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THE NY TIMES PUTS 9-11 QUESTIONS IN THE GRAVE
As Sad As It Was Predictable
Story Marks the End of a Sequential and Planned Campaign to Discredit Authentic 9/11 Research
by
Michael C. Ruppert and Jamey Hecht
© Copyright 2006, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact admin@copvcia.com. May be circulated, distributed or transmitted for non-profit purposes only.
June 7th 2006, 1:28pm [PST] – “Ignominious” is the only word that comes to mind as I try to describe a June 5, 2006 New York Times story titled 500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11. For the first time (to our knowledge) in the almost five years since 9/11, the nation’s premier newspaper sent a reporter to cover a two-day conference sponsored by 9/11truth.org.
The term ignominious applies to both what remains of the 9-11 movement and the Times story itself. The Gray Lady’s disingenuous but expectedly well-crafted character assassination will have a lasting historical footprint, but the 9-11 truth movement has been virtually consigned to a footnote in the dustbin of history as a result of mainstream media mind control and its own foolish choices.
The truth is that the real and best 9/11 researchers chose a long time ago not to ride willingly into the Little Big Horn massacre that was long prepared for, set up, and executed over the last few months. None of us takes any satisfaction in saying we told you so, but… we told you so.
Unless a movement alleging government corruption of this magnitude understands from the gate that every move must be planned with one question and only one question in mind, it will fail at the precise moment that it reaches the threshold of mass public consciousness. That question, very simply, is “When the mainstream media is forced to take note, how will they try to discredit our efforts?”
Avoiding the obvious ambush points is the best way to plan. Of course, that threatens the chance that a movement like 9-11 truth will ever reach the mainstream media; it also evokes the now-justified observation that the only movements questioning the government and exposing the complicity of the press that get the ink or airtime will be the ones that can easily be shot down in the public eye.
The headline pretty much sets the tone for a series of cheap shots that run very predictably throughout the story — cheap shots that most of the 9-11 movement stood up and volunteered for.
Among other things the Times article spun using the following terms and phrases:
- “splintered factions of the movement” (second paragraph)
- “In colleges and chat rooms on the Internet, this band of disbelievers has been trying for years to prove that 9/11 was an inside job” (4th paragraph) – The Times does not mention the three best-selling books on 9/11 after the Kean Commission report including Crossing the Rubicon, The New Pearl Harbor, or The Terror Timeline.
- “It was in tone, half trade show, half political convention” (5th paragraph) – Nothing to take seriously here, this implies. It’s only a bunch of people trying to make money selling things, have a few drinks and get laid.
- “Mr. Berger, 40, is typical of 9/11 Truthers – a group that, in its rank and file, includes professors, chain-saw operators, [Gee, as in Texas Chain Saw Massacre?], mothers, engineers, activists, used-book sellers, pizza deliverymen, college students, a former fringe candidate for the United States Senate and a long-haired fellow named hummux (pronounced who-mook) who, on and off, lived in a cave for 15 years.” (7th paragraph) – By the time you get finished reading about the cave man you have forgotten about the professor and are now looking at this as a ridicule piece.
- “Such ‘red flags,’ as they were sometimes called, were the meat and potatoes of the keynote speech on Friday night by Alex Jones, who is the William Jennings Bryan of the 9/11 band.” (9th paragraph) – Great, anoint a not-so-credible and easy-to-dismiss Jones as leader of the movement, wrap him up in a ball with the kooks and then flush the whole thing. Just ignore the real 9/11 pioneers like myself, Michel Chossudovsky, Paul Thompson, Nafeez Ahmed and Dan Hopsicker because we can’t be so easily dismissed. I’m certain that Jones’ pocketbook is flush, however, since he helped trash the movement which others made credible as he appropriated their research.
- “The controlled demolition theory is the sine qua non of the 9/11 movement.” (11th paragraph) – Says who? Not one of the authors of the three best-selling 9/11 books challenging the Kean Commission adopted or endorsed this position or made this statement.
- “Its basic claim and, in some sense, the one upon which all others rest. It is, of course, directly contradicted by the 10,000-page investigation by the National institute of Standards and Technology, which held that jet-fuel fires distressed the towers’ structure, which eventually collapsed.”
There are more lies per square inch in this little passage than in a whole page of typical NYT fare (say, Judy Miller). First, the most widely respected 9/11 researchers have stayed completely away from physical evidence arguments, which will be discussed further below. The sine qua non of 9/11 research – as far as we’re concerned – is the original investigation and exposé that five simultaneous wargame exercises based on hijacked airliners were taking place on the morning of 9-11-01 in the Northeast Air Defense Sector and that these exercises — under the control of Dick Cheney — were what paralyzed air defenses that day. This is the one piece of hard evidence which cannot (and has not) been refuted or even acknowledged by the government.
The cited 10,000 page investigation is one of the exact reasons why FTW and other major researchers never touched the physical evidence aspects of 9-11: sufficient non-scientific (i.e. uncontestable) evidence exists to prove government complicity, cover-up, and murder.
- “— the 9/11 Truthers are dogged, at home and in the office, by friends and family who suspect that they may, in fact, be completely nuts.” (13th paragraph)
- “There is a plan by the British delegation (such as it is, so far) to get members of Parliament to watch “Loose Change”, the seminal movement DVD.” (16th paragraph) – This is one of the biggest whoppers of all. I have watched “Loose Change” and in my expert opinion it is a very fine piece of CIA disinformation, one that fits an astute maxim by Professor Peter Dale Scott: “Disinformation, in order to be effective, must be 90% accurate.”
Even though the film opens with some of my original research (including images taken from the FTW web site), it quickly sinks into a repeatedly debunked and confabulated hypothesis that no airliner hit the Pentagon. This film is so slickly produced (and on such a large budget) that it is hard to believe that amateur filmmakers could have made it. Once the audience buys into all the credible research at the front, they are quickly swept away in a flood of easily impeached high-tech nonsense, and that was the film’s intent.
Not long before “Loose Change” was released, a recently retired high-ranking US Naval officer approached me and tried to sell me on the claim that no plane hit the Pentagon. He even claimed that he had been inside the Pentagon on 9-11 and had seen no aircraft wreckage. He kept pushing but could not persuade me, because (as I told him) I was aware of more than 130 independent, non-military eyewitnesses who had been traveling on nearby I-395 who swore that they did see an airliner hit the Pentagon. Having driven on I-395 many times, I know that they had a perfect view.
My last correspondence with the retired Navy Captain was on May 3rd and in my message I made it very clear that I would not endorse the no-plane hypothesis and that I believed “Loose Change” to be (in impact) a CIA propaganda film, whether by design, trick or device, or the sheer gullibility of its makers.
On May 16th the Pentagon released what it claims was new video showing a Boeing 757 striking the building. It was clear that, realizing I would not fall for the “dangle,” the powers that be had decided that they would discredit the rest of the 9-11 movement who had accepted “no plane.”
- “Beneath the weekend’s screenings and symposiums on geopolitics and mass hypnotic trance lies a tradition of questioning concentrated power…” (18th paragraph) – “Mass hypnotic trance”? What the movement uses as a metaphor has been turned into a hyperbolic specific allegation.
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“I hope you don’t end up dead somewhere,” a companion said to a participant… (last paragraph) – This is just a nice reinforcement that those who get it too accurately sometimes turn up dead. Psychologically, this is just the cherry on top. After all the other ridiculed and twisted logic, why should anyone go through the trouble of challenging authority if that’s the payoff one gets for being successful?
“NO-PLANE”: TIMELINE OF A MEME 1
October 2001: Michael Ruppert begins timeline of 9/11 attacks, turning up early evidence of U.S. complicity by focusing on actions by individuals, agencies, and corporations as evidenced in public media, legal proceedings, and government documents.
October 7, 2001: Thierry Meyssan posts webpage claiming that no plane hit the pentagon on 9/11, eventuating in his book Pentagate.
October 12, 2001: SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview with Parade Magazine, uses the word “missile” to describe what hit the Pentagon. This was probably a deliberate intent to mislead gullible researchers. In military parlance a missile can be anything from a bullet, to an airliner striking a building, to a real missile. The first dictionary definition listed for missile states, “An object or weapon that is fired, thrown, dropped, or otherwise projected at a target; a projectile.” Thus the airliners were missiles and Rumsfeld’s choice of words was literally correct. How could anyone who understands the rudiments of evidence consider that as proof of anything?
November 25, 2001: At an annual meeting of the Coalition on Political Assassinations, John Judge and T. Carter make a presentation regarding 9/11 in which Carter, an AA flight attendant, claims to have recovered from Pentagon wreckage the bracelet of a colleague killed in the crash of AA77.
November 26, 2003: Michael C. Ruppert publishes “The Kennedys, Physical Evidence, and 9/11,” an essay that attempts to warn the 9/11 Truth Movement not to over-invest its energies and its credibility in questions of physical evidence which invite sabotage by U.S. counterintelligence programs (COINTELPRO).
October 1, 2004: New Society Publishers releases Michael C. Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. This book is the most complete, early, logical and legally actionable case against American authorities – chiefly Dick Cheney – for complicity in the 9/11 attacks. It makes almost no reference to the physical evidence issues, precisely because they are so easily distorted.
October 7, 2004: Washington Post Staff Writer Carol Morello publishes “Conspiracy Theories Flourish on the Internet,” which uses the “no-plane” story to characterize the 9/11 Truth Movement in general.
March, 2005: Popular Mechanics publishes cover story claiming to debunk 9/11 skepticism. The article gives ample space to the “no-plane” straw man. While addressing almost every major 9-11 research group, the article fails to mention Crossing the Rubicon.
December 2005: The US State Department posts “Identifying Misinformation,” a guide to 9/11 claims. In response, FTW contributing writer Mark Robinowitz publishes “‘Identifying Misinformation’: The State Department’s Rosetta Stone for understanding 9/11 disinformation promotes 9/11 conspiracy hoaxes while ignoring Crossing the Rubicon and other authentic investigations.” The State Department web site also fails to mention Rubicon, which by now has gained worldwide recognition.
February, 2006: The Village Voice profiles the 9/11 Truth Movement in a negative article focused on the “no-plane” story. Again, there is no mention of Rubicon even though the Village Voice is known to have obtained at least one copy.
March 20, 2006: In an interview by radio host Alex Jones, Charlie Sheen disputes the 9/11 Commission Report on grounds that include the no-plane hypothesis.
March 25, 2006: Sheen makes similar claims on CNN Headline News’ “Showbiz Tonight.”
April, 2006: USA Today reviews “no-plane” based film “Loose Change.”
April 21, 2006: Divorce court proceedings appear in the news, accusing Sheen of dangerous mental instability and an addiction to pornographic images of “very young girls.” The stories about Sheen proliferate through the major media for several days.
May 16, 2006: The Pentagon releases images which it claims are proof that a Boeing 757 did indeed hit the Pentagon, discrediting the large portion of the 9/11 Truth Movement that had embraced the “no-plane” hypothesis.
May 19, 2006: FTW publishes “It’s the Timing, Not the Film: New Frames from Pentagon Crash Video Show Langley Embarrassing the 9/11 Truth Movement.”
The moment Crossing the Rubicon was in print, copies were rushed to major news outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and NEWSWEEK. None of them has ever reviewed the book, though it is one of two best-selling texts on 9/11 from the skeptical point of view – nor have they ever even mentioned it. To quote Mark Robinowitz, Rubicon “has sold 100,000 copies despite a deafening silence from the media, an extremely unusual circumstance for a book. Even the publications that attacked From the Wilderness in the months after 9/11 for daring to connect the dots about 9/11 foreknowledge have refused to say anything (good or bad) about Rubicon. If the thesis was flawed, surely someone somewhere would describe the errors.” Indeed, this book accuses the sitting Vice President of the United States of mass murder, demonstrating means, motive, and opportunity. Surely if the book was in error it would have been challenged. Instead, there has been nothing but stony silence.
Mr. Feuer’s New York Times article is an off-the-shelf hit piece, done in boilerplate prose, against a movement that should have had the sense to avoid this sort of thing. For a critique of the intellectual poverty of Feuer’s language (shared by thousands of happy hacks on the gravy train), see “Conspiracy and the State of the Union.” But Feuer and his ilk don’t matter. The real lesson here is about how to oppose fascism: speak the truth, anticipate the propaganda, and make it impossible for disinformationists to discredit your research. Remember: means, motive, and opportunity. Anything else is a slippery slope to the pillory.
This played exactly the way we said it would. It is too late to change things but perhaps someone, somewhere is paying attention to these bitter lessons. It might make a difference if there is another opportunity to fight the “Mighty Wurlitzer” of state-sponsored propaganda and mind control.
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