Increasing Threats To The 9/11 Truth Movement

By Bill Willers *

"Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence."
--Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, 2008, "Conspiracy Theories"

Attacks directed at the 9/11 Truth Movement are on the increase as the Movement grows globally, drawing ever more from technical, scientific, intelligence and military communities. While earlier criticism aimed only to insult and trivialize, more recent attacks have suggested stronger, even militant reaction.

Efforts to neutralize the 9/11 Truth Movement now involve describing a common "conspiratorial thinking" that essentially renders all conspiracy theories equally fallacious. By association, such a premise places one who cannot accept an official story replete with blatant lies into the company of vacuous fringe groups. A case in point is the new (2010) and widely advertised book "Voodoo Histories" in which David Aaronovitch, a "political journalist", frets about the "seditious role" conspiracies play and the"shadow armies" of the Internet that allow for "9/11 revisionism".

While Aaronovitch makes the empty claim that conspiracists are guilty of "exaggeration of the status of experts", he avoids referencing the 1200+ Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, or the likes of Dr. Robert Bowman, head of the "Star Wars" program under two presidents; Francesco Cossiga, former president of Italy; Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former Director of Studies at the U.S. Army War College; Andreas von Bulow, former Secretary of Germany's Federal Defense Ministry; General Leonid Ivanshov, former Chief of Staff of Russian's Armed Forces; Ronald D. Ray, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, and hundreds more of like credibility and authority.

It is simply not believable that a competent journalist dealing with this subject could be unaware of them, since their positions have been public for many years.

Likewise, law professors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, whose article "Conspiracy Theories" centers on 9/11, intermingle 9/11 Truth with beliefs involving such as faked moon landings and global warming denials.

Throughout, they express such fear of the "harmful" 9/11Truth Movement that they prescribe "cognitive infiltration" by governmental agents. Because they use "theorist" and "extremist" interchangeably, it is not difficult in this era of the Patriot Act to envision scenarios in which governmental infiltration goes beyond the merely cognitive, should the Truth Movement make it necessary. Sunstein was made head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OMB) after authoring this article and is considered a contender for the Supreme Court.

Last year, Michael Chertoff, former head of Homeland Security, charged that failure to accept the official 9/11 Commission's narrative was akin to Holocaust denial - a serious charge although ludicrous on its face. Others have made a similar comparison, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine.

Regarding Skeptic, for a lengthy but unconvincing defense of the governmental story re 9/11, consider this 2006 article at eSkeptic by Phil Mole. One has to wonder why an account by the 9/11 Commission, admittedly "set up to fail", a story so full of holes and physical impossibilities that it cries out for a skeptical assessment , is not merely immune to skepticism by self-proclaimed "skeptics" but aggressively defended by them. Yes, it does make one wonder.

In March, the Washington Post, exposing itself in a way it may come to regret, published a venomous editorial attacking a prominent Japanese politician as "susceptible to the imaginings of the lunatic fringe" for his opinions regarding 9/11. While the editorial depicted the man's views as a threat to U.S.-Japanese relations, his views simply mirror those of the global Truth Movement, about which the Post is certainly aware, so that the editorial became a de facto attack on the entire Movement as"reckless and fact-averse ... too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion."

Evidence that three buildings came down via internal demolition is simply overwhelming, and by any reasonable standard this cries out for investigation. For the likes of Sunstein, Aaronovitch, Chertoff, Shermer et al. to so aggressively attack what is a global effort for truth puts them way, way beyond mere believers of a discredited governmental story. And this is very interesting, for when an influential cadre of lawyers, journalists and bureaucrats take such pains at organized attack of such a Movement, it makes them a major bulwark in a monstrous fiction.

Why such concern on their part if the Truth Movement is, as it was depicted early on, so silly as to warrant "troofer" ridicule? In fact, their efforts indicate considerable apprehension (itself a validation of the Truth Movement) within certain interests. What interests, exactly, are they? What do these people have in common that is not clear to the larger public? One wonders.

A glaring aspect of these attacks is the apparent refusal of attackers to engage technical experts of the 9/11 Truth Movement in civil debate. So far, face-to-face exchanges of evidence, on camera and for the record, have not taken place as certainly they should have. Sunstein and Vermeule maintain that the claims of the 9/11 Truth Movement are easily refuted. Likewise "skeptic" Shermer. Fine, let them present their evidence, and let Richard Gage and his colleagues present theirs, so that the evidence of each side can be compared in full light.

* Bill Willers is emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh now living in Middleton, WI. He is founder of Superior Wilderness Action Network (SWAN) and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He posts occasionally online at OpEdNews, Common Dreams, Counterpunch and Dissident Voice.