9/11 Conspiracy

Kat and I attended Alan Korwin’s Bill of Rights celebration, celebrating the 217th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which was held this evening at the Wrigley Mansion. There were several hundred people in attendance, mostly civil libertarians of both liberal and libertarian varieties, including people from the Institute for Justice and the ACLU. We were asked in the invitation to think about which Amendment is our favorite–I would probably rank the 1st and 4th at the top of my list, of which the 1st is much healthier than the 4th. I’d also put the 8th and 5th high in importance, both of which have taken some recent hits but are showing signs of recovery. And of course the 6th, and the under-utilized 9th… ah, heck, they’re all important. The crowd seemed dominated by 2nd Amendment fans, not surprising since Alan Korwin is the author and publisher of numerous books on U.S. gun laws. The reading of the Bill of Rights and its preamble was excellent, but I was disappointed that the event included a Patrick Henry impersonator played by Lance Hurley of Founding Fathers Ministries. Hurley is a Christian who endorses David Barton’s works of pseudohistory on his website (for which the antidote is Chris Rodda’s Liars for Jesus), and at the event argued in character, with quotations from Henry, that the 2nd Amendment came from the teachings of Jesus Christ, that the American revolution was fought on Christian principles, and the Constitutional Convention succeeded because of Ben Franklin’s prayer. He also stated, when there were discussions of the health of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, that freedom of religion is in serious danger, because no one can mention God in schools but the Koran can be discussed. This is simply untrue–God and the Bible can be discussed by students, but such discussions cannot constitutionally be imposed by state agents such as teachers and administrators in a way that constitutes an establishment of religion. The Bible can be legally taught as the combination of myth, history, poetry, literature, and religious doctrine that it is, but Christianity cannot be endorsed as true by state agents. The same rules apply to the Koran. Hurley seems not to realize that Madison’s version of the First Amendment won out, not Henry’s. Some Christians–and it appears that Hurley may be one of them–have a view that their freedom of religion is infringed if they are prevented from legally imposing their religion on others through acts of state agents. I’ll find it amazing that Christians consider themselves to be a poor, persecuted minority prohibited from expressing their religious views when they are, in fact, regularly engaging in establishment clause violations, and Congressmen are signing on to bills like last year’s House Resolution 847. Hurley does public speaking as both Patrick Henry and George Washington–I wonder if his George Washington is historically accurate with respect to Washington’s religious views. He’s also an advocate of conspiracy theories (Illuminati, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers, etc.) and an advocate of the National Day of Prayer. Further fringe elements were represented at the event by Ernie Hancock of the Ron Paul Revolution, who distributed multiple pieces of literature promoting his Freedom’s Phoenix website, billed as “uncovering the secrets & exposing the lies.” That site also promotes conspiracy theory, including “9/11 truth” conspiracy claims. In the discussions, several people brought up Phoenix’s recently installed freeway traffic speed cameras as evidence of the sickliness of the Bill of Rights, though no one really offered an explanation of how the Bill of Rights is violated by them. And the objection seemed to only be to the cameras, not to speed limit laws. I’m not a fan of speed cameras, and I agree that they are more of a revenue generation method than a safety measure, but I don’t see an obvious case that they violate the Bill of Rights. That’s not to say that the event was entirely dominated by the lunatic fringe–one woman in the audience commented that she was particularly concerned about the 4th Amendment, because she is now regularly stopped at a “border checkpoint” while driving between destinations well inside the U.S. border, because of the 100-mile “Constitution-free zone” that the courts have created around the perimeter of the U.S. And Jennifer Perkins of the Institute for Justice pointed out that even though the U.S. Supreme Court blew a gigantic hole in the 5th Amendment with the Kelo case, nearly all of the states have passed legislation adding further protections against eminent domain abuse (and Arizona’s are the strongest). There was one critical mention of the USA PATRIOT Act (by the Patrick Henry impersonator, to well-deserved applause), but no mention of Guantanamo Bay, the Military Commissions Act, or torture that I noticed. I think concern over traffic cameras is at least a bit lower on the priority list than any of these items. A point in favor of the Patrick Henry arguments is that he correctly identified the risk of expanding executive power and judicial decisions that disregarded basic rights (the fact that the Bill of Rights, as well as the Constitution itself, has many passages that have effectively been written out of it, is testament to the accuracy of that prediction). The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, at least, is alive and relatively well. UPDATE (December 16, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out that Ron Paul introduced the American Freedom Agenda Act which would: Repeal the “Military Commissions Act of 2006” and thereby restore the ancient right of habeas corpus and end legally sanctioned torture by U.S. government agents Restore the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” (FISA) and thereby outlaw warrantless spying on American citizens by the President of the United States ...

BBC’s “The Conspiracy Files” investigative report on the collapse of WTC 7 will air on Sunday, July 6. They have some promotional videos on the web, including an explanation of their reporter’s statement that WTC 7 had collapsed before it did. The conspiracy theorists claim that it had to be a controlled demolition, because WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and was virtually untouched. But the latter claim is false–WTC 7 was heavily damaged by the collapse of the twin towers, with a giant hole in the southwest corner about 20 stories high. There were raging fires in a building full of diesel fuel and backup generators. The BBC investigation will no doubt report in more detail on the facts that the conspiracy theorists like to pretend don’t exist.

Readers of Gerald Posner’s Why America Slept know that there has been evidence of Saudi royal family connections to the al Qaeda 9/11 terrorism plot. The final chapter of that book, titled “The Interrogation,” is about the capture and interrogation of al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002 by a team that included American Special Forces and FBI SWAT teams as well as Pakistani police and military. After he was captured, Zubaydah was subjected to interrogation by the CIA in a real “false flag” operation, where he was made to believe he had been transported to a country with a reputation for brutal interrogation. While in fact he was in Afghanistan, he was made to believe he was in a Saudi jail, and two Arab-Americans with U.S. Special Forces played the role of his interrogators. To their surprise, Zubaydah didn’t display fear, but relief. While previously he hadn’t even been willing to reveal his identity, he now gave his name, said he was happy to see them, and asked the interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family, for whom he provided private home and cell phone numbers from memory. That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, a nephew of King Fahd, owner of the Research and Marketing Group, and owner of the Kentucky Derby winning horse War Emblem. Zubaydah claimed that bin Laden had made a cooperative arrangement with Pakistani air force chief Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, a military official with close ties to the pro-Islamist members of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and that this arrangement had the blessing of Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. Also according to Zubaydah, Turki had made a deal to provide aid to the Taliban in Afghanistan and would not ask for extradition of bin Laden, so long as his activities were directed away from Saudi Arabia. Zubaydah also implicated Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir as supporters of al Qaeda, and stated that Mir and Prince Ahmed had advance knowledge that there would be terrorist attacks against the U.S. on 9/11. His interrogators were skeptical of his claims, even though information from him was successfully used to capture Omar al-Faruq, a senior al Qaeda operative in Southeast Asia. And when U.S. personnel (not posing as Saudis) confronted Zubaydah about his claims, he denied it all and said that he had made it up. CIA investigation of his claims found nothing to refute them, however, and some corroborating evidence. A report on his claims was submitted to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, each of which responded that the claims were entirely false. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 43, and on July 23, 2002, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud was killed in a car accident at the age of 41. A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was found dead, having “died of thirst” at the age of 25. Prince Turki was fired from his position as head of Saudi Intelligence on September 1, 2001, and became the Saudi ambassador to Great Britain in 2002. On February 20, 2003, Pakistani air force chief Mir, his wife, and fifteen others were killed in a plane crash. None of this appeared in the 9/11 Commission Report, though it might have been planned for that document. This is because the Bush administration censored 28 pages of material about Saudi connections to 9/11 from the report on the grounds of national security. In 2004, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, published a book, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s War on Terror, in which he claimed that Bush covered up evidence that the Saudi government was aiding at least two of the 9/11 hijackers via Omar al-Bayoumi, which Graham discussed in an interview with Salon.com. More recently, New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, raises the same point about the Saudi government’s ties to Omar al-Bayoumi. I think the full story of Saudi and Pakistani involvement in 9/11 has yet to be told. None of this involves munitions used to collapse buildings, unmanned drones, missiles hitting the Pentagon, or the innocence of Osama bin Laden, like the crazy 9/11 truth movement’s claims. It does involve U.S. political relations with nations that have been key allies in the war on terror, both of which have governments which have been close to collapse, and one of which (Pakistan) is a nuclear power and one of which is the source of most foreign oil imported by the U.S. It’s clear why the U.S. would treat relations with these countries gingerly even if they did have members of their governments directly involved in 9/11, and why those countries would want to quietly dispose of the problem. UPDATE (July 16, 2009): Greetings to Talking Points Memo readers, here because of a link in the comments from a story about a Bush/Cheney CIA assassination program apparently permitted to operate domestically. That commenter seemed to suggest that the CIA might have been behind the deaths described in the above post, which I think is highly unlikely in comparison to the speculation that the Saudis themselves might have taken care of matters. UPDATE (April 13, 2015): Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, claimed in February 2015 that members of the Saudi royal family helped fund the 9/11 attacks. He specifically named Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud and Prince Bandar bin Sultan. ...

Blair Gadsby, a 45-year-old adjunct religious studies professor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, has gone on hunger strike until John McCain agrees to meet with him about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Gadsby thinks that the U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center towers and Building 7 with explosives, even though he’s apparently read the Popular Mechanics book on Debunking 9/11 Myths, for which McCain wrote the foreword. In how many different ways is this guy an idiot? 1. He’s bought into nonsensical conspiracy theories–his version has both Islamic terrorists flying planes into the WTC and explosives put there earlier, so he must believe something like this. 2. He apparently can’t understand the refutations of them. 3. He thinks a hunger strike is a good way to meet John McCain. 4. He’s an adjunct professor of religious studies. Feel free to add to the list. ...

Last night I attended an event at which one of the attendees promoted “Zeitgeist: The Movie.” I was prompted to finally watch this piece of pernicious nonsense back in January when a commenter at this blog made reference to it, and I forced myself to sit through the whole thing. The movie is in three segments–the first is on the origins of Christianity, in which it argues that Jesus was a myth derived from Egyptian myth, based on the work of Acharya S. The second is 9/11 conspiracy theory. The third is an argument that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a scam. It’s almost entirely garbage, dependent on crackpot sources. I posted a series of comments about the movie as I watched it, but I’ll summarize those here and add a bit more. The first part argues that Christianity is derived from Egyptian myth, primarily by pointing out parallels between them. The arguments are apparently derived from the self-published “The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold” by Acharya S (Dorothy M. Murdock) and perhaps also from Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ, both works of pseudoscholarship based on the work of other pseudoscholars like 18th century archaeologist Godfrey Higgins, 19th century amateur Egyptologist and poet Gerald Massey, and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, a high school language teacher and promoter of Theosophy) and entirely ignores actual work in Egyptology. For example, the film draws a list of comparisons between Horus and Jesus that is just fabricated–Horus wasn’t born of a virgin, he was the child of Isis and Osiris, though Isis was impregnated by Osiris through some magic after he was dead. There have been parallels drawn between Isis and Mary that are more plausible (especially in iconography), but the movie exaggerates them, too, and fails to note the considerable areas of dissimilarity. A quick look at the Wikipedia entries on Horus and Isis is sufficient to show that the comparison is strained. The significance of a December 25 birthdate is nonexistent–Christianity did acquire attributes of pagan religions later in its history, and it has clearly been a syncretistic religion, but while this is evidence of falsehood in Christian traditions, it is not a clue to its origin. For accurate information about Christianity and the formation of the Christian tradition, virtually any mainstream academic work will be more reliable. There has been a lot discovered since the work of 19th century Theosophists, both in the form of document manuscripts and archaeology, that sheds light on the early history of Christianity. In discussions at the James Randi Educational Foundation Forums, poster GreNME wrote: ...

Wired magazine’s blog reports that NORAD and U.S. Northern Command “have released a copy of their audio files, telephone conversations and situation room discussions” from September 11, 2001.

Jeffrey Shallit has written a multi-part summary of an event hosted by the University of Waterloo Debate Society on March 19 on “A Forensic Analysis of September 11, 2001: Questioning the Official Theory.” The event wasn’t a debate, however, it was a one-sided presentation by “9/11 Truth” movement members who formulate absurd conspiracy theories and fail to look at the actual evidence. Even the moderator taking questions and answers was a 9/11 Truther who did his best to avoid taking critical questions. Shallit’s posts: “An Evening with 9-11 Deniers” - Introduction and summary. “The Questionnaire at the 9/11 Denier Event” - The content of a questionnaire given out at the event, which participants were supposed to fill out at the beginning and again at the end. “An Open Letter to Richard Borshay Lee” - A letter from Shallit to the event moderator about his performance at the event. “A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 1)" - A detailed summary of Dewdney’s presentation at the event, part 1. “A.K. Dewdney at the 9/11 Denier Event (Part 2)" - Part 2. “Graeme MacQueen at the 9/11 Denier Event” - A summary of MacQueen’s presentation at the event. “The Question-and-Answer Period at the 9/11 Deniers Evening” - Summary of the Q&A. Of particular note among the comments at Shallit’s blog is a lengthy description of the details of the WTC collapses from Arthur Scheuerman, Retired FDNY Battalion Chief. ...

Mike Metzger, co-founder of 9/11 Truth UAlbany, has abandoned the 9/11 Truth movement and returned to reality after actually starting to listen to the debunkings and think about the evidence and the methods of argument used. He’s posted a letter explaining his change of heart. Good for him. I’ve yet to see a 9/11 Truther actually attempt to systematically address the content of any of the critiques, nor put together a scenario that even attempts to be a comprehensive explanation of the events leading up to and including the 9/11 attacks (such as the actions of Osama bin Laden and the hijackers, described in the 9/11 Commission Report, Gerald Posner’s Why America Slept, James Bamford’s A Pretext for War, and elsewhere). Instead, their methodology resembles that of creationists and Holocaust deniers–identifying apparent inconsistencies, and constructing a fantasy around them without any regard for the enormous collection of facts at hand. Their defense then becomes progressively more delusional attempts to explain away the contrary facts that they’ve not bothered to address. The “Screw Loose Change” annotated version of the “Loose Change” 2nd edition video may be found here. ...

Rightwing Nuthouse reports that the History Channel’s documentary, “9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction” gives the conspiracy theorists a high-quality debunking. The format is to allow a 9/11 conspiracy theorist to make a claim, and then have experts in the appropriate fields respond to the claim. I’ve got the TiVo set up to record this weekend’s showing. UPDATE (August 26, 2007): I watched the show today, and I thought they did a very good job, though of necessity they were fairly brief in their rebuttals. I was pleased to see that, contrary to some conspiracy theorist claims, they did in fact address conspiracy theorist claims about the collapse of WTC Building 7. I was also quite amused to see that in Alex Jones’ concluding remarks, he made the classic crackpot self-comparison to Galileo, and did so in such a way to demonstrate his own lack of awareness or concern for factual accuracy by stating that the dispute between Galileo and the Catholic Church was about whether the earth was round or flat.

Nathan Zamprogno has put together a nice list of the craziness that Kent Hovind purports to believe. (Via Pharyngula.) Historical Comments Nathan Zamprogno (2007-07-06): Thanks. Although I am sure that Hovind could be nailed on a lot of these kooky beliefs himself, I should point out that my analysis is confined largely to what Hovind's entourage believes. Hovind himself was a veritable fountain of nuttiness, as is extensively detailed at sites like http://www.kent-hovind.com/If I had to go into all the woo-woo Hovind spouted over the years, the article would be three times as long. ...