There was a time when I, in company with most of America’s citizens, believed what our government as well as the media told us and that our country stood for all that was good in this world. For us the Cold War was a necessity against what President Reagan had called, appropriately we thought, the “evil Empire,” which had to be defeated. We rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down and when President George H. W. Bush began to create a “New World Order,” which included peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as evidenced by the Madrid Conference. We were deeply disappointed when he lost re-election because Bill Clinton’s unbridled sexual propensities, which were well known prior to election, as well as his political orientation, did not inspire confidence. The Monica Lewinsky scandal, where he wagged his finger at us while pronouncing, “I did not have sexual relations, with that woman [pause], Miss Lewinsky,” was famously contradicted by his DNA on the “blue dress.” Dropping bombs on innocent citizens in Baghdad while impeachment proceedings were getting under way, for having lied under oath, was obviously regarded as a diversionary tactic. In addition, not only the cuts in the military, but forcing their male and female members into close physical proximity such as in nuclear silos was regarded as lack of judgment, if not worse.

          These sentiments were expressed in the Conclusion section of War&Mayhem and I, again in company of many of our countrymen, welcomed the appointment of George W. Bush by one vote of the Supreme Court. We assumed that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” and that the son would follow the policies which his father was unable to bring to fruition. Since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the root of turmoil in the Middle East I thought that President George W. Bush would now let General Powell, as Secretary of State, continue with the “peace process.” In order to help in this effort I wrote Whither Zionism? and sent copies not only to all members of the administration, but also of the relevant committees in the House and Senate. In addition, I started in February of 2001 this website to acquaint my fellow Americans with some aspects of history they might not be aware of. I felt that this was needed since the personal experiences of my generation of Central Europeans who had lived through the tragedies of the first half of the 20^th century differed from what one nowadays reads in history books. I had called the website “thinktruth” because lying, or the deliberate use of the half-truth is what we had experienced in the Nazi as well as the Clinton era and when government or the media engage in it they should be held accountable.

          The first article on this website dealt with John Ashcroft’s nomination for Attorney General. Not knowing anything about his subsequent conduct I went to his defense and continued to believe in the righteousness of our government for the next several months. This sentiment found full expression in the article “September 11^th” which was published in the October issue of that year. It makes interesting reading today. In the section on “What should be done now?” I was correct in the analysis of bin Laden’s and Israel’s goals. I was also correct in stating that a retaliatory attack on Afghanistan or any other Muslim country would be ill-advised and simply fulfill bin-Laden’s intent. But I was wrong in the assumption what our government’s reaction would be. The reason for this mistake was inadequate information in regard to the geopolitical beliefs of key members of the Bush administration. This information was available on the Internet but I had felt no need to consult it because I trusted the media and the administration.    

Truthfulness, and this is what this website is all about, requires that first one admits one’s mistakes and then tries to find out why one was mistaken. I am making this point because my attitude towards 9/11 was typical for the vast majority of our citizens. We had no problem believing that 19 devout Muslims, under the direction of Osama bin Laden, had hijacked four commercial airplanes and in a kamikaze type holy furor smashed two of them into the Twin Towers, another into the Pentagon, while the fourth one was prevented from reaching its goal in Washington by heroic passengers who overcame the hijackers and crashed the plane near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This was and is the only legitimate version of the events of that day and it has now achieved the status of religious dogma which must not be questioned. But while a great many of our countrymen still adhere to this dogma others, including myself, have tried to educate themselves by reading relevant articles and books. When one does so it becomes apparent that the Bush administration has not told us the full truth in regard to what really happened on that day. The 9/11 Truth movement was born when the government refused to provide better explanations for a variety of improbabilities

          The first account of some of the problems with the government version was by a French journalist, Thierry Meyssan, who published in February 2002 L’Effroyable Imposture, which soon thereafter appeared in English under the title The Big Lie. The book consists mainly of three parts. The first one is called: The bloody stage is set; the second: The death of democracy in America and the third: The empire attacks. It is followed by an Epilogue and a section on: Documents and Appendices. The cover shows a color picture of black smoke arising from one façade of the Pentagon in the background with an unblemished lawn, fire trucks and other emergency response vehicles in the foreground. Underneath is an excerpt attributed to The New York Times “… challenges the entire official version of the Sept. 11 attacks.”

          This book is an important historic document because it set the pattern for all the numerous subsequent ones which deal with the improbabilities that are inherent in the official account. The books which appeared after the 9/11 Commission Report had been published, added reasons why this Report, which was to have clarified the issues, was not only inadequate but actually further stretched credibility. I shall deal with this part of the 9/11 tragedy later and for now concentrate on Meyssan’s book.

          The mentioned cover picture is important for two reasons. The pristine lawn contradicts the idea that an airplane had just flown over it at practically ground level – which must have occurred in order to impact the ground and first floor of the building. Furthermore, this feat would not only have required a highly skilled pilot but a hijacker would not have chosen such a difficult target and instead simply crashed the plane into the roof of the building. This was actually pointed out in quotes from Egypt’s President Mubarak who was interviewed by CNN on September 15. “… something like this done in the United States is not an easy thing for some pilots who had been training in Florida . . . I am speaking as a former pilot, I know that very well. I flew heavy planes, I flew fighters, I know that very well, this is not an easy thing, so I think we should not jump to conclusions now.” While this makes the official pilot version unlikely, the lack of debris from a crashed Boeing 757 is an additional facet which has never been explained by the government.

This is serious. Because if the story of flight 77, which was supposed to have hit the Pentagon, does not hold up, Pandora’s box has been opened and all the rest of what these 19 hijackers accomplished can be called into question. Meyssan then continued with the destruction of the World Trade Center. He pointed out that given the speed of the planes and their low maneuverability it “would have been a remarkable feat even for an experienced pilot, let alone trainees. . . . The professional pilots we talked to confirmed that few amongst themselves could envisage performing such an operation and completely ruled it out in the case of amateur pilots.” Meyssan continued, “There is, however, one infallible method of achieving this result: The use of radio beacons. A signal, transmitted from the target, guides the plane in automatically.” While Meyssan agreed that the impact of the planes damaged the Twin Towers this did not account for their collapse. He pointed out that, “the New York’s firemen’s association and the professional review, Fire Engineering, which, backed up by calculations, claimed that the structures could have resisted the fire for a long period. The firemen affirm that they heard explosions at the base of the buildings and demanded the opening of an independent investigation.” He then mentioned Building 7, which likewise collapsed on that day but was not hit by a plane and stated, “The question is no longer ‘was it dynamited?’ but rather, ‘what other hypothesis can one formulate?’” But if explosives were used, they must have been prepositioned and this would necessitate help from within the U.S.

Meyssan mentioned one additional item in regard to loss of life which resulted from the destruction of the Towers. It was far lower than the expected estimates based on the number of office workers who would ordinarily have been in the building at that time. He, therefore, suggested that “prior intervention was required to ensure that numerous persons, at least working on the top floors, were absent from their offices at the critical hour.” He then mentioned the same anomaly in the Oklahoma City bombing where “a large portion of the civil servants working in the Alfred P. Murrah building were given a half-day off so that the car bomb explosion only killed 168 persons.”

Foreknowledge was also suggested by the fact that an unusual number of “put options” (bets that the stock would lose value) had been placed on certain specific companies in the days preceding 9/11. The irregularities were first noted by the Chicago Securities & Exchange Commission. “Insiders had made capital gains of 5 million dollars on United Airlines, 4 million dollars on stock in American Airlines, 1.2 million dollars on Morgan Stanley Dean Winter & Co. and 5.5 million dollars on Merrill Lynch & Co. [the latter two companies had offices in the WTC]. On October 15 the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) presented an interim report. “It appeared that the illicit gains added up to several hundred million dollars, constituting the ‘biggest case of insider trading ever committed.’” Meyssan added that Osama bin Laden’s bank accounts had been blocked by the Clinton administration since 1998 and that Afghanistan’s Taliban government likewise did not have the financial means for these speculations. 

The chapter called “Moles in the White House” is also worrisome. It deals with phone calls received in the White House around 10 a.m. of September 11 which directly threatened the president, who was at that time on Air Force One. They indicated that the caller had access to the secret codes not only of the White House, but also of a number of other government agencies such as: The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Air Force Intelligence (AFI), Army Intelligence (AI), Naval Intelligence (NI), the Marine Corps Intelligence (MCI) and the intelligence services of the State Department and the Department of Energy. As Meyssan stated, “Each of these codes is known only by a very small group of officials. No one is authorized to possess several of them.” The common denominator was, however, a computer program PROMIS. It had been stolen by the FBI spy Robert Hanssen and sold to the Russians who may have circulated it to others. I have previously addressed the topic in the August 1, 2008 installment, “The National Security Scam,” and while the presidential spokesman, Ari Fleischer, as well as Karl Rove initially admitted the credible threat, it was subsequently denied by the administration.

The rest of Meyssan’s book deals with the unreliability of the passenger list on the doomed flights; Osama bin Laden’s precarious health; our government declaring not only Al Qaeda as the single responsible culprit but in President Bush’s words “the beginning of a monumental struggle of good versus evil;” the enactment of emergency powers which curtail civil liberties; the attack on Afghanistan and previous secret operations, planned or executed by the U.S. government especially against Cuba. Although the war against Afghanistan was officially portrayed as the just revenge against the Taliban which sheltered bin Laden, Meyssan demonstrated that this was an excuse rather than the reason. Negotiations with the Taliban in regard to a UNOCAL pipeline from the Caspian basin through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, which had been going on for some time, had failed because the Taliban required that they be recognized by the U.N. as the official government of the country. This was not possible and, “According to the Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, the American delegation became threatening and announced in mid-July that the dispute would be decided by arms.” Plans were then made to install the former King, Zaher Shah, who lived in exile in Italy, as head of a puppet government in Kabul.

I have mentioned the pipeline project in other installments and especially in August 1, 2011 under “Misguided Arrogant Incompetence,” but had not been aware of additional details provided by Meyssan. He added a Chinese stone to the mosaic. Pakistan, “Fearing overly strong Anglo-American pressure looked for new allies before the storm broke. It invited a Chinese delegation to Islamabad and promised that it would open a doorway for China to the Indian Ocean in exchange for military aid.” We and the British did not like this interference and “The Sea of Oman became the theatre of the biggest deployment of the British fleet since the Falklands War, while NATO transported forty thousand troops to Egypt.” These statements were not referenced but can also be found in the “911 Encyclopedia” http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/WarWasPlanned.shtml.

Let this suffice for Meyssan’s book, which ought to be read in its entirety, because as will be shown later this information, although published in 2002, had as of March 2010 not yet reached an Editorial writer of the Washington Post.  For now let us address the next book which likewise was published in 2002. Its author was Eric Hufschmid and the title Painful Questions Analysis of the September 11^th Attack. I have discussed it in the October 1, 2006 article (The 9/11 Cover-up) and it supplements much of Meyssan’s information especially in regard to the Pentagon and the WTC. The pictures Hufschmid provided are of high quality and can hardly leave any doubt that the WTC buildings did not just collapse. The Twin Towers appear to have exploded in mushroom clouds, while Building 7 imploded in a manner typical for controlled demolitions of buildings. The Pentagon pictures are likewise more detailed and cast serious doubt on the statement that the damage resulted from a crashed Boeing 757.

When one realizes that the essential information, which raises serious questions in regard to the veracity of the government’s account, was already available in 2002, it should come as no surprise that people began to demand an impartial investigation into the 9/11 events. It started with firemen who had lost their friends and they were joined by four young women from New Jersey, later somewhat derisively referred to as “the Jersey girls,” who had lost their husbands in the Twin Towers destruction. With likeminded other 9/11 widows they formed a steering committee which began to demand answers from our government. This initiated the second phase of the disaster: the deliberate cover-up – there is no other word that can be applied – by the Bush administration. If the government had promptly established a genuine impartial investigation into the events of that day the subsequent “conspiracy theories” could have been forestalled. But the administration did exactly the opposite. It took the stance that there was no need for an investigation because everybody knew that bin Laden and his hijackers were responsible. Furthermore, Vice-president Cheney called the Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Tom Daschle, to abstain from launching a full investigation. When the latter did not agree he was summoned, four days later, to the White House, where the president reinforced the request, as reported by CNN on January 29, 2002 http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-29/politics/inv.terror.probe_1_daschle-house-and-senate-intelligence-intelligence-committee?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS.  The reason given was that it would take resources away from the war on terrorism. This was hardly credible and lent fuel to the smoldering suspicion that the government was hiding something it didn’t want to become known.

When the Jersey widows persisted in their quest for the truth and approached Congress, the administration had by November 2002 no longer a choice. Although a commission was appointed the cards against impartiality were stacked against it. I have discussed the inadequacies of the Commission report previously in “The 9/11 Cover-up” (October 1, 2006) and Professor David Ray Griffin has published in 2004 an entire book about them; The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions.” The two major problems were: the process was controlled through its entirety by the White House and that its mission had been limited to establish intelligence failures and means to enhance future security. As has been pointed out it was a matter of “The White House investigating itself.” This left the bereaved families, 9/11 emergency personnel and other concerned citizens disgusted and they called for further investigations.

Since then an ever growing number of articles and books have appeared that added information and at times engaged in a number of theories as to what might have happened. I shall not deal with speculations, which at this time cannot be verified, but will simply refer the reader to the series of books by Griffin with the latest one of September 2011; 9/11Ten Years later: When State Crimes against Democracy Succeed. They limit themselves largely to a detailed discussion of the problems with the government theory and the inadequacies of the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) report in regard to the destruction of the WTC. The author concluded that without some type of involvement by agencies within our government the attacks could not have been so spectacularly successful. On the other hand Prof. Judy Wood’s Where Did the Towers Go? Evidence of Directed Free-Energy Technology on 9/11, while showing high quality pictures in regard to the Twin Towers’ destruction, presents a novel theory which is, however, not shared by the majority of the 9/11 Truth Movement. 

All members agree on the overall goal of the Movement, namely the establishment of a truly independent international 9/11 fact finding commission. But there are differences on how this is best achieved and in regard to the extent a variety of “conspiracy theories” are advocated. There are several websites readers can acquaint themselves with. For starters one may go to http://st911.org/ where the major two different points of view can be evaluated. Scholars for 9/11 Truth prefers to engage in theoretical speculations as to what might have happened, while Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice stays on the academic experimental side and publishes a peer-reviewed journal. Unfortunately, since evidence has either been destroyed or not released by the government, the factual data are quite limited. Since I prefer to stay with personal experience information from professionals in their respective fields I was impressed with http://patriotsquestion911.com, a website where a number of professionals argue for the need of a new investigation. These individuals include: senior military, intelligence service, law enforcement as well as government officials; architects and engineers; pilots and other aviation personnel; members of academia, survivors and family members; artists, entertainers and media professionals as well as medical professionals.

Some of the supporting statements are highly relevant to what Meyssan had been told by French pilots. For instance Commander Ralph Kolstad, a former Air Combat Instructor, U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun), who flew commercial planes after 20 years in the Navy wrote, “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and could not have flown it the way the flight path was described.” Furthermore, pilots stated that at top speed they would have had great difficulty, even in the simulator, to hit such narrow targets as the Towers. Architects, as well as other professionals have challenged the NIST report and pointed out that the models which were used to explain the destruction of the buildings had fatal flaws. Physicists have likewise challenged the “fire only” explanation as was advanced for the destruction of WTC7. It is remarkable that this event was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. When one considers Jeffrey Scott Shapiro’s statement that, in the afternoon of September 11 Larry Silverstein, who held the lease of the WTC buildings, was contacting his insurance company for authorization to destroy WTC7 (May 1, 2012 America’s Galileo moment), one wonders why Mr. Silverstein and the insurance carrier had not been deposed under oath in order to establish whether or not this was true?

 At present the absolute numbers of people who have signed the petition for a new investigation is still fairly small and the reason is twofold: suppression of truthful information by the media and fear of losing one’s reputation and/or job. The latter is a real danger which few of us can ignore. This should not prevent, however, anyone from consulting the Internet and informing him/herself about the truth of the matter to the extent as it exists. I have already mentioned some of the books and sites although these provide in part conflicting information and viewpoints. Yet, even a cursory glance at The Terror Timeline, by Paul Thompson, which stays strictly with material published by the media, will be an eye-opener. Thompson did not editorialize in the text and merely quoted published reports on a year by year, day by day and minute by minute basis. This meticulous piece of honest work ought to be widely read. For anyone who has not been previously exposed to the data which were presented here and still finds it difficult to doubt the official explanation I would recommend http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory. Although it is presented as a spoof please watch not only the five minute video but read the transcript and while doing so click on the red portions because they provide the documentation.

This brings up the final question: why have our public media, the supposed guardians of government accountability, failed us so miserably? Especially after the 9/11 Commission Report they have not only abrogated their responsibility but have heaped scorn on any and all who want genuine answers. Here is a typical example. On March 8, 2010 the Washington Post published an unsigned Editorial under the headline. “A leading Japanese politician espouses a 9/11 fantasy.” The key paragraph states,

“Yukihisa Fujita is an influential member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. Mr. Fujita's ideas about the attack on the World Trade Center, which he shared with us in a recent interview, are too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion. He questions whether it was really the work of terrorists; suggests that shadowy forces with advance knowledge of the plot played the stock market to profit from it; peddles the fantastic idea that eight of the 19 hijackers are alive and well; and hints that controlled demolition rather than fire or debris may be a more likely explanation for at least the collapse of the building at 7 World Trade Center, which was adjacent to the twin towers.”

          One really wonders: is this writer of one of the nation’s most respected newspapers really so intellectually lazy of not having checked the vast literature which exists on this topic, or is the writer deliberately misinforming the public? Unusual trading had already been dealt with by Meyssan and so was the destruction of the WTC. The evidence for the “living hijackers” had been presented between September 16 and 23, 2001 in major newspapers from around the world and was summarized in pages 496-498 of The Terror Timeline, which was published in 2004. Furthermore, Andreas von Bülow former Bundesminister in Germany’s Federal Government had published in 2003, Die CIA und der 11. September Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste. The author, who had personal experience with the ways various secret service agencies around the world work, likewise felt that our government’s account is not sustainable.

          The 9/11 Truth Movement will not go away because too much is at stake. The next war, against Iran, is in the planning stage and complicity of that country in the 9/11 tragedy is about to be trotted out again as it was in the case of Iraq. The “War on Terror” must be exposed for what it really is: a quest for global domination and a never ending sinecure for what Eisenhower had called the “military-industrial complex,” to which now needs to be added the “information and security industry.” On September 27, 2001 the New York Times published a guest Editorial by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the title, “A new kind of war,” which was reprinted in Meyssan’s book. In it Rumsfeld stated, “Forget about ‘exit strategies’: we’re looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines.” Is this really what we want for our children and grandchildren: perpetual war against some phantom enemy who can morph at any moment depending upon the whims of our leadership? I doubt it. But if we don’t act now this is what we will get, in addition to a police state.

          In the July 1 installment I shall present information on the ways the Truth Movement has tried to gain public traction since the 9/11 Commission Report; the impediments encountered and a potential way forward.