I have always been concerned about what really happened on
September 11, 2001, but I have also always thought that the
attacks were the result of a combination of determined
action on the part of terrorists and official incompetence.
I did not really believe that they might have actually been
orchestrated by our own government. Indeed, such a thought,
in itself, seemed almost treasonous to me. I am a political
moderate, but I am also a strong patriot. I don't believe in
condoning anti-government activity in time of war unless it
is warranted by fact.
However, a story appeared on Yahoo News on January 30 that
has shocked me deeply. (As of March 25, the story has been
pulled by Yahoo, but remains available on PR web. To read
it,
click
here. Normally, Yahoo retains its stories for 6 months.)
I don't want to believe that our leaders did this to us,
that they are responsible for killing thousands of Americans
in the interest of restoring the president's then abysmal
popularity ratings and enabling them to end many of our
freedoms, but a growing number of distinguished academics
and scientists do think so, and that has me deeply, deeply
worried.
This worry does not end with 911. There is so much wrong
that it staggers the mind. In fact, it looks very much like
the United States of America is well on its way to becoming
a dictatorship--a danger that no less an authority than
retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Conner warned of
in a speech at Georgetown University on March 8--a speech
that was virtually unremarked in the general media.
On Monday, the story I have linked to above was published on
Yahoo News. It's easy to say that the academics involved are
just a bunch of liberals, but that simply isn't the case.
Some are lefties, but they are mostly political moderates.
They have been radicalized by what they have discovered.
They are not really promoting a political agenda, but rather
demanding an investigation of what increasingly seems to
have been not simply official incompetence that led to mass
murder, but an actual offical locomotion behind this murder.
That there was official incompetence is now generally
accepted. That was even the conclusion of the 911
Commission. But this goes beyond that.
My initial reaction was that the whole business of accusing
government officials of orchestrating the attacks was
conspiracy theory nonsense. Then I watched "911 in Plane
Sight" and I wondered. I liked the way the author of the
DVD, Dave von Kleist, asked questions without drawing what
seemed to me to be unwarranted conclusions. Then David Ray
Griffin came along. I saw him on C-Span, and he seemed quite
rational and his research was careful.
I interviewed him on Dreamland. I must add here that the
fact that I interview somebody on my radio program doesn't
mean that I endorse them. A lot of people get that wrong. It
means that I think they're interesting, nothing more. I'm
always open and encouraging with them. I conceal my
opinions. My program is not about my opinions, it is about
my guests' information, and I am often the only interviewer
they get who has read their books and/or thought about their
work carefully enough to ask them questions that enable them
to express their ideas.
Griffin was a very convincing interview. He had
done his homework. His book is carefully annotated, with
every claim supported by careful documentation.
Frankly, I was appalled at what I read and heard from this
man. I found it difficult to believe that he wasn't right.
The thought flickered into my mind that I might live in a
country run by a bunch of mass murderers.
Which I rejected. Not on rational grounds, on emotional
ones. I guess my feeling is that if the light goes out in
the United States, maybe mankind is a failed species. It's
that large an issue, and if our leaders did indeed cause
this catastrophe in order to juice their popularity ratings
and cement themselves in power, that is a tragedy of
historic proportions. Along with the collapse of the Roman
republic and the transformation of Weimar Germany into the
Nazi dictatorship, it is one of the great subversions of an
institutional republic.
Other media are just now reacting to the Yahoo article. They
are as stunned as I am. Robert Steinback, writing in the
Miami
Herald, puts it very well:
"The reflexive first reaction is incredulity -- how, one
asks, could anyone even contemplate, never mind actually do
such a barbaric thing? But before you shut your mind, check
the resumés -- these aren't Generation X geeks subsisting on
potato chips and PlayStation. Then look at the case they
present."
The case is indeed a powerful one. It is, largely, not a
political case or a case based on conspiracy theories. It
could best be described as an engineering-based case. This
is what makes it so terrifyingly convincing. These men know
how structures work, and they are becoming convinced that
these structures--the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon--were not destroyed and damged in the ways the
government has claimed. They are making an argument that the
World Trade Center was, in fact, demolished, and that this
was done with thousands of living human beings inside,
without regard for their lives.
Immediately after 911, I posted a journal entry complaining
that the FBI had failed so profoundly to protect us in this
case that its failure was indistinguishable from treason.
Now I think that it may have BEEN treason. And this treason
may not have involved only the FBI.
I base this not only on the well-publicized investigatory
failures of that agency, but also on the way another matter
was handled by the administration. This was the fact, that
emerged during the 911 hearings, that Condoleeza Rice, in
her role as National Security Adviser, had received no fewer
than 11 specific warnings from the Federal Aviation
Administration that terrorists might use aircraft to strike
the World Trade Center.
The fact that she had received this information was held
classified prior to the
election--illegally classified, incidentally--and only
released afterward. Ms. Rice sat before 911 Commission and
said that she and her colleagues were completely surprised
by the attack.
Frankly, if they were surprised, then there must be some
other presence within the government that is able to project
its power without the leadership knowing, and is willing to
use mass muder as a means of doing so.
I don't believe that. I believe that we need further
investigation of 911 and the possible official role in it.
In a couple of weeks, Jim Marrs and I
are going to interview Webster Tarpley, who wrote 911:
Synthetic Terror. I am not going to say what my opinion is
of Mr. Tarpley's book. As I stated before, that's not what
Dreamland is about. What I am going to do, though, is give
him a chance to really air his ideas. As radical as they
once appeared, it now seems that they deserve careful attention.
Something that now worries me terribly--in fact, keeps me
awake at night--is fear that has arisen from the most recent
Osama Bin Laden tape. In it, he states that there is shortly
going to be another attack on the United States. He also
goes on to condone a book by a liberal author critical of
the Bush Administration.
This tape was immediately "validated" by the CIA. Gone was
the long period of investigation and the hedging that came
from CIA when George Tenet was director. Now, under Porter
Goss, confirmation is immediate.
And yet, serious and competent researchers have cast doubt
on the authenticity of this tape. So much so that the
president has even spoken out against them.
Given what is emerging about 911, what are we to believe?
The administration has reached another nadir of
unpopularity, one even deeper than the one it was in before
911. However, if there is another terrorist attack at this
point, it is going to be blamed, not honored with the
support of a shocked nation.
So what would motivate it to orchestrate another attack, if
indeed it orchestrated the first one? It knows that what few
supporters it has left would abandon it if this was done.
Homeland Security would be painted as another FEMA-style
farce. Beyond being impeached, the president might literally
be run out of town on a rail.
However, it could be that the attack will be so appalling
that the administration will, quite simply, end the republic
altogether and commence frank dictatorial rule.
If such an attack happens, there seems a distinct
possibility that it will have been either officially
inspired, actually orchestrated by a government run amok, or
allowed to happen. Even if the terrorists are real and they
are indeed responsible for such an attack, it wll represent a
failure of government so profound that we will need the
administration to resign. There will have to be a special
election, or a special convention of the Electoral College
to choose new leadership.
However, that's not what will happen. If there is an attack,
the country will be battened down tight by the
administration. It will become a dictatorship, and will
remain so until the terrorists are defeated.
But they will never be defeated.
Related Entries:
28-Feb-2007: The 911 Script and the Age of Terror
10-Feb-2003: Official Terror Worse than 'Night and Fog'
28-Oct-2001: Bin Laden's Objective
13-Oct-2001: Conspiracy Theories: Should We Listen Now?
27-Sep-2001: The Terrorism Problem--How We Can Solve It
12-Sep-2001: What Next?
