Anthony Summers

[Michael Hogan]

From irishtimes.com: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2012/0915/1224323971635.html

[David Andrews]

I found Summers & Swann's history of 9/11, The Eleventh Day, to be unstomachable cant of the explaining-away variety. A paint roller is taken to some of the most important issues of the 9/11 attacks and planning. It's of the order of Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, a modern day Jim Bishop job.

As for Summers' gig as a historian - the best parts of his J. Edgar Hoover book (parts I actually found interesting and worthy of further investigation) are based on conjecture.

I'll keep looking for a Summers book that elevates his work for me, but my estimate took a big hit with The Eleventh Day. Go ahead and read that book and ask yourself if it's the 9/11 book you would have hoped for from Summers. Instead it's the book that's made him a gatekeeper, which puts it up there with Case Closed.

Edited September 17, 2012 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

I don't know what you believe about 9/11, Jim, but you probably don't believe what Summers swears to. He's crossed over into gatekeeper status with The Eleventh Day. It's up there with that book on lone assassins that Dulles once waved around.

I'm willing to retract the complaint on conjecture in his Hoover book, because I'm working from memory there and haven't read it in a couple years, and I don't like to short-sell anybody for the sake of hyperbole. I can only complain that the incriminating photos of Hoover in flagrante have never been available for review - so that part's not historical writing.

Edited September 17, 2012 by David Andrews

[Dawn Meredith]

I am sure Jim must be aware that Jim Garrison referred to Summers as "One of the CIA's more accommodating prostitutes ". If he he disputes this he can see it in a letter from JG to me in 1986. I had heard about a riff between the two and wrote them both in an effort to either dispell or convince both we needed to be on the same side. Summer's reply to me was sparce and he repeated his evasion about conspiracy, saying there "may have been one".

Garrison on the other hand wrote me a three page single space letter and off to the side he hand writes "Incidently, every single author you mentioned is100% CIA and prostitute is too good a word for them". .

The letter may be seen via google "letter of Jim Garrison". It is at Wim's JFK solved site. I liked the book "Conspiracy" very much too. Seems AS is trying to have it both ways. Or maybe Garrison was onto something. Summers loved to smear JG with the ties- to- the- Mob lies.

Dawn

[David Andrews]

But I don't see any way out of concluding that Building 7 was imploded. And I also have a real problem with denying that there was an attempt to delay the interceptors. IMO, the second plane should not have hit the towers.

Does he try and explain away those two things?

Let me seem if I can fetchThe Eleventh Day out of the library and I'll get back to you on those points here. I am fairly certain, though, that Building 7 falls of its own accord in Summers.

I suppose that, if I'm casting historical writing as interpretation of the recorded facts (the terms I applied to the Hoover book), then Summers. like too many writers, is a historian of 9/11.

Edited September 17, 2012 by David Andrews

[Michael Hogan]

I hesitated before posting anything not dealing directly with the JFK case, particularly because I have already been chastised for posting a link to a recent article about Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan in a thread titled, of all things, Anthony Summers. Prior to my post, the thread had been moribund for almost seven years.

But I wanted to answer part of Jim's question, since he brought up WTC Seven.

Summers and Swan devote the equivalent of one page to the collapse of World Trade Center Building Seven, noting that David Griffin described it as the "Official Account's Achilles Heel," and that "WTC 7 became the first known instance in the world of a tall, modern, steel-reinforced building brought down apparently as a result of fire."

Summers and Swan wrote:

According to the NIST, in its 2008 report, WTC 7 was brought down by "fire-induced progressive collapse," a chain of events technically unlike those in the Twin Towers, beginning with the failure of one key structural column. The NIST "found no evidence supporting the existence of a blast event."

The above accounts begin on page 108.

http://books.google....vidence&f=false

Note the quotation from Deputy Chief Peter Hayden about WTC 7 and compare it with what he said about the South Building:

http://books.google.... hayden&f=false

The Eleventh Day is subtitled The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. It falls far short of that lofty description, in my opinion.

[David Andrews]

Thanks for chiming in on Building 7, Michael. I had high hopes for the Summers book, but its main fault finding is with the performance of the 9/11 Commission, without revealing many of the most important aspects that the Commission failed to address. It's a dodge that's been used on the Warren Commission in other books.

[Michael Hogan]

Summers' thinks the 9-11 Commission did a creditable job?

From page 167 of The Eleventh Day:

The truth officialdom gave us, that young men loyal to al Qaeda and bin Laden were responsible for carrying out the attacks is not the full story. The 9/11 Commission varnished the story for public consumption, spared the American people knowledge of troubling factors and issues -- perhaps because they were highly sensitive, perhaps because pursuit of them involved banging on doors that seemed best left closed, perhaps simply because they remained unresolved.

Accessories after the fact.

[David Andrews]

I didn't mean to say Summers gave credit to the 9/11 Commission, but his fallback is to blame them for oversights and obscuration, much as other writers have blamed the Warren Commission for botching the Kennedy investigation - and stopped right there, without bringing up any issues that never made it before a commission. Real end-of-The Parallax View investigative journalism.

Again, it's just the entire opposite of the book one might have expected from Summers.

Edited September 19, 2012 by David Andrews

[John Simkin]

I did indeed regret the fact that my then publisher - not I - decided to give my Kennedy assassination book the title Conspiracy. That word wound up on the cover because I had mooted something along the lines of the HSCA's (then fresh) finding of "probable" conspiracy. When the book was republished in the nineties I insisted that the title be changed to Not In Your Lifetime - a reference to Earl Warren's quote on publication of his Report, to the effect that some material not not be released "in your lifetime". It seems to me an affront that this should apply to any relevant material today. And, yes, I did say to Lisa Pease that I don't think a conspiracy has been proven - for the good reason that there is no definite, uncontested proof of conspiracy. Perhaps there was a plot, and my writings show that I'm very open to that possibility. But there's nothing finite, or indeed anything hard enough to "go to the bank" on. Any open-minded person ought to accept that.

I don't know what Pease means by her reference to "self-serving" - and no idea who Gary Webb may be. I certainly have never discussed anyone of that name with Pease or anyone else.

I thought it might be worth reviving this thread considering the publication of the new edition.

[Steve Rosen]

Anthony Summers updated version of Not In Your Lifetime will contain some new information about David Atlee Phillips and other fresh material, especially in the final chapter. Should prove interesting.

Steve

[David Andrews]

I'm not wild about the implicit defeatism toward JFK research and investigation in Summers' new title, Not in Your Lifetime. It smacks of Case Closed-style finality.

[Anthony Thorne]

Not to pile on Summers too much, but reading that he was clueless as to who Gary Webb was does suggest a certain disinterest in deep political research. Then again, Summers has probably never claimed to have such a specific interest.

I own his Hoover book, and the circa 90's UK edition of NOT IN YOUR LIFETIME. I skipped his 9/11 volume as it was clear much of it would not be what was hoped for. (The quote from post #21 above, where NIST found no evidence of a blast event, should have been expanded with the equally true observation that NIST, by their own admission, never looked for evidence of explosives in the first place. One prominent 9/11 truth advocate - possibly Jon Gold - did mention however that he found sections of the Summers book worthwhile despite the many caveats and misgivings he had over its broad acceptance of the official story). I'll be buying the newest edition of NOT IN YOUR LIFETIME when it comes but my expectations for it aren't as high as they are for some other JFK books appearing around the same time. Being pleasantly surprised by it would be nice.

Paris Flammonde (if he's still about) should have used the anniversary as an excuse to bring out new editions of his four-volume set with all the typos corrected.

[Guest Robert Morrow]

I'm not wild about the implicit defeatism toward JFK research and investigation in Summers' new title, Not in Your Lifetime. It smacks of Case Closed-style finality.

Anyone who couldn't figure out there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination by the year 2005, especially after all the folks who Summers talked to, is just someone in willful denial. Summers has done a lot of good research in many areas - wasn't he the one that got Delphine Roberts to say Banister said Oswald was part of the Banister office? And he talked with Evelyn Lincoln who told Summers the Kennedys were going to use the ammunition of the Bobby Baker affair to annihilate Lyndon Johnson.

Summers has also done some good work on Marilyn Monroe and Hoover.

I think some folks are looking for a videotaped confession by the perps, a sworn signed document by them in a court of law, the perps actually turning themselves into the Dallas DA ... then I don't think that would be enough for them.

In my book, the Zapruder film alone, with its "back and to the left" headsnap of JFK, denoting an obvious kill shot from the front, is enough to tell me the murderers of JFK were running the non-investigation into his death.

Edited August 28, 2013 by Robert Morrow