Among all the crises, real and artificially created, there is perhaps none that is more serious and detrimental to our country than the erosion of trust in our institutions. When there is no trust fear reigns and in the June 1, 2009 installment I have commented how fear is deliberately spread in our country to gain political points. The tone was set by ex-Vice President Cheney who chastised President Obama for being lax on national security and thereby inviting further terrorist attacks. This was the opening salvo which has become a virtual barrage of fear mongering by some members of the Republican Party but more importantly, by media personalities. The latter are now driving policies especially in the health care debate which was discussed last month and rages on unabatedly. A recent e-mail dubbed it, “Obama’s Health Scare Plan.”

The issue is still being vigorously debated in Congress, Obama gives speeches and interviews but it is already obvious that whatever legislation is eventually going to be passed, will be saddled with so many amendments which may aggravate rather than solve the problem. Since the president has made health care reform one of his prime political goals he may well sign a piece of legislation that will come to haunt us in years to come.  

Health care is, however, only one of the many aspects of our culture where fear is stoked. This has very practical and dangerous consequences. A recent article in The Salt Lake Tribune pointed out that while the overall economy lingers in recession, gun sales, ranging from handguns to assault weapons, are experiencing an unprecedented boom. Utah, a State of about 2.7 million people, issued about 7,000 permits for concealed firearms in all of 2001 but 56,370 from Jan. 1-Aug. 31 of 2009. Gun sales had remained up to 10,000 for the first five years of this decade but had shown a steady rise thereafter and officials expect to process 70,000 applications next year. Citizens are clearly arming themselves and the question is: what for? There may be individual valid reasons but for the most part these weapons are clearly unnecessary and will unavoidably create more homicides. Since violence, in addition to sex, is the daily fare of our TV programs this outcome is totally predictable. What is one to expect when concealed weapons are now allowed to be taken even to churches?  

While fear has reached in part irrational proportions, trust, which is the glue that must hold a complex society together, is also steadily being eroded. The reason is that we are being lied to by government, institutions, the media, businesses as well as private citizens. The lie has become the biggest problem of our lives and comes in many forms. The most egregious is, of course, the deliberate misrepresentation of the truth as one knows it. This is, however, not necessarily the most common or vicious one. The worst lie is the deliberate withholding of part of the information which is essential to form a correct opinion about a given plan or proposition. I have discussed this aspect previously in the essay on The Great Satan (February 1, 2002), where I pointed out that it was precisely this satanic lie which led to what has been called the original sin and which is re-enacted on a daily basis. It is the precipitous rush towards some expected gain based on information from which an essential element has been deliberately withheld. In this manner the human being’s innate trust is being abused and the fabric of society frayed.

The Bush 43 administration may have done the greatest harm in this respect and the Obama administration has so far not found the courage to confront the most vicious lie of this new century. Obama has inherited two wars and in both instances the reasons given for invading Afghanistan as well as Iraq were not the full truth. While it is today agreed by most that the Iraq war was unnecessary and a mistake, conventional wisdom still has it, that the war in Afghanistan was one of necessity. This war has now been going on for 8 years and our new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, declared that the war cannot be won militarily, but total defeat can be staved off by sending more ground troops to fight the Taliban insurgency. Some of us who have a smattering of history know that Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires; as the British found out and subsequently the Soviets. This is the reason why I wrote, in the aftermath of the September 11tragedy, on these pages in October of 2001, that military action against Afghanistan would be a serious mistake because this is precisely what bin-Laden wanted and in order to understand our enemy we need to put ourselves mentally in his shoes.

These statements were correct then and they are still true. The only mistake in that article was my ignorance as to who was really in charge of our country. At that time I still had faith in the wisdom of George W Bush’s advisors without knowing that they were in the neoconservative camp that itched for war with Iraq and only acceded to the Afghanistan route to Baghdad out of expediency. I had also been unaware of previous discussions with the Taliban by Unocal for a proposed gas pipeline through their country and then via Pakistan to the Indian Ocean which they had turned down in August of that year. As such further terror attacks were not needed because we fell, voluntarily, into bin Laden’s trap. I also wrote on November 1, 2001

“Deny it as we might the current war against "terrorism" is indeed a religious war of ideas and, as mentioned repeatedly, it cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops in Afghanistan, Iraq or other places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be defeated and a pro-Western government installed in Kabul, fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla warfare, accompanied by terrorist tactics, would continue ad infinitum. It pains me to say so but Osama bin-Laden has so far succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A $200,000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped anyway by selling assets on the stock market before its expected 9/11 crash) has produced, and continues to produce, billions of dollars of losses to the American economy, fear is being spread by the media and if we are to believe our politicians we are engaged in an Afghan war with a projected duration of several years. Even if we kill bin-Laden now he will be a martyr (which is what he wants anyway) who goes to paradise and his image will spur on other fanatics to continue with his work of creating hatred for America in the Islamic world.”

            I don’t claim the gift of prophecy but the outcome of the wrong decisions which were made by the Bush administration immediately after 9-11-2001 was obvious to anyone who is not blinded by passion. As mentioned above General McChrystal realizes the difficulty, if not impossibility, to bring the Afghan war to a victorious conclusion but hopes that with an additional contingent of 40,000 American troops and a strategy that provides security for the Afghan people, the tide can be turned against the Taliban. Past history, including that of the Vietnam War, tends to make this hope illusory. Even 100,000 troops are inadequate to control and hold a country of Afghanistan’s size and geography. In the absence of a stable popular government, indigenous rebels have time and terrain on their side. They know fully well that sooner or later we will have to leave, regardless of what our government may say and they can wait us out while harassing our troops to the best of their ability. They win by just surviving. Since our troop strength will always be inadequate, unless the draft was to be re-instituted, which would be political suicide, we will be forced to continue to rely on air power to hit Taliban strongholds.

            This strategy had proven itself fruitless in Vietnam and has the additional disadvantage that it relies on local informants as to the targets. This not only opens the way to settle scores among rival Afghan factions, with American help, but inevitably causes civilian casualties which are then blamed on us. In addition that country has a warrior ethos where you are supposed to face the enemy and lay your life on the line. But Americans are averse to risking the lives of soldiers and airmen and we are now fighting the air-war largely by drones. The pilot sits in relative comfort in Nevada, flies his mission via “joystick” and then goes home for dinner. While this may well be the war of the future it is bound to be fiercely resented by the recipients of this type of fire power because it will be regarded as cowardice on our part and thereby stiffen the resistance.

            The problem the Obama administration faces in regard to Afghanistan is compounded by the apparently fraudulent election results, which deprive the Kabul government of legitimacy. President Obama, who has no love for this war, but doesn’t know how to end it without ruining his and his party’s political future, has so far decided to what is commonly called “kick the can down the road;” to wait a while before making a decision in regard to troop strength and strategy. This is understandable but akin to hoping for a miracle.

The problem and thereby its potential solution demands a fundamental re-assessment of America’s role in the world of the 21^st rather than 20^th century. Obama realizes this, as his speech to the UN’s General Assembly and the enlargement of the G8 to G20 showed, but the American media and therefore the public have as yet not caught up with these changed realities. In addition, the American political system which is geared to winning elections, rather than towards long term solutions of problems, does not lend itself to sober reflection on what is possible to achieve, rather than what we would like to happen. As far as Afghanistan is concerned this would mean an educational campaign not just in that country but right here. We need to stop lumping Al-Qaeda with Taliban and simply regard both groups as terrorists who are equally responsible for the 9/11 tragedy. The Taliban are predominantly tribal nationalists, who want to run their patch of the earth their way and have no interest in exporting their ideas beyond possibly Pakistan. While their religious philosophy is unacceptable for us, we can’t change it by bombs. Some accommodation will have to be made in the short term and in the long run religious fundamentalism, of whatever stripe, is not likely to carry the day in a technologically integrated world.

The apparent fear is that if we leave Afghanistan and the Taliban assume power, Al-Qaeda will again have a safe haven from which to instigate 9/11 type attacks. But it has been pointed out repeatedly that this group no longer needs Afghanistan because there are enough other unstable countries around the world from which they can operate. Al-Qaeda likewise will never be defeated by bombs or other military actions and its activities will cease when they are no longer deemed necessary and financial support dries up. In the meantime international cooperative police actions can thwart terrorist plans and even if not fully successful minimize their impact. The key aspect is again not to let irrational fears cloud better judgment. This is, however, precisely the problem. There are some in our country who apparently need this fear in order to enact their own agenda which has little to do with the ostensible reason.

The 9/11 tragedy will continue to serve as the excuse for ill-considered military as well as  other actions (e.g. Patriot Act) and this is why it will continue to haunt us until our media as well as our government, provide us with the full truth about the events of that day. This is still withheld from us. What I have above called “the satanic lie,” the purposeful use of half-truths has become dogma and whoever does not subscribe to it loses membership in polite society as well as potentially his/her job. Yet there is a substantial segment of our society which cannot believe the official version of what happened on 9/11, but is powerless to gets its voice heard. This adds to the distrust of government and the promised transparency which many of us voted for last year has not materialized.

Let me just give a few examples why I believe that we have not been told the full truth about what happened on that fateful day and why a re-evaluation of the official version is urgently needed. Recently a memorial service was held in Somerset County Pa. for the passengers who supposedly took charge of the doomed UA 93 flight and crashed it to the ground. But there is a problem with that story. No plane or bodies had initially been found on the supposed crash site; there were only widely scattered debris over a radius of several kilometers. The coroner, Wallace Miller, has been quoted as saying that "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.” This disintegration of the plane and its passengers is, of course, highly uncommon, if not unheard of, when airliners crash. While the FBI reported that 95 percent of the plane’s debris had been found, the coroner told a Canadian audience that only eight per cent were recovered, “everything else was vaporized.” The most reasonable explanation, which was denied by the FBI, is that the plane was shot down by one of our military jets to prevent it from crashing into the Capitol or the White House. It seems that Dick Cheney, with or without Bush’s approval had given the order and under the circumstances it was the right thing to do. Yet, the American people are not to be trusted with being able to handle the truth and the disasters of that day seemed to have demanded a heroic ending. The truth about the crash site ought to be presented publicly to the mainstream media by the emergency personnel, including the coroner, who were called to the site on that morning. Once this has been established, if the scenario as outlined above (it comes strictly from Internet sources) is validated, the true cause of the plane’s pulverization should be ascertained. The purpose is not to diminish the plight of the passengers and their possible attempt to take charge of the plane but to clear the air as to what is rumor and what is fact.  

            The same applies to the unprecedented collapse of the Twin Towers within half  an hour of each other and the even more mysterious one of building WTC 7, which had  not been hit by a plane but was partly on fire from falling debris and combustibles within it. People who question what had really happened are relegated by the media to the lunatic fringe as conspiracy theorists. Some are, but there are also reputable scientists who are not and their concerns are not being properly listened to and investigated. One such person is physics Prof. Steven Jones of Brigham Young University, a good Mormon, who is not given to outlandish ideas. As a result of his investigations which suggested that thermite (explosive used for controlled demolitions) may have been present in some of the dust from the Twin Towers’ wreckage, he lost the use of his laboratory, was initially placed on paid administrative leave by the university and he retired thereafter. Another is Prof. David Ray Griffin who had a good name in his field (Philosophy of Religion and Theology) because among other aspects he had been co-editor of Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, which is the definitive version of that well known philosopher’s epoch making book. The common link between these two professionals is their love of truth and their dislike of being manipulated by falsified data.

Some of these aspects have previously been discussed in the article, “The 9/11Coverup” (October 1, 2006) which was based on then available literature, including Griffin’s book, The 9/11 Commission Report. Omissions and Distortions. Since that time NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) issued another “draft” report on August 21, 2008 for which it invited comments. This report stated that, “‘Our study found that the fires in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary event,’ said NIST WTC Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder. ‘Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down [http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc082108.html].’”

USA Today also reported these statements by Dr. Sunder, "The public should really recognize the science is really behind what we have said. The obvious stares you in the face [http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm].” It may have been obvious to Dr. Sunder and his team but there were a great many dissenting voices and Prof. Griffin published on September 8 of this year a book devoted to this topic entitled, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final official report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False. I have not yet had an opportunity to read the book because amazon.com does not have it in stock and there is a two-three week delay before it can be delivered. This indicates that main-stream publishers were loath to associate themselves with the professor’s views. But Griffin gave a lecture on the NIST report on September 10 and wrote an article on Sept.14 for Global Research which is available on http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15201.

In the article the author accuses NIST of having committed “scientific fraud,” by omitting evidence which did not fit into the preconceived politically desired conclusion. The article provides extensive references and the main gist is that fire alone could not have brought the building down. It is stated that a steel beam had been found which had “melted so severely that it looked like Swiss cheese.” This would have required temperatures which cannot be reached by fire. In addition particles of dust were recovered from the nearby Deutsche Bank Building. The Bank’s insurance company failed to pay for the clean-up claiming that the dust had not come from the WTC collapse. The private firm RJ Lee was, therefore, hired to determine whether or not the dust had indeed come from the WTC destruction. Their report, also available on the Internet, showed unequivocally that the WTC dust had its own “signature,” which differentiated it from other normal “background dust.”  WTC dust contained toxic material and evidence of extremely high temperatures. “Various metals (most notably iron and lead) were melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles.” The report also stated, “The presence of lead oxides on the surface of mineral wool indicates the exposure of high temperatures at which lead would have undergone vaporization, oxidation, and condensation on the surface of mineral wool.” Griffin stated that this would amount to temperatures of 1,749 degree C (3,180 F). Fire temperatures vary depending upon the material which is consumed, but it appears that napalm is at the top of the list with about 1,250 degree C. 

It now needs to be mentioned that the official explanation provided by NIST, which is to be taken as the full truth, is actually only a theory. It was mainly based on computer simulations and no actual debris had been examined. NIST pointed out that the steel beams used for WTC7 were not labeled, as had those from the Twin Towers and whatever steel beams were left in the scrap yards that had not already been shipped off to Asia could therefore not be definitively identified. This applies, of course, also to the dust samples. While one can understand NIST’s predicament, relying nearly exclusively on computer simulations for a definitive explanation of the mysterious collapse of WTC 7 leaves us with a problem. Everyone, who has been using such data, knows that all you can get is “virtual reality” and a “model” rather than “what really happened.” The official theory demanded that fire was the culprit and, therefore, the theory had to be proven by simulation. As Griffin pointed out this is not how unbiased science is supposed to proceed.

Since the collapse of the Twin Towers seemed to have been preceded by explosions which sent dust and debris even to New Jersey and that of WTC7 looked to everyone, who does not have preconceived ideas, remarkably similar to an implosion resulting from a controlled demolition many people have had difficulty accepting the official government explanations. A Zogby poll in 2004, after the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report, showed that 49 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of those in New York State believed “individuals within the US government ‘knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.’" The margin of error for this poll was 3.5 percent. When nearly 50 percent of New Yorkers, people who were most affected by the tragedy, believe that the government cannot be trusted in this respect we are no longer dealing with the lunatic fringe.

A group that called itself 911 truth.org published on Oct. 26, 2004 on their website that “An alliance of 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those killed on 9/11 today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.” Focusing on twelve questions, the Statement highlighted areas of incriminating evidence that were either inadequately explored or ignored by the Kean Commission. These ranged from insider trading and hijacker funding to foreign government forewarnings as well as inactive defenses around the Pentagon. The Statement asked for four actions: an immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Congressional hearings, media analysis, and the formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry.

Needless to say this was an exercise in futility and exposed the signers of this petition to potential jeopardy of their careers, especially since the statement also contained the words that, “this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

The most recent victim of the signatories was Van Jones who had been appointed by the Obama administration to what has been called, “green-jobs czar.” He was forced to resign on September 6, 2009  and Charles Krauthammer wrote on September 11 in the Washington Post that the major problem with Jones’ views was not necessarily his leftist opinions but,

“He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 -- i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil -- and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House. Unlike the other stuff (see above [left wing radicalism]), this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. . . .  You can no more have a truther (sic) in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.”

While the petition did not state that the Bush administration had indeed been responsible, although it hinted at it, the intention was to get an honest inquiry to clear the air once and for all. But Mr. Krauthammer’s language is typical for how people tend to get labeled nowadays if one wants to pursue the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, regardless where it leads to. The unwarranted linking to Holocaust denial is also typical.

The 9/11 truth group did indeed have some members who harbored outlandish theories and this is why the scientifically inclined members then formed a separate organization in 2007 which calls itself Scholars for 911Truth and Justice and focuses on scientific research in regard to the government’s claims (http://stj911.org). The key issue in regard to the collapse of the WTC buildings is: whether or not the fires could have destroyed the buildings and send the mentioned clouds of toxic dust far and wide as the government maintains. Prof. Jones did not believe this scenario and his talk before the Utah Valley State College can be viewed at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=964034652002408586#. In his original publication where he reported having discovered highly explosive thermite in a dust sample, which a private citizen from Manhattan had provided him with, he had asked for additional samples from other private individuals and that these should be made available to a group of independent scientists.

This was done and a report has been published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, Volume 2 Harrit et al.. It represents a collaborative effort of several scientists including Prof. Jones and the lead author is from the Chemistry Department of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The pdf version of the article can be downloaded for free and the essence is that four independent dust samples contained evidence for having been exposed to extremely high temperatures, above those of fire. In addition to iron rich microspheres, red/gray chips were present which represented “active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material.” The article also pointed out that this type of nanotechnology was available in 2001 and that the 221st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held during April 2001 in San Diego featured a symposium on Defense Applications of Nanomaterials. Dr. Niels Harrit’s interview of April 10, 2009 on Danish TV can be seen on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o.

            Since the dust samples were available to non-government scientists one must wonder why NIST had not availed itself of this opportunity which is the point of Griffin’s book and article. The key questions were: 1) why did NIST deny that “molten steel” had been observed not only in the remains of the Twin Towers but also in those of Building 7. 2) Why did the NIST report state unequivocally that “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery” and that it “did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down”?

The answer is that scientific integrity had to make way for political expediency. As a former NIST employee stated, “everything had to be approved by the Department of Commerce, the National Security Agency, and the Office of Management and Budget.” As such political pressure was exerted to bring about a desired result and this is not how science should proceed. In addition NIST’s spokesman had not been entirely truthful when he had declared that the mystery of the WTC 7 collapse had been solved because no physical evidence was examined and a follow-up letter based on the Freedom of Information Act brought on August 12, 2009 this reply, “As we mentioned previously, we are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse of the upper stories of the tower. . . . . NIST did not conduct tests for explosive residue and as noted above such tests would not necessarily have been conclusive.”

While it is true that tests might have remained inconclusive this is no excuse for not even undertaking them and to declare officially that no explosives had been used. These are the facts which the general public needs to know and ought to make headlines in the papers as well as promote discussions by TV pundits. In their absence trust into the veracity not only of the government but also the mass media will be further, and possibly irreparably, eroded. These questions are absolutely vital and a new investigation into the events surrounding the collapse of the buildings is urgently needed. An international group of scientists, who are free from government control, as well as potential retribution, should be officially empanelled and given the resources to produce an honest report.

The official cover-up in regard to the events of 9/11 persists and there is indeed a conspiracy. Not necessarily by people who want answers but a conspiracy of silence by the government and media, which is compounded by the demonization of those who object to it. 9/11 was not only a crime but it can also be regarded as the “original sin” of this new century. Until it is fully confessed to, it cannot be expiated. As such it will continue to fester, and wrong decisions will again be made with ensuing new disasters. The satanic lie of half-truths must be exposed for what it is if trust in our institutions is ever to be restored.