by David Patnode <draknor@gmail.com>
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/beginningofend18apr05.shtml
April 18, 2005

Forward Courtesy of John Kaminski

I attended a lecture tonight at the UW-Madison campus by Christian theologian David Ray Griffin. This is the author of "The New Pearl Harbor - Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11". His most recent book is "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions". The title speaks for itself.

The lecture this evening was reported to be the first of its kind - the first time a formal lecture has challenged the official 9/11 story. In addition, it was being recorded for broadcast on C-SPAN! The lecture was entitled "9/11 and the American Empire: How Should Religious People Respond?" He started off with some definitions of "religious people" (apparently Christianity isn't the only religion), and "American Empire" - the conservatives would have you believe America is the world's first "benign" empire, but I think the point is pretty debatable. Then he gets into the heart of the lecture with a discussion of 9/11. He categorizes people into 4 groups:

1. People who believe the official story that the 9/11 attacks were a surprise attack orchestrated by 19 Islamic Al-Qaeda terrorists.

2. People who believe 9/11 was used opportunistically by the Bush administration to advance an agenda

3. People who believe that the Bush administration had foreknowledge of the attacks but did not stop nor prevent them. No national polls have been taken, but one Zogby poll in New York City showed 50% of the people thought Bush knew.

4. People who believe the Bush administration orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

Griffin goes on to describe how religious people in each of these groups would justify the "war on terror":

1. If you believe these were surprise attacks by terrorists, the war is justified then as "punishing evil", and you'd have no suspicion of American imperialsm.

2. Those who consider Bush to be opportunistic with respect to 9/11 would probably categorize America's response as worse than the attacks themselves; they would tend to recognize that these attacks were most likely a "blowback" or response for decades of poor US-Mideast foreign policy.

3. People who belive the Bush administration knew about the attack, and letit happen anyway, would be angry. Very angry. For an administration that emphasizes the importance of "sanctity of life" to let thousands ofinnocent Americans die, to justify starting a war where hundreds ofthousands of more people will die, that's worse than just hypocrisy.

That smacks of treason.

4. If the third group is angry, the ideas of the 4th group are too horribletoo think about - to consider that an American president and hisadministration would develop, orchestrate, and execute an attack againstthe American people - that's unthinkable! Or is it?

And there's where the lecture jumps into the serious questions andcontradictions that anyone who's read any of the 9/11 Truth sites or "The NewPearl Harbor" is well aware. I'll reiterate what David Griffin spoke about thisevening, but these questions are but a drop in the barrel.

He first brought up evidence to support the third group - that the Bushadministration must have known about the 9/11 attacks. He spoke for a bit about the FBI and the testimony to the 9/11 Commission that the FBI had no knowledgeof these attacks. Which, incidentally, is contradicted by a number of FBI agents & personnel. Attorney David Schippers (the lead prosecutor in the caseagainst former President Clinton), announced within days after the attacks that he had been allegedly approached by several FBI agents weeks before warning of an impending attack - including details of where & when. The agents allegedly told him to stop their investigation by superiors, and when Schippers tried to get some answers Attorney General Ashcroft wouldn't return his calls.

Another little piece of damning evidence comes from the financial markets.Griffin reported that days before the attacks there were extraordinarly high "put options" placed on United Airlines, American Airlines, and one of the firms that occupied several floors of the World Trade Center. Put options are essentially bets that the stock price is going to fall. So obviously somebody knew about the attacks and planned to profit off of them, and Griffin argues that the intelligence community keeps tabs on the financial markets to watch for things like this (at least, I believe that's what he said, my notes are vague).

Then we get into the really good stuff - 4 examples that Griffin presents to support the argument that not only did the Bush administration know about the attacks, it was actively involved in planning them:

1. The US military failed to stop the attacks and gave 3 different storiesfor why it failed. To start, the standard operating procedure for theFAA is to alert the military at the earliest sign that a plane mighthave been hijacked, and the military standard operating procedure is tohave the nearest base scramble fighters to intercept the flight inquestion. This process takes 10-20 minutes, and Griffin says it happensabout 100 times a year, so there's no excuse for these procedures not tohave been followed on 9/11/2001.

First story:
No fighters were in the air until after the Pentagonwas allegedly hit, some 90+ minutes after the FAA reported thefirst hijacking.

Second story:
They did send up fighters, but the FAA responded tooslowly and the fighters didn't get there in time. If this storyis accurate, then someone at FAA broke standard operatingprocedure - why has no one been held accountable for this? Andeven then, Griffin argues, the fighters still should have gotten there in time.

Third story:
This was the story "made up" by the 9/11 Commission -that the FAA gave insufficient warning about the first plane andNO warnings about the other planes. This directly contradicts the military's (second) story, which it had been using for the previous 3 years, as well as the many credible & mutually supporting stories of people involved (no details were given).

Obviously, not all 3 of these stories can be true. Either the military, the 9/11 Commission, or both, are lying. And why would they lie, but asa cover up?

2. The attacks on the Pentagon

- the official story is that Flight 77 wascrashed into the Pentagon. Assuming this is the case - how?- The Pentagon is the world's best defended site, within a couple milesof Andrews Air Force Base. The military claims there were nofighter squadrons on alert, which Griffin says is ridiculous.

- The United States military boasts of the best radar system anywhere -they claim they don't miss anything in North American airspace, andthe system is designed to track multiple targets simultaneously (asit would need to if America were under attack from a foreign airforce or ICBM missle attack). So how'd they miss a commercialairliner headed right for the Pentagon?

- The Pentagon is equipped with anti-aircraft missle batteries that attacks anything within range that's not equipped with a US militarytransponder. Which means either the missle batteries weredeactivated on 9/11, or flight 77 had a US military transponder.Neither of which is a promising explanation.

But there's also evidence indicating it couldn't have been a commercialairliner that hit the Pentagon:

- The alleged pilot of flight 77 was, according to reports, a terriblepilot and would not have been capable of executing the complexmaneuvers required to hit the west side of the Pentagon, whichbrings us to...- Why would any terrorist, capable of plotting a massive attack againstthe United States, "the enemy", hit the west side of the Pentagon,which not only required complex maneuvers to get to, but was alsounder renovation! If you were going to attack the heart of yourenemy's military power, wouldn't you want to wipe out as many oftheir military personnel and leaders as you could? Since all of thetop brass were on the east side, why would you target the west side?

- There was far too little damage to the Pentagon facade for a Boeing757 to have crashed into it.

- There are no un-ambigous photos of the crash site that showed theaftermath - no clear evidence of what was really there. Furthermore,the FBI confiscated all videos taken of the area after the crash andhas refused to release them. Why would they do that, if not to hidethe truth?

3. The WTC attacks - the evidence strongly suggests the towers (and WTC 7)were brought down by controlled demolition using thousands ofexplosives. The clearest supporter of this is the fact that no high-rise steel framed building has EVER, before or after 9/11, collapsedbecause of fire. And there have been other, larger fires (both in realbuildings and experiments), than the fires produced by the 9/11 attacks.

The buildings also collapsed at nearly free-fall speed, which is anotherindication of a controlled demolition; people also reported hearing explosives, and the concrete was pulverized into a very fine dust.Griffin suggested that you try this experiment - take a block ofconcrete and drop it from a 1000 feet. Is that block going to turncompletely into dust when it impacts? And if the towers were reallycollapsing downward, why was so much dust & debris blown out horizontally several hundred feet? And how do explain the pools ofmolten steel?

Another couple of unanswered questions - despite the fact that it's afederal offence to remove evidence from the scene of a crime, why wasall of the steel from the towers loaded onto trucks and shipped to Asiaas quickly as possible? Also, if the 9/11 Commission's "pancake" theoryof collapsing is true, why were the 47 steel columns (that made up theprimary weight-bearing structure of the towers) not still sticking upseveral hundred feet through the rubble? The 9/11 Commissionconveniently denies the existence of these, instead saying the center ofthe towers were hollow-metal service shafts. Never mind the fact thesesteel beams were a specific, unique characteristic of the WTC!

Oh yeah - and the 9/11 Commission Report simply ignores the fact thatWTC 7 (a 47-story building) collapses, allegedly because of fires on 2different floors.

4. Finally, Griffin questions our Secret Service Agency - dedicated men &women whose job it is to protect our nation's leader. If these werereal attacks, then why was Bush allowed to sit, for 10 minutes after thesecond plane crashed, in a public location that was well-publicized? Ifthe Secret Service didn't know what the terrorists were planning,wouldn't the most immediate, safest thing to do would be to get thePresident whisked away to a secure location? Instead, Griffin points ut, they allowed him to sit where he was, for about 10 minutes afterthe second hijacked plane crashed. The only reason not to rush him awaywould be if they already knew he wasn't in danger - and the only way toknow that is if they were somehow in on it.

Griffin continues on to discuss America's "Global Domination Project", and howintelligence and military policy-focus is on protecting and extending America'sinterests and investments - not on spreading democracy and peace. The missile-defense system, while touted as a defensive measure against missle attacks, isreally the first step in weaponizing space - ensuring that the US has spacesuperiority by denying others access. A missle defensive system would be simpleto turn around and use offensively. Griffin talks a little about the paper"Rebuilding America's Defenses", published by the Project for a New AmericanCentury just before Bush took office. It argues for more tax dollars to bespent for military technology and weaponizing space, and suggests that implementing these ideas would be slow unless the American people had acatastrophic catalyst, a new "Pearl Harbor". Interesting, then, how Bush describes these attacks exactly that way in his diary on the night of 9/11. Alsoquite amazing was how Rumsfield, that very night, was right on-message (despitejust having had the largest attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor happen underhis nose), berating Democrats for previously denying the Pentagon additionalmoney to greatly increase military & weapons technologies. Needless to say,$40 billion was granted very quickly.

Griffin also describes the establishment of new permament US military bases incentral Asia as a result of the war, and talks at length about America's "GlobalDomination Project". It was an interesting section of the talk, but I didn'ttake many notes during it. I picked up again when he got back to the topic ofsuggestions for what religious people should do - he started by saying the "GDP"has a perverted value system that should be at odds with the value system ofjust about every world religion. He had 4 suggestions for relgious people:

1. Discover & speak the truth - investigate Griffin's claims, and if youbelieve them, spread the truth. Get people talking about thesequestions.

2. Create new mediums and communications to spread the truth. The massmedia and Congress don't show any interest in pursuing the truth, andmany left-wing groups and online mediums are hostile to religiouspeople, so religious people need to develop their own new, religiouscommunications channels to spread the word.

3. Formulate proposals to subvert the American "Global Domination Project" -need to get get proposals for subversion from religious thinkers, basedon their value systems. Emphasize the morality and values of religionand the perverted value system of GDP - this needs to come from thereligious groups to really get a strong base and momentum.

4. Form alliances with other moral, non-govermental organizations (NGOs)that support peace, human rights, etc. Forge those relationships and emphasize the common moral principles of religion & these NGOs.There was a Q&A session that followed, where audience questions that had been written on cards during the lecture were read. Just a couple of notes from thispart of the lecture:

- Michael Rupert is a great hero of 9/11 truth - one of the first people involved

- One question was: If this was such a huge conspiracy with the US behindit, why has no on come forward? Griffin responded that many hugeconspiracies were kept secret for a long time, such as the ManhattenProject. And the people who might know (such as FBI agents), might notbe able to risk coming forward to tell a story that people don't want tohear; at best they'd be breaking their oath of obediance they took whenjoining the FBI, and go to prison for the rest of their lives, not tomention direct or indirect threats against their family or friends ifthey speak out. But some people are trying to!

- According to a credible Swiss journalist, Osama bin Laden was in anAmerican hospital for surgery by American doctors in (missed thelocation - someplace in Europe, I believe) in July 2001, and in factwas visited by the local CIA agents and head of the Saudi intelligenceagency. OBL was a most-wanted terrorist at this time. If this story istrue (several European papers ran it, though curiously no Americanpapers did), then it suggests there were still strong ties from CiA tobin Laden before the attacks.

- Proper wording: "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

All in all, a very interesting lecture - most of the material was not new to me,but I was excited to see the diversity of people present - old, you, well-dressed, "dirty hippies", etc. I hope this lecture was the start of a grandunraveling of the lies, deceits and secrecy that enshrouds the truth about 9/11.Returning to my apartment, I considered where to go from here. To me it seemslike we need to force the issue out into the open. The host at the talk indicated he had given a copy of "The New Pearl Harbor" to Senator RussFeingold a few weeks ago - I thought that was a great idea. In fact, I brainstormed that should be a national campaign. It could be called somethinglike "Send the Truth" or "We can handle the Truth!" and the goal would be to swamp the halls of Congress with copies of "9/11 Commission Report: Omissionsand Distortions" and other such material. If there's 535 Congressional offices, and we can get 4 copies of that book sent to each office, that's over2000 copies landing in Congress's lap. That would generate some publicity, I think! Of course, I decided I need to actually read the book for myself beforeengaging in such a campaign, so I stopped off at Borders on the way home topick up both of Griffin's books and "The 9/11 Report" (with reporting & analysis by the New York Times; the regular version of the report that was sitting on the shelf looked pretty grungy).

My first goal will be to uncover the truth - what really happened on 9/11? If it turns out that the Bush Administration did have foreknowledge, or worse, orchestrated the attack, then my secondary goal would be to see all of those involved brought to justice on charges of treason. And I would like to see that happen (if that turns out to be the case), before the official end of Bush's second term. If we have a traitor in the White House, he should not be allowed to continue to destroy this country and the principles and values that have built it.

On an eerie note, the lecture + Q&A tonight ended at exactly 9:11PM.

Notice: This document is based upon my individual perceptions, notes, and memoryof David Griffin's speech at UW-Madison on 18-Apr-2005. Although I have triedto faithfully recall the significant content of his speech, it is not completeand some details may be missing, wrong, or misconstrued. All of the points ofargument regarding the 9/11 events are described in much greater detail in thebooks mentioned and on various websites - you can start with http://mujca.com/or http://911truth.org/ and go from there. I have no direct or indirect affiliation with MUJCA-NET, any 9/11 Truth sites, Mr. Griffin or any of thebooks. I'm simply a concerned citizen of the United States of America who wantsto know what really happened and to see that justice is rightfully served.

Also note: This document has been digitally signed using PGP encryption. You canverify the digital signature using my public key at available at http://wwwkeys.pgp.net - search for "draknor@gmail.com". I proudly use GnuPG andthe Windows Privacy Tray. See http://www.gnupg.org/ and http://www.winpt.org for more details.