Is anyone interested in Apollo missions...

[Jack White]

Army Theorists Crafted Model of 9/11 Attack Back in 1976.

by Greg Szymanski

This is a very important article because it shows the degree of long-term planning that went into these attacks. It should be noted that from November 1975 until January 1977 the Director of Central Intelligence was none other than George H.W. Bush.

The Perfect Terrorist Plan To Level the Twin Towers

Created In 1976

By Greg Szymanski

Exclusive to American Free Press

Our own U.S. Army devised a plan commissioned by Congress to bring down the WTC using commercial airliners and box cutters as weapons.

The laundry list of terrorist warnings handed to the Bush administration prior to 9/11 makes the President and others look like "bumbling idiots or a bunch of conniving criminals" responsible for the mass murders at the Twin Towers and in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These are the harsh words of Timothy McNiven, an outspoken critic of the President's handling of 9/11 and a 29-year U.S. Defense Department operative still under contract with the government.

He says not only did the Bush administration purposely ignore Al Q'aida in the months preceding the WTC attacks, but the situation is even more disturbing, considering his military unit way back in 1976 devised a mock terrorist attack of the Twin Towers exactly like what occurred on 9/11. McNiven, who first went public in an affidavit included in a 9/11-related federal conspiracy (RICO) lawsuit filed against Bush and others in 2004, claims his unit was ordered to create the "perfect terrorist plan" using commercial airliners as weapons and the Twin Towers as their target.

The publicized version of the study, commissioned by Congress, was to identify security lapses and submit corrective measures to lawmakers. However, McNiven claims the real purpose of the study was to brainstorm how to pull off the perfect terrorist attack using the exact same 9/11 scenario.

The study, commissioned to C-Battery 2/81st Field Artillery, U.S. Army, stationed in Strassburg, Germany in 1976, specifically devised the scenario of the Twin Towers being leveled by Middle Eastern terrorists using commercial airliners and even plastic box cutters to bypass security.

To silence critics, McNiven has successfully passed a credible lie detector test regarding his participation in the study as well as other specific orders given to him by his superiors in case of a real attack on the Twin Towers.

The head of the 1976 mock terrorist plan was Lt. Michael Teague of Long Island, who McNiven says was given specific orders by higher-ups in the military to use the Twin Towers as the terrorist target.

McNiven said he has been unable to contact Lt. Teague, but was interested in his opinion now that "the 9/11 attacks happened the way we planned them in 1976."

"I remember Lt. Teague changed the scenario of the supposed study from a 100 story building to the Twin Towers," recalled McNiven, emphasizing that Lt. Teague was acting on specific orders from unknown superiors.

"He then said he thought it was very strange to be asked to devise a plan to blow up your own home town. But as I watched the Twin Towers really collapse on the morning of September 11th, I realized I was watching the very same thing we devised in the 1976."

Since that ominous realization, McNiven has devoted his entire life to alerting the American public about the similarities between 9/11 and the 1976 study without much success, his story basically being ignored by politicians and the mainstream media.

"Why am I doing this? Why have I spent every waking hour trying to bring this story to the American people?" asked McNiven, claiming he still is following a strange direct military order given to him more than 25 years ago. "During the course of the terrorist plan we were devising, I made the statement to Lt. Teague that if the WTC was ever attacked like we planned, I'd go public. I was then physically assaulted and told never to reveal anything we were doing regarding the Twin Towers."

However, about a week later a strange turn of events occurred. For no apparent reason, McNiven claims his superiors completely changed their minds.

"I was given the direct order that if the Twin Towers were ever attacked the way we discussed in the 1976 study, I was to do everything in my power to bring the similarities to the attention of the American people. "I have no idea why they changed their minds, but I was then emphatically told that this order was never to be rescinded - never - because those who would rescind it, would be the very same people who turned against the American people."

Besides taking a lie detector to verify his story, McNiven has made public a detailed list of about 40 names of those individuals who took part in the mock terrorist plan, including Col. Robert Morrison, Maj. Joe Dipiero, Sgt. Middleton, Sgt. Arroyo and many others.

"There were also people from the Defense Department and the CIA who were monitoring the study, but I wasn't able to get their names," he added. Some of McNiven's most recent assignments with the Defense Department include work on the Northwest Drug Task Force and various other drug smuggling and weapons trafficking cases.

March 9, 2005:

"If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us." (George H.W. "Poppy" Bush)

[Len Colby]

So all we have is this guys word that what he was he says is true? How compelling! How do we know the guy really worked for the Department of Defense? Amazing that none of the other “about 40” people supposedly has come forward no even his superiors who gave him the direct order that if the Twin Towers were ever attacked the way we discussed in the 1976 study, (he) was to do everything in (his) power to bring the similarities to the attention of the American people… this order was never to be rescinded - never - because those who would rescind it, would be the very same people who turned against the American people." Intimidation does make sense because they would have to know they would safer seeking up. Why can’t they locate any of them? If they had all mysteriously died or disappeared that would be a story in itself and there is no indication anyone spoke to them or tried to speak to them.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Jack-- just got my copy of the new book edited by Scott and Griffin. It looks very useful as an eye-opener, particularly those who have been effected by "left gatekeepers" like Alexander Cockburn (Cockburn wrote a new hit piece on 9/11 movement today for The Nation. Its 100% namecalling with no realdiscussion of the

evidence. I know Cockburn is also very uninformed, but whats interesting is his excellent book in defese of Gary Webb, who he might also have dismissed as a conspiracty theorist--See Whiteout, parts of which are excellent)

What immediately struck me is the books endorsement on the firts page. Thes included blurbs from

*Mark Crispin Miller NYU professor of Journalism

*Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst

*Rev. William Sloane Coffin

These are people who are allowed on Democracy Now, the left radio show that has been targeted by activists as left Gatekeeper #1. Of course they were not on discussing thier views on 9/11, but were discussing other subjects.

The fact that they have endorsed this new book, is interesting. Might this be used as a means of countering the left gatekeeping that we suspect is going on? (See Francis Stoner Saunders "The Cultural Cold War, for the

this history of this left gatekeeping if you think this is baseless speculation)

In other words might one type to a citizen you is fond of Amy Goodman something along the lines of "Amy doesn't find Ray McGovern a wacky conspiracy theorist when he's talking about OTHER topics. If you to some degree trust Ray, shouldn't you at least be open minded regarding a book he recommends" In other words use these names as catapults against the left-gatekeepers. Admittedly, it sounds a bit credentialist for my taste, but one has to fight back against the mindless namecalling that some academic types accept in lieu of rational discussion.

[Michael Hogan]

The Disbelievers

9/11 Conspiracy Theorists Are Building Their Case Against the Government From Ground Zero

By Michael Powell

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, September 8, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6090701669.html

[Len Colby]

While I am quite suspcious [i'm being kind] of Cockburn, I think DM! [Democracy Now! - which by the way can be seen on the internet as well as heard! www.democracynow.org] just is IMO afraid to go the extra step into [none dare speak the word!...] Conspiracy! About once a month I email Amy Goodman and Jaun Gonzales and tell them how wonderful their show it [it is!], but that they are leaving out important information [JFK, 911 and many other conspiracies....] They once 'went there' with RFK and the death of Malcom X....but only a tad. I think they are afraid to loose some of their audience and be 'labled' as we all are as CTs when we know it is Conspiracy fact - and only some details are debatable. I would urge any of you who love DN! to make polite and cogent arguments to them to help give them the needed nudge toward this end.

Perhaps they simply recognize how little merit there is to 9/11 "inside job" theories. As for the JFK assassination it is a news not a history program their focus is current and recent events.

Goodman and Gonzales stike me as intelligent people and I think they recognize that if they take unfounded theories seriuously they loose credebility should they devote time to people who believe in UFOs, Holocaust denial and "chemtrails" too?

Len

Edited September 9, 2006 by Len Colby

[Douglas Caddy]

How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Slip Off the Hook

The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Weekend Edition

Counterpunch

September 9/10 , 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/

You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts -- -- the ones who say Bush and Cheney masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- in the first paragraph of the opening page of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor. “In many respects,” Griffin writes, “the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself… In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes… not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them.”

The operative word here is “should”. One characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency, thus many of them start with the racist premise that “Arabs in caves” weren’t capable of the mission. They believe that military systems work the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they should work. They believe that at 8.14 am, when AA flight 11 switched off its radio and transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the National Military Command center and NORAD. They believe, citing reverently (this is from high priest Griffin) “the US Air Force’s own website”, that an F-15 could have intercepted AA flight 11 “by 8.24, and certainly no later than 8.30”.

They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because if they did they’d know that minutely planned operations – let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency -- screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality, weather and all the other whims of providence.

According to the minutely prepared plans of the Strategic Air Command, an impending Soviet attack would have prompted the missile silos in North Dakota to open, and the ICBMs to arc towards Moscow and kindred targets. The tiny number of test launches actually attempted all failed, whereupon SAC gave up testing. Was it badly designed equipment, human incompetence, defense contractor venality or… CONSPIRACY? (In that case, presumably, a Communist conspiracy, as outlined by ancestors of the present nuts, ever intent on identifying those who would stab America in the back.)

Did the British and French forces in 1940 break and flee a Wehrmacht capable of only one lunge, because of rotten leadership, terrible planning, epic cowardice, or … CONSPIRACY? Did the April 24, 1980 effort to rescue the hostages in the US embassy in Teheran fail because a sandstorm disabled three of the eight helicopters, because the helicopters were poorly made, because of a lousy plan or because of agents of William Casey and the Republican National Committee poured sugar into their gas tanks in yet another

CONSPIRACY?

Have the US military’s varying attempts to explain why F-15s didn’t intercept and shoot down the hijacked planes stemmed from absolutely predictable attempts to cover up the usual screw-ups, or because of CONSPIRACY? Is Mr Cohen in his little store at the end of the block hiking his prices because he wants to make a buck, or because his rent just went up or because the Jews want to take over the world? August Bebel said anti-Semitism is the socialism of the fools. These days the 9/11 conspiracy fever threatens to become the “socialism” of the left, and the passe-partout of many libertarians.

It’s awful. My in-box overflows each day with fresh “proofs” of how the WTC buildings were actually demolished, often accompanied by harsh insults identifying me as a “gate-keeper” preventing the truth from getting out. I meet people who start quietly, asking me “what I think about 9/11”. What they are actually trying to find out is whether I’m part of the coven. I imagine it was like being a Stoic in the second century A.D. going for a stroll in the Forum and meeting some fellow asking, with seeming casualness, whether it’s possible to feed 5,000 people on five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.

Indeed, at my school in the 1950s the vicar used to urge on us Frank Morison’s book, Who Moved The Stone? It sought to demonstrate, with exhaustive citation from the Gospels, that since on these accounts no human had moved the stone from in front of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, it must beyond the shadow of a doubt have been an angel who rolled it aside and let Jesus out, so he could astonish the mourners and then Ascend. Of course Morison didn’t admit into his argument the possibility that angels don’t exist, or that the gospel writers were making it up.

It’s the same pattern with the 9/11 nuts, who proffer what they demurely call “disturbing questions”, though they disdain all answers but their own. They seize on coincidences and force them into sequences they deem to be logical and significant. Like mad Inquisitors, they pounce on imagined clues in documents and photos, torturing the data –- as the old joke goes about economists -- till the data confess. Their treatment of eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence is whimsical. Apparent anomalies that seem to nourish their theories are brandished excitedly; testimony that undermines their theories – like witnesses of a large plane hitting the Pentagon -- is contemptuously brushed aside.

Anyone familiar with criminal, particularly death penalty defense – I had such an opportunity for a number of years – will know that there are always anomalies the prosecution cannot account for and that the defense teams can exploit, in hopes of swaying a jury either in the guilt or penalty phase of a trial. Time and again I would see the defense team spend days and weeks, even months, back-checking on a possibly vulnerable link in the evidentiary chain that could be attacked, at least to the all-important level of creating “reasonable doubt” in the mind of a juror. Expert witnesses would be imported at great expense –- unlike states such as Texas, the justice system of California is generous in the provision of money for death penalty defense -- to challenge the prosecution’s forensic evidence. Such challenges weren’t hard to mount. Contrary to prosecutorial claims, there is far less instrinsic certainty in forensic evaluation than is commonly supposed, as regards fingerprints, landing marks on bullets and so forth.

But minute focus of a death penalty defense team on one such weak link often leads to a distorted view of the whole case. I remember more than one case where, after weeks of interviewing witnesses at one particular crime scene, the defense’s investigator had collected enough witness reports to mount a decent attack on this aspect of the prosecution’s overall case. At least this is what I thought, hearing the daily bulletins of the investigator. But when, in such instances, the camera pulled back, so to speak, and I saw the prosecution’s whole case – chain of evidence, cumulative witness statements, accused’s own movements and subsequent statements – it became clear enough to me and, in that case to the juries , that the accused were incontestably guilty. But even then, such cases had a vigorous afterlife, with the defense trying to muster up grounds for an appeal, on the basis of testimony and evidence withheld by the prosecution, faulty rulings by the judge, a prejudiced jury member and so on. A seemingly “cut and dried case” is very rarely beyond challenge, even though in essence it actually may well be just that, “cut and dried”.

Anyone who ever looked at the JFK assassination will know that there are endless anomalies and loose ends. Eyewitness testimony – as so often – is conflicting, forensic evidence possibly misconstrued, mishandled or just missing. But in my view, the Warren Commission, as confirmed in almost all essentials by the House Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, had it right and Oswald fired the fatal shots from the Schoolbook Depository. The evidentiary chain for his guilt is persuasive, and the cumulative scenarios of the conspiracy nuts entirely unconvincing. But of course – as the years roll by, and even though no death bed confession has ever buttressed those vast, CIA-related scenarios -- the nuts keep on toiling away, their obsessions as unflagging as ever.

Naturally, there are conspiracies. I think there is strong evidence that FDR did have knowledge that a Japanese naval force in the north Pacific was going to launch an attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt thought it would be a relatively mild assault and thought it would be the final green light to get the US into the war.

Of course it’s very probable that the FBI or US military intelligence, even the CIA, had penetrated the Al Qaeda team planning the 9/11 attacks; that intelligence reports – some are already known – piled up in various Washington bureaucracies pointing to the impending onslaught and even the manner in which it might be carried out.

The history of intelligence operations is profuse with example of successful intelligence collection, but also fatal slowness to act on the intelligence, along with eagnerness not to compromise the security and future usefulness of the informant, who has to prove his own credentials by even pressing for prompt action by the plotters. Sometime an undercover agent will actually propose an action, either to deflect efforts away from some graver threat, or to put the plotters in a position where they can be caught red-handed. In their penetrations of environmental groups the FBI certainly did this.

Long before the Yom Kippur war, a CIA analyst noted Egyptian orders from a German engineering firm, and deduced from the type and size of equipment thus ordered that Egypt was planning an attack across the Suez canal. He worked out the probable size of the Egyptian force and the likely time window for the attack. His superiors at the CIA sat on the report. When the Egyptian army finally attacked on October 6, 1973 the CIA high command ordered up the long-buried report, dusted it off and sent it over to the White House, marked “current intelligence”. Was there a “conspiracy” by the CIA high command to allow Israel to be taken by surprise? I doubt it.

Bureaucratic inertia and caution prevailed, until the moment came for decisive CYA acitvity. The nuts make dizzying “deductive” leaps. There is a one particularly vigorous coven which has established to its own satisfaction that the original NASA moon landing was faked, and never took place. This “conspiracy” would have required the complicity of thousands of people , all of whom have kept their mouths shut. The proponents of the “fake moon landing” plot tend to overlap with the JFK and 9/11 nuts.

One notorious “deductive” leap involves flight 77, which on 9/11 ended up crashing into the Pentagon. There are photos of the impact of the “object” -- i.e., the Boeing 757, flight 77 -- that seem to show the sort of hole a missile might make. Ergo, the nuts assert, it WAS a missile and a 757 didn’t hit the Pentagon. As regards the hole, my brother Andrew -- writing a book about Rumsfeld and the DoD during his tenure -- has seen photos taken within 30 minutes of Pentagon impact clearly showing outline of entire plane including wings. This was visible momentarily when the smoke blew away

And if it was a missile, what happened to the 757? Did the conspirators shoot it down somewhere else, or force it down and then kill the passengers? Why plan to demolish the towers with pre-placed explosives if your conspiracy includes control of the two planes that hit them. Why bother with the planes at all. Why blame Osama if your fall guy is Saddam Hussein? Why involve the Israeli “art students”.

The nuts simultaneously credit their targets – the Bush-Cheney “conspirators” -- with superhuman ingenuity and grotesque carelessness. In Webster Griffin Tarpley’s book “9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA” he writes that “in an interview with Parade magazine, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld also referred to the object which hit the Pentagon as a ‘missile’. Was this a Freudian slip by the loquacious defense chief?” (And, a nut might add, is it mere coincidence that Webster Griffin Tarpley shares one of his names with David Ray Griffin?

The demolition scenario is classic who-moved-the-stonery. The WTC towers didn’t fall down because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption, incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority, and because they were struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, they fell because Dick Cheney’s agents methodically planted demolition charges in the preceding days. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom –- party to mass murder –- have held their tongues ever since. The “conspiracy” is always open-ended as to the number of conspirators, widening steadily to include all the people involved in the execution and cover-up of the demolition of the Towers and the onsslaujght on the Pentagon, from the teams acquiring the explosives and themissile, inserting the explosives in the relevant floors of three vast buildings, (moving day after day among the unsuspecting office workers), then on 9/11 activating the detonators.

Subsequently the conspiracy includes the disposers of the steel and rubble, the waste recyclers in Staten Island and perhaps even the Chinese who took the salvaged incriminating metal for use in the Three Gorges dam, where it will submerged in water and concretye for ever. Tens of thousands of people, all silent as the tomb to this day.

Of course the buildings didn’t suddenly fall at a speed inexplicable in terms of physics unless caused by carefully pre-placed explosives, detonated by the ruthless Bush-Cheney operatives. High grade steel can bend disastrously under extreme heat. People inside who survived the collapse didn’t hear a series of explosions. As discussed in Wayne Barrett and Dan Collin’s excellent book Grand Illusion, about Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, helicopter pilots radioed warnings nine minutes before the final collapse that the South Tower might well go down and, repeatedly, as much as 25 minutes before the North Tower’s fall.

What Barrett and Collins brilliantly show are the actual corrupt conspiracies on Giuliani’s watch: the favoritism to Motorola which saddled the firemen with radios that didn’t work; the ability of the Port Authority to skimp on fire protection, the mayor’s catastrophic failure in the years before 9/11/2001 to organize an effective unified emergency command that would have meant that cops and firemen could have communicated; that many firemen wouldn’t have unnecessarily entered the Towers; that people in the Towers wouldn’t have been told by 911 emergency operators to stay in place; and that firemen could have heard the helicopter warnings and the final Mayday messages that prompted most of the NYPD men to flee the Towers.

That’s the real political world, in which Giuliani and others have never been held accountable. The nuts disdain the real world because, like much of the left and liberal sectors, they have promoted Bush, Cheney and the Neo-Cons to an elevated status as the Arch Demons of American history, instead of being just one more team running the American empire, a team of more than usual stupidity and incompetence (characteristics I personally favor in imperial leaders.) The Conspiracy Nuts have combined to produce a huge distraction, just as Danny Sheehan did with his Complaint, that mesmerized and distracted much of the Nicaraguan Solidarity Movement in the 1980s, and which finally collapsed in a Florida courtroom almost as quickly as the Towers.

* Footnote: I should add that one particular conspiracy nut, seeing that Roosevelt’s grandson Ford – a schoolteacher in Los Angeles – was for a while, some years ago, on the board of CounterPunch’s parent non-profit, the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity – wrote an enormous onslaught on CounterPunch a while ago, “proving” to his own satisfaction that CounterPunch was a pawn of the Democratic Party, the CIA and kindred darker forces. I suppose the fact that CounterPunch attacked the Democratic Party and the CIA on a weekly basis was just one more example of our cunning in deflecting suspicion away from our true sponsors. The fact that from time to time that we also quite regularly attacked FDR – and posited his foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor – should again be taken as evidence of our cunning in deflecting suspicion away from Ford’s supervisory roile in our affairs. In fact we’d put Ford on the board in the hopes (vain, as they turned out to be) that he would persuade film stars to give CounterPunch money.

A much shorter, earlier version of the column ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Thursday.

[William Kelly]

How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Slip Off the Hook

The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Weekend Edition

Counterpunch

September 9/10 , 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/

You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts -- -- the ones who say Bush and Cheney masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- in the first paragraph of the opening page of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor. “In many respects,” Griffin writes, “the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself… In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes… not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them.”

The operative word here is “should”. One characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency, thus many of them start with the racist premise that “Arabs in caves” weren’t capable of the mission. They believe that military systems work the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they should work. They believe that at 8.14 am, when AA flight 11 switched off its radio and transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the National Military Command center and NORAD. They believe, citing reverently (this is from high priest Griffin) “the US Air Force’s own website”, that an F-15 could have intercepted AA flight 11 “by 8.24, and certainly no later than 8.30”.

They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because if they did they’d know that minutely planned operations – let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency -- screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality, weather and all the other whims of providence......

WHILE I DON'T BELIEVE THAT THE WTC WAS DEMOLISHED BY IMPOLISION, THE PENTAGON HIT BY A MISSILE OR BUSH-CHANEY PLANNED THE WHOLE THING, NOR DO I BELIEVE THAT THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK AND THE EVENTS OF 911 WERE THE RESULT OF "Stupidity, cowardice or venality" OTHER THAN OUR OWN.

APPARENTLY THOSE WHO WANTED JFK DEAD AND THE WTC DESTROYED WEREN'T STUPID OR COWARDS AS THE RESULT FOR FAILURE WAS CERTAIN.

BK

[Sid Walker]

This is a disgraceful hatchet job by Alex Cockburn.

It's not unexpected, because it is consistent with his past position on the assassination of JFK and the events of 9-11.

Like Chomsky's 'debunking' of 'conspiracy theories' re JFK and 9-11, it is pure flim-flam.

Cockburn doesn't make a single point of substance in the entire article. Is there a longer version where he does get into the substance of the debate?

If not, all it shows is that this persuasive voice on the left knows how to spin and dissemble on a few key issues.

But those of us who've been paying attention knew that already...

[Evan Burton]

It makes a number of very good points. 9/11 nutters..... they wouldn't know the truth if it slapped them in the face.

[Robert Howard]

This is a disgraceful hatchet job by Alex Cockburn.

It's not unexpected, because it is consistent with his past position on the assassination of JFK and the events of 9-11.

Like Chomsky's 'debunking' of 'conspiracy theories' re JFK and 9-11, it is pure flim-flam.

Cockburn doesn't make a single point of substance in the entire article. Is there a longer version where he does get into the substance of the debate?

If not, all it shows is that this persuasive voice on the left knows how to spin and dissemble on a few key issues.

But those of us who've been paying attention knew that already...

One could add, why is it important to use the description of those who take a dissenting view of the official version of events as nut's, if it is such a nutty concept, why does Cockburn spin his wheels refuting it? There is, an inherent danger in a culture which espouses sanctioned history, the danger is....the distinct possibility that one day the cat comes out of the bag and the official version is revealed as 'not worth the paper it is written on.' That, I will argue has already been proven with regard to the official versions of 12-7-41, and 11-22-63.

Cockburn smells like a rat regarding Japanese Fleet Movements pre-December 7th, when he grudgingly concedes there are indications....xxxx, ONI Intercepts, Chuchill relaying British intel intercepts re same to FDR, within day's of the attack, FDR's General's telling him that the US Oil Embargo in retaliation for the Japnese invasion of oil/rubber rich Malaysia, SE Asia would be construed by a militaristic Japanese Cabinet headed by Hideki Tojo as a provocation....Get Real....Hegemony, Ladies and Gentleman...Hegemony, who prevails are how the pages of history are written.

Can you imagine or picture in your mind the effect on a society upon realizing a historically profound event as it was documented, is a pile of lies? Has it happened before? The Reichstag Fire....The Assassination of Benigno Aquino, to name a couple.

My view of 9-11 is simply that there are a lot of signs that there were individuals who knew something was coming and others currently unidentified, for reasons that are at best speculative, did not want that something to be discovered. In the final analysis, America is in grave danger, because there IS NO coherent discourse between the left and the right, at least as far as visual mass-media is concerned. That is not the sign of a healthy society, and it will get worse before it get's better. My advice for anyone who does not have the time to spend several years researching 9-11, is to read the CIA Document Appendix 'Four Alternative Global Future's' and ponder 9-11.

http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/globalt...dex.html#link14

I would say that there is a distinct possibility certain elitist circles decided 9-11 had to happen, denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Edited September 10, 2006 by Robert Howard

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I heard from very reliable sources that Amy Goodman has agreed to a debate between Dylan Avery Vs. the authors of the Pop. Mechanics articles. There may be others also involved, not sure.

Looks like the pressre campaign on DM may have finally paid off!

Also just whant to say that I hope they get into some of the dimplomatic, and FISA evidence, as I find it more compelling than some of the physical evidence.

This could be a big moment in the history of the 9/11 movement.

[Douglas Caddy]

Oliver Stone hints at darker 9/11 film in future

www.globeandmail.com

Sept. 12, 2006

Moscow -- U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, who surprised many with the patriotic flavour of his new film World Trade Center, hinted in Moscow yesterday that he is considering a more controversial follow-up investigating the "conspiracy" around 9/11.

"There is a great story in a movie, a conspiracy by a group of people in the American administration who have an agenda and who used 9/11 to further that agenda," he told journalists in Russia.

There could be a "fascinating project [on] what happened after Sept. 11," the director said at his packed press conference on the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

Stone accused U.S. President George W. Bush of mishandling the fight against Osama bin Laden's militants and using the crisis to stoke fear and bolster his own power at home in a way that was "right out of George Orwell." AFP

[Brian Smith]

Sure hope so.

[Len Colby]

Doesn't sound like it to me. It seems rather that his theory is close to mine; the Bush administration exploited 9/11 to further their rightwing agenda and screwed up the fight against terrorism before and AFTER the attacks.

Oliver Stone hints at darker 9/11 film in future

Moscow -- U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, who surprised many with the patriotic flavour of his new film World Trade Center, hinted in Moscow yesterday that he is considering a more controversial follow-up investigating the "conspiracy" around 9/11.

"There is a great story in a movie, a conspiracy by a group of people in the American administration who have an agenda and who used 9/11 to further that agenda," he told journalists in Russia.

There could be a "fascinating project [on] what happened after Sept. 11," the director said at his packed press conference on the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

Stone accused U.S. President George W. Bush of mishandling the fight against Osama bin Laden's militants and using the crisis to stoke fear and bolster his own power at home in a way that was "right out of George Orwell." AFP

[Douglas Caddy]

Sure hope so.

Theory that U.S. orchestrated Sept. 11 attacks 'not absurd':

Sept. 12, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday that it's at least plausible that the U.S. government was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Chavez did not specifically accuse the U.S. government of having a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks, but rather suggested that theories of U.S. involvement bear examination.

The Venezuelan leader, an outspoken critic of U.S. President George W. Bush, was reacting to a television report investigating a theory that the Twin Towers were brought down with explosives after hijacked airplanes crashed into them in 2001.

"The hypothesis is not absurd . . . that those towers could have been dynamited," Chavez said in a speech to supporters. "A building never collapses like that, unless it's with an implosion."

"The hypothesis that is gaining strength . . . is that it was the same U.S. imperial power that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist attack or act against its own people and against citizens of all over the world," Chavez said.

"Why? To justify the aggressions that immediately were unleashed on Afghanistan, on Iraq."

Chavez has said the U.S. launched those wars to ensure its political and economic power.

The U.S. government says al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"A plane supposedly crashed into the Pentagon, but no one ever found a single remnant of that plane," Chavez said, citing a television program he had seen on Venezuela's state television.

Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro raised the same theories in an earlier speech Tuesday, and called for an independent investigation.

"It's really worrisome to think that all of that could have been a great conspiracy against humanity," Maduro said. "An independent international investigation must be carried out one day to discover the truth about the events of Sept. 11."