presentation elsewhere, it will be a pity if this is not corrected. Similarly, a book so necessarily replete with acronyms really does need a glossary.)

Still on structure, the 320 page book’s main section divides into 51 short chapters, each addressing a discrete issue, or set of interrelated issues, arising from the official account. All chapters have the same structure: introduction .. official account .. best evidence .. conclusion. Where successive official accounts differ – often as not with that same whiff of ‘tidying up’ – the account-best evidence-conclusion cycle iterates until the chapter ends with an overall conclusion. By such tiering, bird’s eye views give way to two or more descending levels of detail in an elegant solution to an old problem: how to evaluate the trees without obscuring the forest. Speaking as a retired academic, if this were a textbook I’d be singing its praises to students.

Nature of the evidence

In challenging virtually every aspect of the official narrative, the authors’ evidence falls into these broad and not always orthogonal categories:

  • Scientific knowledge, on such as the melting point of steel and whether any fire triggered by exploding aviation fuel could reach it. This impacts on the crown jewel of truther claims: that the towers could not have been brought down, in the manner the world saw on its TV screens, by the forces claimed by NIST 2005 as sole cause.[3]
  • Architectural, engineering and other professional knowhow on such as: whether those WTC beams and columns could come apart in the manner claimed by NIST; whether any man with minimal flight training could execute that low altitude turn into the Pentagon; whether in 2001 it was possible to make a cell phone call from a plane at 30,000 feet.
  • Forensic evidence, on such as whether nanothermite (classic signature of controlled detonation) was found in the WTC debris; and whether CCTV footage, placing the nineteen men in the places claimed, can be relied on.
  • Witnesses on the scene whose statements pose serious problems for the official narrative.
  • Inconsistencies within the official narrative on points where, even after ‘tidying up’, it lacks internal coherence else uses circular or other flawed forms of reasoning.
  • Lack of fit with known realities, such as that flying an airliner into a skyscraper, far from being an unforeseen event, had in fact been played out in wargame scenarios.
  • Suspicious behaviour by key players, in particular Cheney, Rumsfeld and senior military commanders; and abnormal levels of put-option and short-selling in the days before 9/11.

As implied by my recurring use of ‘such as’, the above barely scratches the surface of the evidence assembled in this book. But how good is it?

Quality of evidence

I’m not a physicist, engineer, military expert or lawyer. What I am (by training, disposition and life experience) is good at evaluating, once I take the time to consider them, the strengths and weaknesses of arguments, especially when laid out with such commendable clarity. If the hard facts deployed to support higher level assertions bear up to expert scrutiny (and if they don’t, the authors are fools as well as charlatans since expert scrutiny is inevitable) then this is as strong a prima facie case for throwing out NIST, and its predecessors, as ever confronted an official cover up.

It follows that an inquiry quite unprecedented – a truly independent panel with no-holds access to all materials and witnesses, and immune from intimidation by pretty much the most powerful interests on earth – would be needed in reply to the gauntlet Griffin and Woodworth have thrown down.

I fear that no such inquiry will occur. Instead, eminent psychologists who’ve never – as I’d never – deigned to engage with evidential details will continue to publish acclaimed drivel on the pathology and pitiable delusions of all conspiracy theorists, citing all 9/11 truthers as textbook examples.

What about the logical case?

I promised to revisit this. The problems for me were always the number of conspirators and, related, complexity of so comprehensively elaborate an inside job, and whether the putative gains might justify the risks. I’ll consider each in turn.

Numbers. The only safe number for a conspiracy is one. Since that’s an oxymoron, let’s move to two. At least you’ll know, if you didn’t blab, who did. But when we get to three, boy, that’s when the problems really kick in. But here? Here we’re talking hundreds if not thousands of conspirators, every last one a party to mass murder and yet, seventeen years on, we’ve had not a single breaking of ranks; not one death bed confession.

Complexity and scale. While America has form on false flag ops, they’ve been simple affairs. It’s one thing to fake or even execute an attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. That can be done with a couple of light craft manned by a few Navy SEALs, hand picked men whose omerta culture minimises risk of leak. But if hard core truthers are right – I’ll come to soft core shortly – this would be a false flag op of unprecedented and incredible dimensions. To what end? The question brings us to my final logical objection.

Risk/benefits.The most cited rationale for 9/11 as an inside job is that it legitimated the ‘War on Terror’ – its Guantanamos, Patriot Acts and expansion of the spy-state – and/or wars on the Middle East which, as many know and I’ve argued elsewhere, are not driven by the reasons Western leaders and media would have us believe.

I don’t downplay the value to the US ruling class of such legitimation, but do question whether such prizes needed so elaborate, risky and, yes, evil[4] a deed. To evaluate such a proposition, the two putative gains need to be disentangled.

On wars in the Middle East, we’ve seen millions slain and nations ruined on the basis of casus belli far simpler: WMDs; nasty dictators. And while ‘going after’ Bin Laden worked in Afghanistan, it was an embarrassment in Saddam’s Iraq: no haven for salafists. It’s true of course that people told they face a terrible threat aren’t the most critical thinkers, but that can be turned on its head. If it’s so easy to fool the worried masses, why bother with such an elaborate ‘reason’ as 9/11, given the logistical problems summarised here?

I have an easier time buying the idea of the War on Terror as legitimated by 911. At least you don’t have to explain, even to audiences as credulous as American patriots, how the likes of Saddam wind up in bed with jihadists. But the question ending the previous paragraph stands. It still doesn’t stack up.

So that’s my logical case (oh, and there is the small matter of why the conspirators left so glaring an audit trail) and Griffin and Woodworth don’t even try to address it. In this they are as one with other truthers I know. Ditto in offering no alternative scenario for what they think happened on 9/11: not even for the softer version that Team Bush didn’t plan an inside job but, forewarned of an attack, let it happen for reasons already sketched out.

But before we damn them for such omissions, far less see their case as fatally flawed, let’s ask this question. Does 9/11 Unmasked cross, by its detailed evidence and reasoning for rejecting the official account, the threshold for being taken seriously? I say it does.

Now let’s ask another. Does it fall to those with compelling evidence of a monstrous crime to say why it happened? It would be dashed sporting of them, for sure, but can we in fairness demand it? I say we can’t.

In the world of Agatha Christie, Poirot ends each case by assembling the suspects in the conservatory. Tweaking waxed moustache, he eliminates one unpleasant character after another before fixing on the unpleasant character who is also the killer. He then sets out a convincing but unforeseen motive, followed by evidence to apply noose to neck.

In the world of Agatha Christie.

In my world, if you and others, upstanding citizens all, catch me with jam smeared face, crumbs to lips and three jam tarts in my pocket, still warm from cook’s oven; if, moreover, you have six witnesses of equally unblemished character swearing they saw me climb through the vicar’s kitchen window to lift the tarts and leg it, need you then, to secure a conviction for aggravated burglary, disprove my indignant protests, backed by two drinking pals and a dodgy doctor, that I loathe jam, have a lethal allergy to pastry and too low an IQ to have pulled off so audacious a heist? I say you needn’t.

On which note I’ll close – with this recommendation for all who deem, as I had, the 9/11 truther case too daft for serious consideration. Buy this book.

NOTES:

  1. It’s important to note that claims of melting steel do not feature in the most important of the 9/11 reports.
  2. Peer review is on balance a good thing, but not the be-all and end-all many assume. In times of paradigm shift within a science it can be a reactionary force, while in the context of accusations of mass conspiracy, demanding it comes close to circular reasoning.
  3. To be fair, whatever was said prior to NIST 2005, an FAQ page on its site does not make the molten steel claim. Rather, it says ‘… the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large number of jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius, or 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers. Also to be fair, 9/11 Unmasked avoids a widespread strawman argument. Its Chapter 2 asserts only that: ‘… office fires, even if fed by jet fuel (which is essentially kerosene), could not have weakened the steel structure of these buildings sufficiently to collapse as suddenly as they did’
  4. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that killing three thousand Americans is more evil than slaughtering millions of Arabs by sanctions, bombs and shells of depleted uranium. I’m saying that those who order death from afar will tell themselves, as they lay head to pillow at night, that it was to save greater suffering. Maybe those authorising 9/11 as inside job, if that’s what happened, will do the same but, given the way humans manage cognitive dissonance, they’ll have a tougher time of it.

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hotrod31
hotrod31
Sep 13, 2021 12:38 PM

Let’s all sing and dance merrily down the road in the firm belief that the government[s] never lie, etc. etc. After all, we do all know that the government has the power to suspend the laws of physics for a day … whenever they please, don’t we?

kevin
kevin
Sep 13, 2020 11:31 PM

Why does this author think we should care so much about his opinion? It took him 17 years to question 9/11!

He even blames others for his own ignorance.

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Nov 10, 2018 1:42 PM

The aim of the Consensus panel on which this book is based is to present the best evidence – ‘against the official story’. That is not the best evidence about the events of Sept. 11th 2001. This is a self selected group of people who are active in the 911 truth movement and therefore have little or no objectivity about the evidence. Anyone who reads this book and considers they are getting some kind of sober , objective view of the evidence about 9/11 , will only realise they are not if the know something about the evidence about 9/11. All of the evidence. If they think David Ray Griffin is going to give them all of the evidence then the very fact that the intention of this book is to give a one-sided view of the evidence should not be lost on them.

binra
binra
Nov 10, 2018 5:26 PM
Reply to  Colin Doran

‘One sided’ is a bit reductionist. I haven’t read the book. I don’t have a sense that it does unmask the whole truth, so much as uncover further masking. The 911 event is a very complex set of shaped charges in the mind – as well as in the buildings. But the one sided assertions of the official narrative add up to an inconceivable conspiracy theory – unless perhaps one’s world view or career depends on believing it – or at least not openly challenging it or being seen to oppose those who do. And so the sense of being given a false account and denied the true generates an emotional bias of distrusting all and everything being said. Not surprisingly, for the laws of physics were suspended while the ability to effect such outcomes says ‘do as I say, not as I do’. To me the ability to effect… Read more »

Tony Szamboti
Tony Szamboti
Nov 11, 2018 12:23 PM
Reply to  Colin Doran

The simultaneous free fall of all four corners of the roof of wtc 7 is evidence of a controlled demolition and the ridiculous NIST assertion that this building collapsed due to fire in the face of that is evidence of a conspiracy.

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Nov 17, 2018 5:23 AM
Reply to  Tony Szamboti

I have seen quite a few controlled demolitions and sometimes the building collapses in the centre and then the ends fall inwards to that collapsed centre, or the building falls over sideways onto some empty piece of land or it collapses in a cascading sequence starting at one end. I don’t see where ‘the simultaneous freefall of all four corners’ is somehow a characteristic of controlled demolition.And I’ve only seen one corner being measured ,by David chandler for example. Measuring an acceleration is something that is done in a laboratory, using video and high speed clocks reference scales. I have never seen anyone using pixels on an unclear video to make measurements of any kind let alone make any kind of definitive statements about them. If people say it is not a structural collapse due to fire and that that has never happened , then they have nothing to compare… Read more »

Tony Szamboti
Tony Szamboti
Nov 17, 2018 10:28 AM
Reply to  Colin Doran

The dynamics of the collapse of WTC 7 prove it was a controlled demolition. Photos of the rubble pile show the exterior was pulled inward, as it fell on top.

It doesn’t matter whether you can or cannot hear explosive noises in the video. In that vain you should also realize that the cameras were quite a distance from the building and you need a high gain microphone in that case, not the short range types used by reporters for interviews. There were a lot of eye witnesses that talked about hearing explosive noise. It was also only necessary to pull the core, which being inside would dampen the noise emanating outside the exterior.

TFS
TFS
Oct 5, 2018 11:16 AM

What EVERYONE seems to forget, whether you an Official Government Conspiracy Theorist, Truther or AN Other, our opinions/views don’t matter on jot.

The families of those killed on that day want answers…..and that my friends is enough for me.

Denying the families their right shows that the Regime of SpartUSA is alive an well.

binra
binra
Oct 6, 2018 1:39 PM
Reply to  TFS

It isn’t that what we think does not materialise results, but that the results may not be what we want. Truth is first and foremost a self-integrity. We can invite others to join in a love of truth and freedom from lies that cant truly serve us, but we cant ‘wait around’ as if life depends on that – at least not without giving power of decision over to other people or circumstances outside our control. Death of loved ones can break our ‘world’ – and under circumstances of ill-intent and withholding or twisting of truth, are likely to be even more unsettling. I feel that truth is where peace is – even if the breaking of our illusions is devastating to what we WANTED to be true. WANTING truth to be different than it Is – has to be a source of conflict – no matter how many people… Read more »

think511374904
think511374904
Sep 29, 2018 10:45 PM

check it out: NIST “no reports of molten metal known” <> fema report appendix c. That’s a cover-up.

physicsandmathsrevision
physicsandmathsrevision
Sep 26, 2018 6:16 PM

Why are people even trying to convince someone who didn’t understand when FIRST confronted with the almost endless and impossible physical anomalies that we have been lied to on a staggering scale re 9/11? Only idiots and the wilfully blind don’t recognise the obvious.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Sep 27, 2018 6:30 AM

Exactly why I valued my [Internet] friendship with Dave “9/12” McGowan: he didn’t screw around with half-arsed “activist”-identity politics. More than can be said of 99% of latter day “activists”. Apropos of which and in light of your comment: if anyone older than 25 in 2001 didn’t already know by 9/12/2001 what Jonathan Cook describes in his latest Counterpunch article – that the entire system is irremediably, systemically corrupt, andbuilt on centuries of equally deep, systemic corruption – and start from there then the time they spend signalling any latter day “activist” tendencies they choose to express might better be spent stomping the brains out of the baby they have previously discarded with its bathwater.

SP
SP
Sep 15, 2018 6:00 PM

There is an assertion that hundreds if not thousands needed to be involved if this was some kind of inside job This need not be so. It needs only 1 or 2 highly placed conspirators giving orders for events that can serve two functions. The war games on the day served a very handy distraction for example, and what was the theme again? A terror attack. Physics suggests that these towers simply could not fall at that speed given the suggested mechanism of collapse. It is also interesting that there have been several far more severe fires in steel framed buildings since that did not induce collapse. Even if the mechanism eagerly popularized by Popular Mechanics (not a peer review journal) happened, exactly how were the massive central concrete columns around the lift wells destroyed, to ground level, given that the energy from gravity can only be used once? If… Read more »

Nicholas Kollerstrom
Nicholas Kollerstrom
Sep 26, 2018 6:22 PM
Reply to  SP

Let’s quote the late Michael Ruppert here, from his 9/11 magnum opus ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ (2004): ‘The number of people with complete foreknowedge of the attacks of September 11th would likely not exceed two dozen’ (p.3).

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Nov 10, 2018 2:39 PM
Reply to  SP

The war games on the day had little or no effect on what happened on the day. Ask yourself a few questions:

-Were these the first exercises ever held by NORAD? – or had they held exercises , for years , when there were no terrorist attacks. They held exercises when there no terrorist attacks and the were holding exercises when there were terrorist attacks. I’m not sure what they are supposed to do really.

-Should NORAD not have been holding any exercises on 9/11? Should they have kept that day free of exercises?

-Are terrorists not allowed to hijack planes when NORAD are holding exercises?

-If NORAD had to be sure that there would be no terrorist attacks when they were holding exercises, when would they ever hold exercises? Should NORAD never hold exercises because there could be some kind of terrorist attack while they were holding exercises?

Tony Szamboti
Tony Szamboti
Sep 12, 2018 5:55 PM

Thank you Mr. Roddis, for having the integrity to admit that once you looked into the situation more intensely you realized things were different than you originally supposed.

BigB
BigB
Sep 12, 2018 2:54 PM

Phillip Can I commend the research of Peter Dale Scott to you, if you have not already read them. He has been researching the Deep State events, or structural deep events (SDEs – the term he coined) since the 1990s. He thinks they are all interlinked, and I agree with him. Specifically, in reference to the planning of 9/11 – how handy would “an $8 billion communications and logistics program for an alternative emergency communications network” – the National Communications System – that was untraceable, left no record, and basically does not exist …officially. Especially if that network was part of the Continuity of Government planning. We know Cheney and Rumsfeld were part of this for 20 years, and on the morning of 9/11 they went absent without leave – leaving the country leaderless. They then suspended the Constitution and implemented COG control. Smells fishy to me! With such a… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 13, 2018 7:47 AM
Reply to  BigB

Ta for the recommend, BigB. I’ve located Dale Scott and listened to a few minutes of a 90 minute speech I’ll listen to in full later today.

Big B
Big B
Sep 13, 2018 10:14 AM
Reply to  writerroddis

đŸ™‚

tony rooke
tony rooke
Sep 15, 2018 1:28 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Would Mr Roddis be the same gentleman [aka Steel City Scribe] who ‘reviewed’ my 9/11 movie ‘Incontrovertible’, describing it as ‘pants’, then admitting to never having even watched it…?

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 15, 2018 1:55 PM
Reply to  tony rooke

My apologies Mr Rooke. I didn’t know what you meant until I read, just now, the last sentence of my ‘review’ of Dylan Avery’s Loose Change. I’m afraid I was carried away by my own sarcastic rhetoric, for which I am deeply sorry. Alas, I STILL haven’t seen your own film but when I get round to it will give it a far more open minded reception, on the back of my much more recent studies. (I’ve listened, on BigB’s suggestion, to Peter Dale Scott and on the strength of his seventy-five minute talk, have ordered his book, Road to 9/11.) Am currently eating a pair of my own pants, alongside humble pie. Can only say in my feeble defence that my exposure to 9/11 truthism back then had been to its weaker and nuttier end. Should we ever meet, maybe I could get you a drink and apologise face… Read more »

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Dec 3, 2020 3:31 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Mr. Roddis you have no apology to make to anyone for any scathing reviews of the 911 truth movement and it’s theories and the movies,articles or books that promote them. I’m really surprised that someone with academic training would fail to see the flaws in the whole idea of this consensus panel and would fall for the idea that the case made by the 911 truth movement has any real merit at all.
As for Tony Rooke’s movie , it’s maybe the grimest example in movie form of the conspiratorial nonsense about 9/11.

tony rooke
tony rooke
Sep 15, 2018 2:17 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Hi Phillip, As I had the misfortune to read your ‘review’ of my film ‘Incontrovertible’, [ a film by your own admission you did not even watch], I’m pleased you’ve put your foot on the first rung to reality. If you had watched my movie, some of the questions you are now struggling with would have been answered. The danger and intellectually folly of those who initially struggle with the truth of 9/11, is that rather than first examining the evidence impartially, they suffer a knee-jerk reaction of automatic denial because of the threat to their own world-view. In doing so, they actually create more conspiracies than the one they are dealing with. For example, you are already asking why the grand, theatrical, scale of 9/11??? Try not to. Just deal with with each piece of contradictory evidence as it arises. You’ve already started, which is good. But, whilst asking… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 15, 2018 6:52 PM
Reply to  tony rooke

Thanks Tony. I can admit to being wrong because, fundamentally, I’m more interested in what is true than in saving face. Again I apologise though. Not for being wrong – we can all be that – but for being scathing and all superior about a film I hadn’t even seen. I may be a little further than first rung, since I’ve written on some things you point out – the corrosive ownership of the media for instance and, even more importantly, the corrosive influence of market forces in media revenue streams; including, indirectly, those of your former employer. Having now accepted – belatedly but BLTN as they say – the empirical case against the official account, my logical objections are being revisited. Those logical objections were to the cruder end of truthism. Having listened to Dale Scott, I’m more open to the idea of a deep state which allowed 9/11… Read more »

tony rooke
tony rooke
Sep 16, 2018 11:21 AM
Reply to  writerroddis

Hi Phillip, Agreed. There is so much at play here. The Let It Happen On Purpose [LIHOP] scenario is very popular, although I personally see it as a somewhat sugar-coated pill for those not quite prepared to believe the US authorities would engineer this from the get-go. I think the MIHOP scenario [Make it Happen on Purpose] holds more credence, for me at least. We know that elements within the US Government have tried to do it before [Northwoods in ’62] and that the lead orchestrator in that [having been refused by JFK] was sent over to Europe after which we saw the rise of Gladio and a series of false flag events which even the BBC acknowledge. I think it’s no coincidence that Trump recently tore up John Brennan’s security clearance. JB has MANY questions to answer over the 9/11 hijacker’s being given an effective red-carpet into the US… Read more »

Tony Szamboti
Tony Szamboti
Sep 16, 2018 2:53 PM
Reply to  tony rooke

Tony and Phillip,

The physics of the collapses show the present government explanation for them cannot possibly be correct. There had to be charges in the buildings, and it isn’t hard to understand that they could not have gotten there without some form of insider involvement.

What that insider involvement was exactly can only be determined by a legitimate law enforcement investigation.

Why it was done can be discussed, to some degree, due to the actions taken in the aftermath and the fairly sound assumption that those providing the impossible government explanation can’t simply be stupid.

tony rooke
tony rooke
Sep 16, 2018 9:59 PM
Reply to  Tony Szamboti

Hi Tony,
You’re preaching to the converted here my friend. You and I have communicated privately many times when I was making Incontrovertible and liaising with some of the Fire Brigade boys here in
the UK. Hoping this finds you well.
Best,
Tony R

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Nov 10, 2018 3:12 PM
Reply to  Tony Szamboti

A conclusion about controlled demolition is not about physics or structures it is about people coming up with a plan and carrying out a plan – to commit mass murder. That is not about physics or science. The analysis of it is not about physics or science. It is about people. If someone tells me that people planned to do something then I can look at the plan and ask myself if the plan makes sense – to the people who are supposed to have planned it. I don’t have to ask the people who say there was a plan. It is not their plan. I don’t have to ask an engineer or an architect if someone else’s plan to commit mass murder makes sense. They could be the last people I would ask. “Why it was done can be discussed, to some degree, due to the actions taken in… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 21, 2018 9:28 AM
Reply to  tony rooke

Hi Tony

apologies for the late reply. I’d assumed this thread had run its course, but have just checked in, almost a week after your September 16 posts.

I’m aware of the Northwoods plan, and its author being sacked by JFK, only to get a senior NATO post within the year! I’m also aware of truly scary thinking behind the Project for a New American Century, and America’s god-given right to ‘full spectrum dominance’. I don’t think I ever doubted that sections of the American ruling class would deem such a false flag operation too evil to be contemplated. My doubts in respect of the MIHOP scenario were and are on practical grounds. That said, I accept now that it is foolish to rule out anything on other than empirical grounds.

Regards,
Philip

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Nov 10, 2018 11:10 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Do people think that the US when contemplating their military strength would be likely to say let’s have maybe the strongest airforce but let’s have a weaker navy that any likely opponent?. Let’s have a strong army but maybe we should have a weak airforce? I for one wouldn’t see much logic in that. The PNAC document is a defense review. When people have a defense review they have to ask what possible emergencies might arise and what to invest in and what not to invest in. The PNAC document advocated phasing out aircraft carriers and ending the F22 project and concentrating resources elsewhere. Governments do defense reviews all the time. I would love to see a day when there was no need for armies or military forces. I must have heard people in the truth movement talk about the PNAC document 1000 times and always they just extract one… Read more »

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Nov 11, 2018 5:53 AM
Reply to  Editor

So therefore I should read the Northwoods document and where it talks about swapping planes and shooting down an empty one or blowing up an empty ship and non – existent victims I should say they were planning to kill hundreds of civilians instead. I didn’t know I could do that. Can I maybe re-write the Northwoods document and change what it says to what I imagine it should say ? ‘Isn’t the time for taking any media narrative on trust well and truly over? ‘ ‘Narrative’ and ‘story’ are really useful words. They allow people to reduce everything to some kind of flimsy insubstantial ‘what we were told’ fiction that they can quote and point to as evidence if it suits their theory, or dismiss as a lie if it doesn’t. Practically every piece of evidence about 9/11 has come from the media and government sources. Where would David… Read more »

wardropper
wardropper
Sep 13, 2020 9:18 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Thank you, writer, for a piece of human integrity and honour which is all-too rare today. As you say, we can all be wrong, but so few of us can admit it when we are. There are still a number of important issues where I can’t say I’m certain what the truth really is, but the amount of excellent research done in recent years has definitely shone a pretty powerful spotlight on many of them, and a very clear picture is emerging.
The worst scenario is, unfortunately, the correct one, and that is what the general public find so daunting that it drives them into their shells. It’s Belshazzar’s Feast all over again, and people just can’t allow themselves to believe that anyone could be that awful, still less that we could have allowed hundreds of such backward specimens to infiltrate all the prominent positions of influence on the planet.

softechsteveabbott
softechsteveabbott
Sep 12, 2018 6:52 AM

When evidence of medical or engineering malpractice comes to light, it is not common to ask those who object to the malpractice, then to perform the operation or produce their own version of an engineering design, in lieu of the professionals. That is the responsibility of competent professionals. By the same token, when it is shown that authorities charged with investigation have performed incompetently, it is irrelevant whether those who have identified the professionals’ failings might have their own theories. They (we) have every right to demand, and indeed must demand, that competent authorities should be called upon to perform the investigation that is mandated by law, and that they produce credible, evidence based results.

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 12, 2018 8:10 AM

I agree.

binra
binra
Sep 11, 2018 4:59 PM

If the primary nature of 9/11 was a psyop or ‘mind capture to narrative manipulation’ by insiders of sufficient capacity to plan, recruit or induce a broad spectrum compliance on a need to know basis, and execute not only the event but its staging and narrative outcome overriding all and any conflicting evidences with an asserted narrative, then it was a deliberate switching of the mind/world to an openly post-truth politic – in terms of a world stage display of power to ‘make reality’ and defend the lie against true, as the precursor and ‘justification’ to launching open ‘war on terror’ that effectively overrides national sovereignty or any process of transparency and accountability and of course denies such rights to its own citizens under threat of ‘National Security’. Many different negative agendas align within it and operate through it and its nature has been to reset world thinking within a… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 12, 2018 8:43 AM
Reply to  binra

Binra I have some sympathy, insofar as I follow its long and scantly punctuated expression, with your worldview. You write:

“How is it that human beings can on the surface present a range of personality traits that seem within ranges of normality, and yet be the knowing or perhaps unwitting instruments of a deep state of personal dissociation – namely fear, rage and projective guilt by which to engage power struggle in guise of or in”

Or as I would say, one core truth about the human condition appears to be that we are amazingly sophisticated and effective reasoning beings, with the emotional maturity of a chimpanzee.

binra
binra
Sep 12, 2018 8:43 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Hi writerroddis No you miss my point there. I make no moral judgement on anyone else. As I see it, judgement of a weak, unworthy and degraded humanity is the basis from which the claim to power goes forth and multiplies denial and division. (This can be seen within ourself as well as between us). I was referring to the structure of human consciousness as the ‘matrix’ of definitions and beliefs that we generally operate within or under, and not to the personality level of a ‘narrative identity’ running as a surface of a deep state of dissociation from reality. And so I see the exposure of profound dis-integrity that runs beneath the mask of ‘normalcy’ or conformity and compliance to a such protective masking identity. The thinking that runs (as) the mind in its version of the world is predicated upon an arrogant and ignorant and therefore blindly havoc-wreaking… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 13, 2018 7:18 AM
Reply to  binra

I still have only the haziest sense of what you are saying, binra. And please don’t apologise for ‘errors’ of punctuation. I’m not a grammar pedant. But when I encounter prose as labyrinthine as yours, I think the writer is not clear in his/her mind on what s/he is thinking. That doesn’t mean the ideas aren’t valuable – simply not yet fully formed. With deepening understanding come clarity and the beauty of simplicity.

binra
binra
Sep 13, 2018 11:28 AM
Reply to  writerroddis

The narrative ‘reality’ of a highly complex defence system can seem to speak ‘simply’ in terms that reinforce the ‘self’ of such a system. In other words a highly complex obfuscation can be traded in AS IF a legitimate currency of exchange. The terms that you and of course the ‘many’, regard as ‘simple’ are partaking of a self and world construct that is enslaved under illusion of power. The illusion of power is the attempt to use denial and rejection to get or become something in and for yourself alone (and by extension any group identity at expense of others). The resulting ‘self’ or personality construct is a self-image given preference over true relation and inherently ‘at war’ with true relation – or more accurately – at war with itself as a means of blocking awareness of true relation. I rest as both clear in my idea expression and… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 13, 2018 3:01 PM
Reply to  binra

If you say so.

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 13, 2018 3:12 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Sorry, that last comment comes across as rude. I’ve no desire to do that, least of all with you, binra. I find your words highly convoluted (this isn’t a grammar thing: your sentences do parse in the main, once I decode the syntax) and have a mild resistance to a tone from the mountain top of The One Who Knows. But you are always courteous and I appreciate that.

binra
binra
Sep 13, 2018 8:46 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

writerroddis I thankyou for meeting in a shared courtesy. I have appreciation for your postings. I also read between the lines. Context provides the meanings of any content. And I extend what I sketch into idea, to a sense of worthiness here but without all the coded preamble of social mores. So I risk coming over as a personal claim to know ‘more than’ or be ‘telling’ others, in giving form to ideas that are beneath or beyond any personal sense of claim. But I hold that what I sketch out is within anyone’s freedom and capacity to consider or not, and perhaps open into their own inner knowing that they then embody in their own way. I live the willingness to stand in or abide with what I uncover as a result of noticing or ‘looking within, and this inherently involves withdrawing allegiance from what I no longer hold… Read more »

binra
binra
Sep 13, 2018 8:57 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Ok – I now read your comment in context. I linked what you were talking about in relation to me with the 911 event in a way that could open new choices.

Narrative control is not only a political or corporate act but a facet of a personal identity that presents a simple cover story over a highly complex set of defences.

I do not ‘require’ you read what you are not inclined to read and so you can simply leave it.
If something is a chore or a struggle – why not do something more aligned with what you are truly interested in?
I do đŸ˜‰

Simple
Simple
Sep 11, 2018 2:08 PM

Slagging off Loose Change and Dylan Avery doesn’t get you anywhere in my book. And slagging off people who send you links is pretty pathetic too. You’ve arrived at certain conclusions – bully for you. Most of the decent evidence was and is contained in long form audio and video – for instance the film of the 2 cops retracing their steps at the Pentagon, or the various analyses of Building 7’s collapse, or pyroclastic dust behaviour, or flashes seen in the upper floors of the towers, or the size of the hole in the Pentagon prior to collapse, or the many people who said they heard explosions in entrance lobbies. Other evidence and timelines (covered admirably by James Corbett) is worthy of prose, but the overwhelming body needs to be seen and heard. It’s also important to view the rise of doubt in the official story in conjunction with… Read more »

dzhugashvili
dzhugashvili
Sep 11, 2018 10:50 AM

bollocks.

explain this away, Serious-Person-Who-Doesn’t-Believe-In-Crackpot-Conspiracy-Theories:

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Sep 11, 2018 9:22 AM

This review is a little short on consideration of actual evidence. You can never use numbers – what about the Holocaust? There are probably a number of single pieces of evidence that can prove all on their own that 9/11 was an inside conspiracy. My favourite is the undisputed 2.25 seconds of free fall acceleration in the collapse of WTC-7, a 47-storey steel frame skyscraper and the third building to collapse at the World Trade Centre on 9/11 at 5.20pm. Newton’s Third Law of Motion means that WTC-7 could not have collapsed in near free fall acceleration of 6.5 seconds (including 2.25 seconds of actual free fall) in almost perfect symmetry through the path of greatest resistance, without all resistance being removed at virtually the same time at the bottom of the building. For this to have happened, all its 82 steel support columns had to fail at almost the… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 12, 2018 8:25 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Thanks flaxgirl. Naturally I disagree with your opening sentence. I not only ‘consider actual evidence’ but say, unequivocally, that in my view the evidence Griffin and Woodworth assembles crosses the threshold of plausibility to build a powerful prima facie case for rejecting NIST and all other strands of the ‘official account.

Colin Doran
Colin Doran
Nov 10, 2020 9:27 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Are you still monitoring the comments on this article? Just wondering what is your opinion today about all of this..

rilme
rilme
Sep 11, 2018 6:08 AM

About halfway through this, you start to use black text on a white background. That’s a very good idea.

I do hope “israel” and “Dov Zakheim” are mentioned.

rilme
rilme
Sep 11, 2018 6:15 AM
Reply to  rilme

because “israel” had the motive, the opportunity, prior form, and the rest.
Dov Zakheim, believe it or not, had access to the WTC, the Pentagon (especially the Accounting Section, which was blowed up), and freaking passenger-jet remote-controllers.

Of course, it could just be a 50-to-1-on coincidence.

colleen mcguire
colleen mcguire
Nov 14, 2018 1:57 PM
Reply to  rilme

Solving 911 by Christopher Bollyn — a must read (the updated version with the footnotes)

remorris
remorris
Sep 10, 2018 10:44 PM

My real difficulty is, to
understand the mind,
that has Not yet understood

911 as sophisticated inside job deception/demolition and false flag Strategy of Tension attack casus belli for the GWOT .

rilme
rilme
Sep 11, 2018 6:18 AM
Reply to  remorris

, the mind that thinks NORAD failed so completely on 9SEP2001, but not on any other day.

binra
binra
Sep 11, 2018 5:14 PM
Reply to  remorris

‘Too big to fail’ does not only apply to banks – but to any self investment in a lie that – built upon and lived as real – cannot be allowed NOT to run as true. Strategies of masking defence start very early in human development and only become more sophisticated and ‘believable’ in a world of agreement to mask rather than truly meet. The fact that we make ‘rules’ that are then used against us by those who make their own rules is part of the liability of running on a mind of ‘rules’ rather than relational honesty. My sense is that the false investments of human ignorance and arrogance even more than is currently being exposed, but that we can only take a step at a time or this step now – albeit in a crash course of evaded self-responsibility for the nature of self-deceit. Disclosure may not… Read more »

writerroddis
writerroddis
Sep 12, 2018 1:58 PM
Reply to  remorris

I sympathise with your difficulty, really I do. Weak opinions strongly held is an ailment worryingly on the increase.

binra
binra
Sep 13, 2018 12:38 PM
Reply to  writerroddis

Weak or false foundations strongly defended would speak the meaning more clearly. For all opinion is and remains mere opinion. But what you are the embodying act OF, you know. A false foundation knows not what it is and therefore knows not what it does, and so seeks ‘authority’ from outside by which to bolster a sense of lack within – that masks so as to hide, cover and protect itself. Growing in what we truly have is a true appreciation. But giving power to a sense of lack shall lose even the little it has. So the ‘real difficulty’ with which you sympathise is a masking over what would open to a genuine appreciation. The mind that has to understand the mind, that has Not yet understood is looking back in attempt to recreate an ignorance as if it is understandable. Whereas a current freedom from ignorance is a… Read more »

Helmut Taylor
Helmut Taylor
Sep 10, 2018 9:25 PM

What did’e say? Who dunnit? And did 2 year’s silence eschew a loada piffle, finally?

binra
binra
Sep 13, 2018 12:53 PM
Reply to  Helmut Taylor

Ideas do us as we would do unto. As you sow, so shall you reap. This is self-serving justice and not a coercion of will from outside or above. It is also a pay as you go affair once the true nature of choice has woken from ‘no real choices at all’. The idea of blame is that of offsetting guilt and conflict in the self by redistributing to others or to God, the weather or your parent. The idea of responsibility as response-ability is the idea of using the power of choice for oneself – where self gives only as it would receive. Because what you put out is what you get back. The idea of guilt will SHOUT that down because guilt is the power by which to disempower, undermine and seem to make a power in its own right. Self interest operates in human affairs regardless how… Read more »