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'Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11' by Kathryn S. Olmsted
2009-02-28, Chicago Tribune
Posted: 2009-03-07 07:16:42
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/booksmags/chi-0228-real-enemiesfeb28,0...

In August 2006, almost five years after the catastrophic attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a poll by Scripps Howard and Ohio University found that 36 percent of respondents thought it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that officials of the federal government "either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them." The poll also found that those who regularly use the Internet but do not habitually consult mainstream media "are significantly more likely to believe in 9/11 conspiracies." Kathryn S. Olmsted, in her exquisitely researched and annotated new book Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11, points out that although such views "may seem to belong to the fringe," they are held by millions of Americans and a majority of those between the ages of 18 and 29. In fact, Olmsted asserts that the tendency to see conspiracies everywhere "long ago spread from the margins into the main body of American political culture," and that the quelling of political dissent is an exacerbating factor. She has set out to track the history and patterning of conspiratorial beliefs as they relate to politics and public policy. Her thesis — that conspiracy theories thrive in part because the government has misled the public or acted illegally and covertly, and been caught at it frequently enough to make them credible — is a disconcerting one. But the historical detail she marshals (which demonstrates a tendency for fusion of far-left and far-right political views) is persuasive in its cumulative power.

Note: For more on the important Scripps/Howard poll showing that high percentages of American citizens suspect US government complicity in the 9/11 attacks, click here. For a 15-minute clip of a powerfully revealing documentary on this, 9/11: Press for Truth, click here.

9/11 widow among victims of crash near Buffalo
2009-02-13, MSNBC
Posted: 2009-02-21 09:41:10
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29176877/

One of the victims of Continental Flight 3407, Beverly Eckert, was a Sept. 11 widow who put her never-ending grief to good use to make the country safer. Just last week, Eckert was at the White House with Barack Obama, part of a meeting the president had with relatives of those killed in the 2001 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole to discuss how the new administration would handle terror suspects. Obama, addressing business leaders on Friday, referred to her "passionate commitment" to the 9/11 families. "She was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead," the president said during remarks about the crash at the East Room event. "She was such an important part of all of our work," said Mary Fetchet, another 9/11 family activist.

Note: Mrs. Eckert rejected the $1.8 million payment for 9/11 survivors, as she would have forfeited the right to sue the government for its role in the event. ABC News quotes her on how she had "chosen to go to court rather than accept a payoff from the 9/11 victims compensation fund. I want to know why two 110-story skyscrapers collapsed in less than two hours and why escape and rescue options were so limited. I am suing because unlike ... congressional hearings and the 9/11 commission, my lawsuit requires all testimony be given under oath and fully uses powers to compel evidence." For why Mrs. Eckert and hundreds of other highly respected politicians and professors are calling for a new investigation on 9/11, click here.

The Political Suspicions of 9/11
2009-02-02, New York Times
Posted: 2009-02-06 09:18:19
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/business/media/02fx.html?partner=rss&emc=rs...

A coming episode of the acclaimed FX drama “Rescue Me” will tackle what may sound like a far-fetched plot line: that the attacks of Sept. 11 were an “inside job.” The actor who espouses the theories on camera, it turns out, also subscribes to them in real life. The second episode of “Rescue Me’s” fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company (FX is operated by the News Corporation). “They’re not discussed a lot in the press,” Daniel Sunjata, the actor who plays Franco Rivera on “Rescue Me,” told reporters at a television press tour last month. In the episode, Mr. Sunjata’s character [describes] a “neoconservative government effort” to control the world’s oil, drastically increase military spending and “change the definition of pre-emptive attack.” To put it into action, he continues, “what you need is a new Pearl Harbor. That’s what they said they needed.” Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he “absolutely, 100 percent” supports the assertion that “9/11 was an inside job.” The alternative theories “seem to me to make a lot more sense than the ones that are popularly espoused,” he said, calling it admirable that the conversation was allowed within “Rescue Me.” Peter Tolan, an executive producer, said Mr. Sunjata is “well read” and has “done a lot of research.” “Look, obviously not all of us buy in,” he told reporters. “But we went: ‘Wow, that’s interesting, and he’s passionate about it. Let’s use that.’ ”

Note: For a powerful two-page summary of key unanswered questions from major media sources about what really happened on 9/11, click here. To read charges by hundreds of professors and top politicians claiming that the U.S. government is lying about 9/11, click here.

Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics
2008-12-16, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2008-12-26 09:23:44
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-cheney16-2008dec16...

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely. Cheney's comments ... mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a ... method known as waterboarding. "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News. Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do." His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture. Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said, the CIA "in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it." Waterboarding involves strapping a prisoner to a tilted surface, covering his face with a towel and dousing it to simulate the sensation of drowning. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said that the agency used the technique on three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. Cheney has long defended the technique. But he has not previously disclosed his role in pushing to give the CIA such authority.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on US torture and other war crimes committed in the Iraq and Afghan wars, click here.

U.N. Rights Investigator Expelled by Israel
2008-12-16, New York Times
Posted: 2008-12-26 09:22:06
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html?partner=rss...

Israeli authorities on Monday expelled Richard Falk, a United Nations investigator of human rights in the Palestinian territories, saying he was unwelcome because of what the government has regarded as his hostile position toward Israel. Mr. Falk, an American, arrived in Israel on Sunday. He was held [overnight] at the airport and placed on the first available flight back to Geneva, his point of departure. Mr. Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, has the title of United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. He has long been criticized in Israel for what many Israelis say are unfair and unpalatable views. He has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to Nazi atrocities and has called for more serious examination of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. Pointing to discrepancies between the official version of events and other versions, he recently wrote that “only willful ignorance can maintain that the 9/11 narrative should be treated as a closed book.” In his capacity as a United Nations investigator, Mr. Falk issued a statement this month describing Israel’s embargo on Gaza ... as a crime against humanity. Regardless of Mr. Falk’s views, some Israelis questioned the wisdom of banning him, noting that it would hardly make his reports more sympathetic. Jessica Montell, the executive director of B’Tselem, an Israeli group that monitors human rights in the occupied territories, said that ... barring his entry was “an act unbefitting of democracy.”

Note: Israel quite explicitly raised the issue of Falk's call for a genuine investigation of the 9/11 attacks in its explanation of his deportation. Why would the state of Israel oppose such an investigation? For information from major media sources on this and many other questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Web Pick of the Week: The New Pearl Harbor Revisited
2008-11-24, Publishers Weekly
Posted: 2008-11-28 12:18:43
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6617001.html?industryid=47159

Author and professor [David Ray] Griffin ... knows his work is referred to by officials and the media as conspiracy theory, and he has a rebuttal: “the official theory is itself a conspiracy theory.” In [The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, a] companion volume to 2004's The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, Griffin provides corrections, raises new issues and discusses “the two most important official reports about 9/11,” the 9/11 Commission Report and the National Institute of Standards and Technology report on the Twin Towers, both “prepared by people highly responsive to the wishes of the White House” and riddled with “omission and distortion from beginning to end.” Griffin addresses many points in exhaustive detail, from the physical impossibility of the official explanation of the towers’ collapse to the Commission's failure to scrutinize the administration to the NIST’s contradiction of its own scientists to the scads of eyewitness and scientific testimony in direct opposition to official claims. Citing hundreds, if not thousands, of sources, Griffin's detailed analysis is far from reactionary or delusional, building a case that, though not conclusive, raises enough valid and disturbing questions to make his call for a new investigation more convincing than ever.

Note: Publishers Weekly reviews have guided the book trade, including booksellers, publishers, librarians, and literary agents, for 136 years. "Pick of the Week" sets the standard for the best of the best new books. This recognition by such a prestigious journal shows the remarkable quality of the 9/11-truth work of WantToKnow.info team member David Ray Griffin. To read about all his 9/11 books, click here.

The 30 greatest conspiracy theories
2008-11-19, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2008-11-28 12:12:41
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3483477/The-30-greate...

From the assassination of John F Kennedy to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. From Roswell, New Mexico, to Nasa's moon landings. From the bloodline of Christ to the death of Elvis Presley. From the Moscow appartment bombings to the Indian Ocean tsunami. From Pearl Harbour to Peak Oil, the Philadelphia experiment and Pan Am flight 103. Every major event of the last 2,000 years has prompted a conspiracy theory and here we examine those with the biggest followings and the most longevity. 1. September 11, 2001. Thanks to the power of the web and live broadcasts on television, the ... theories surrounding the events of 9/11 ... have surpassed those of Roswell and JFK in traction. The [alternative] theories continue to grow in strength. At the milder end of the spectrum are the theorists who believe that the US government had prior warning of the attacks but did not do enough to stop them. Others believe that the Bush administration deliberately turned a blind eye to those warnings because it wanted a pretext to launch wars in the Middle East to usher in another century of American hegemony. A large group of people - collectively called the 9/11 Truth Movement - cite evidence that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon and that the World Trade Centre could not have been brought down by airliner impacts and burning aviation fuel alone. Many witnesses - including firemen, policemen and people who were inside the towers at the time - claim to have heard explosions below the aircraft impacts (including in basement levels) and before both the collapses and the attacks themselves.

Note: For a concise two-page summary of many unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Mark Cuban Is Charged With Insider Trading
2008-11-18, New York Times
Posted: 2008-11-22 09:17:14
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/business/18insider.html?_r=1&partner=rss&em...

Mark Cuban, the Internet entrepreneur turned owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, has never shied from a fight. But now the pugnacious billionaire is squaring off against his biggest adversary yet: the federal government. On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit charging Mr. Cuban with insider trading for selling shares of a small Internet search company in 2004, just before its share price fell. [Allegedly] Mr. Cuban saved himself a $750,000 loss. Scott W. Friestad, the S.E.C.’s deputy director of enforcement, said the investigation of Mr. Cuban’s trading began in early 2007, but declined to say what had set off the inquiry. A person close to Mr. Cuban provided what he said was one of a series of e-mail messages from Jeffrey B. Norris, an S.E.C. lawyer in Fort Worth, who accused the billionaire of being unpatriotic for helping to finance a movie named “Loose Change.” In the e-mail message, Mr. Norris described the movie as a “vicious and absurd documentary” that “posits that President Bush planned the demolition of the World Trade Center as a pretext for going to war against Iraq.” In the e-mail message, sent from his S.E.C. e-mail address, Mr. Norris said he was informing Christopher Cox, the chairman of the S.E.C., of Mr. Cuban’s actions. “If this upsets you, I wonder how George Bush feels,” Mr. Norris wrote. “I assume that Mr. Cox would view your involvement with ‘Loose Change’ much as I do. After all, he served his country as a Republican congressman from Orange County for nearly 20 years and was appointed by President Bush.”

Note: This New York Times report clearly suggests that Cuban is being pursued by the SEC because of his support for the 9/11-truth documentary Loose Change Final Cut, for which WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin acted as script consultant. To read the full text of the email from Norris to Cuban, click here. Another project Mark Cuban supports is the highly useful website for tracking the Wall Street bailout, bailoutsleuth.com, which has recently estimated the bailout to date at over $2.5 trillion!

Former CIA executive pleads guilty to defrauding government
2008-09-30, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2008-10-03 13:11:09
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-foggo30-2008sep30,0,5681841.story

The former No. 3 official at the CIA pleaded guilty Monday to defrauding the government, closing an investigation that linked the nation's preeminent spy service to the corruption scandal involving former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. In admitting that he abused his rank to steer lucrative contracts to cronies, Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, the agency's onetime executive director, became one of the highest-ranking officials in CIA history to be convicted of criminal charges. But the deal also involved major concessions from prosecutors, who allowed Foggo to admit guilt to a single fraud charge, wiping out 27 additional counts that included money laundering and conspiracy. Prosecutors indicated that they would recommend he serve no more than 37 months. The revelations of Foggo's crimes surfaced two years ago during one of the most tumultuous periods in recent agency history, and added to the pressure on the Bush administration to remove Porter J. Goss as CIA director in 2006. Goss selected Foggo for the agency's third-ranking position. Foggo had never served as a case officer or an analyst -- the jobs that typically garner the most respect within the CIA. But as a procurement officer at a secret CIA post in Frankfurt, Germany, he was in a position to cultivate contacts with members of Congress and other influential officials who visited during overseas trips to war zones.

Note: Interesting that a guilty plea for one count was exchanged for dismissing numerous other charges of fraud and money laundering. For an excellent analysis of the reasons behind this unusual prosecutorial strategy, click here. Buzzy Krongard, the previous #3 man at the CIA, has been linked to the millions of dollars in suspicious stock option trades made just prior to 9/11 that were never claimed, though this received little media coverage.

Bush Doctrine enters American vocabulary
2008-09-26, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2008-10-03 13:09:14
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/26/EDGR135ERL.DTL

Thanks to the Sept. 11 interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson of ABC News, the Bush Doctrine has become part of the American vocabulary. Although it has been a fateful doctrine - it was used to justify the attack on Iraq - many Americans reported that they were as clueless about it as Gov. Palin. So what is the Bush Doctrine? According to international law as generally understood since the creation of the United Nations, a pre-emptive attack is legal only if a country has certain knowledge that an attack on it is imminent - too imminent for the matter to be taken to the U.N. Security Council. Pre-emptive war is different from preventive war, in which a country, fearing that another country may become strong enough to threaten it at some time in the future, attacks it to prevent this possibility. Preventive wars are illegal under international law. This distinction, however, creates a terminological problem: Although preventive war is worse than pre-emptive war, to most ears preemption sounds worse. Many people, therefore, speak of pre-emptive war when they mean preventive war. To avoid confusion, we can use the term pre-emptive-preventive war. Neoconservatives, the most powerful of whom is Vice President Dick Cheney, had long disliked the idea that America's use of military power could be constrained by the prohibition against preemptive-preventive war. In 1992, his last year as secretary of defense, Cheney produced a draft of the Defense Planning Guidance that said the United States should use force to "pre-empt" and "preclude threats." After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the neocons were able to turn their wish into U.S. policy.

Note: This article is by WantToKnow team member David Ray Griffin. He analyzes the significance of the 9/11 attacks for the acceptance of the Bush Doctrine in more detail in his recent book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, pointing out that the author of the document which first made the doctrine official policy was Philip Zelikow, who then later became executive director of the 9/11 Commission.

Bruce Ivins Wasn't the Anthrax Culprit
2008-08-05, Wall Street Journal
Posted: 2008-09-21 09:08:26
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121789293570011775.html

Over the past week the media was gripped by the news that the FBI was about to charge Bruce Ivins, a leading anthrax expert, as the man responsible for the anthrax letter attacks in September/October 2001. But despite the seemingly powerful narrative that Ivins committed suicide because investigators were closing in, this is still far from a shut case. The FBI needs to explain why it zeroed in on Ivins, how he could have made the anthrax mailed to lawmakers and the media, and how he (or anyone else) could have pulled off the attacks, acting alone. The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute. The product contained essentially pure spores. The particle size was 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter. There are several methods used to produce anthrax that small. But most of them require milling the spores to a size small enough that it can be inhaled into the lower reaches of the lungs. In this case, however, the anthrax spores were not milled. They were also tailored to make them potentially more dangerous. The spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. Each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in the air, and increased their retention in the lungs. In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program.

Fire, Not Explosives, Felled 3rd Tower on 9/11, Report Says
2008-08-21, New York Times
Posted: 2008-09-21 08:59:16
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/nyregion/22wtccnd.html?partner=rssuserland&...

Fires in the 47-story office tower at the edge of the World Trade Center site undermined floor beams and a critical structural column, federal investigators [from the National Institute of Standards and Technology] concluded on Thursday, as they attempted to curb still-rampant speculation that explosives caused the building’s collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. The collapse of 7 World Trade Center ... is cited in hundreds of Web sites and books as perhaps the most compelling evidence that an insider secretly planted explosives, intentionally destroying the tower. [Critics] have pointed to the fact that the building fell straight down, instead of tumbling, as proof that explosives were used to topple it, as well as to bring down the twin towers. Sixteen percent of the respondents in a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll said it was very likely or somewhat likely that explosives were planted. Other towers in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles have remained standing through catastrophic blazes that burned out of control for hours because of malfunctioning or nonexistent sprinkler systems. But 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane, is the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire. Adding to the suspicion is the fact that in the rush to clean up the site, almost all of the steel remains of the tower were disposed of, leaving investigators in later years with little forensic evidence. Skeptics ... have long argued that an incendiary material called thermite, made of aluminum powder and a metal oxide, was used to take down the trade center towers. They also have argued that a sulfur residue found at the World Trade Center site is evidence of an inside job.

9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom
2008-09-09, New York Times
Posted: 2008-09-19 13:30:05
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/world/africa/09cairo.html

Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom [in Cairo] that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too. “Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.” Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But they also said that Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq. “Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.” Zein al-Abdin, 42, an electrician, [said] “What happened in Iraq confirms that it has nothing to do with bin Laden or Qaeda. They went against Arabs and against Islam to serve Israel, that’s why.”

Note: For a two-page summary of many reports from reliable, verifiable sources that highlight unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Civil liberties: Outrage at New York police plan to track vehicles
2008-08-14, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
Posted: 2008-08-23 08:07:04
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/14/usa.humanrights

The Big Apple is turning into Big Brother, civil liberties groups have warned in response to a new plan from New York city's police chiefs to photograph every vehicle entering Manhattan and hold the details on a massive database. As well as placing cameras at all tunnels and bridges into Manhattan, the 36-page plan, called Operation Sentinel, calls for a security ring to be erected at Ground Zero and for a 50-mile buffer zone around the city within which mobile units would search for nuclear or "dirty" bombs. [The] 3,000 cameras that could be mounted as a result of the plans of the New York police ... have provoked outrage in the United States. Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the idea of tracking the movements of millions of people was "an assault on the country's historical respect for the right to privacy and the freedom to be left alone". The NYCLU is pressing the New York police to release further details of its intentions under freedom of information laws. The toughest element of the scheme relates to preparations to secure Ground Zero once the six-hectare site is rebuilt and open to the public again. Those measures include moveable roadblocks, security cameras across lower Manhattan and an underground bomb-screening centre through which all delivery vehicles would have to pass. The plan to video the number plates of every vehicle would be applied to all points of entry into Manhattan, including the main Brooklyn-Battery, Holland, Lincoln and Midtown tunnels and Brooklyn, Manhattan and other bridges.

Note: For lots more on threats to privacy from major media sources, click here.

The evolution of a conspiracy theory
2008-07-04, BBC News
Posted: 2008-07-10 11:06:14
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7488159.stm

Nearly seven years after the terrible events of that September day, the US authorities are due to publish the final report on a third tower that also collapsed on 9/11. Unlike the Twin Towers, this 47-storey, 610-foot skyscraper was not hit by a plane. The official explanation is that ordinary fires were the main reason for the collapse of Tower 7. That makes this the first and only tall skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire. Yet despite that all the thousands of tonnes of steel from the building were carted away and melted down. The way official bodies have investigated Tower 7 at the World Trade Center has made some people think they're hiding something. Its destruction was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. An inquiry by the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the building collapsed because intense fires had burned for hours, fed by thousands of gallons of diesel stored in the building for emergency generators. But its report said this had "only a low probability of occurrence" and more work was needed. That was in May 2002. The task has now fallen to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) based at a sprawling campus near Washington DC. For more than two-and-a-half years, scientists there have been studying Tower 7. The officials have been criticised for being slow and even of being frightened to publish. Steven Jones, a former physics professor at Brigham Young University, who has become [a] leading academic voice in the movement, first watched a video of the collapse of Tower 7 in the spring of 2005. But when he did, he said he was taken aback as a physicist.

Note: For a two-page summary of some unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

9/11 third tower mystery 'solved'
2008-07-04, BBC News
Posted: 2008-07-10 11:04:33
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7485331.stm

The 47-storey third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers. Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse. Conspiracy theorists have argued that the third tower was brought down in a controlled demolition. Unlike the twin towers, Tower Seven was not hit by a plane. The National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] ... is expected to conclude in its long-awaited report this month that ordinary fires caused the building to collapse. That would make it the first and only steel skyscraper in the world to collapse because of fire. [NIST's] lead investigator, Dr Shyam Sunder, spoke to BBC Two's "The Conspiracy Files": "Our working hypothesis now actually suggests that it was normal building fires that were growing and spreading throughout the multiple floors that may have caused the ultimate collapse of the buildings." However, a group of architects, engineers and scientists say the official explanation that fires caused the collapse is impossible. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth argue there must have been a controlled demolition. The founder of the group, Richard Gage, says the collapse of the third tower is an obvious example of a controlled demolition using explosives. "Building Seven is the smoking gun of 9/11. A sixth grader can look at this building falling at virtually freefall speed, symmetrically and smoothly, and see that it is not a natural process. Buildings that fall in natural processes fall to the path of least resistance", says Gage, "they don't go straight down through themselves."

Note: To watch a one-minute clip of the fall of WTC 7 from a PBS documentary, click here. For a two-page summary of some unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Controversy and conspiracies
2008-07-02, BBC News
Posted: 2008-07-10 10:57:38
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/07/controversy_conspiracies_iii.html

World Trade Center Building 7 has become the subject of heated speculation and a host of conspiracy theories suggesting it was brought down by a controlled demolition. And some people suggest it was not just the government and foreign intelligence, but ... even the media that were involved. It is certainly true that on 9/11 the BBC broadcast that WTC7 had collapsed when it was still standing. Then the satellite transmission seemed to cut out mysteriously when the correspondent was still talking. Then [head of BBC News] Richard Porter admitted in his blog last year that the BBC had lost those key tapes of BBC World News output from the day. The internet movie Loose Change has been viewed by more than 100 million people according to its makers and it asks this question in the latest film release: "Where did CNN and the BBC get their information especially considering the building was still standing directly behind their reporters?" It turns out that the respected news agency Reuters picked up an incorrect report and passed it on. They have issued this statement: "On 11 September 2001 Reuters incorrectly reported that one of the buildings at the New York World Trade Center, 7WTC, had collapsed before it actually did. The report was picked up from a local news story and was withdrawn as soon as it emerged that the building had not fallen." And the reason the interview with the BBC correspondent, Jane Standley, ended so abruptly? The satellite feed had an electronic timer, which cut out at 1715 exactly.

Note: How many "coincidences" does it take for people to start to ask questions? How could people know that the building was going to collapse when a skyscraper had never collapsed before from fire? For a useful BBC FAQ on 9/11 alternative theories, click here.

The 9/11 Commission Second-Guesses the Pentagon
2006-08-02, CNN News
Posted: 2008-07-10 10:46:11
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0608/02/sitroom.01.html

BLITZER: The 9/11 Commission second-guesses the Pentagon on the timeline of events on that fateful day. What kind of impact might that have? Let's check ... with Jack Cafferty in New York. CAFFERTY: A member of the 9/11 Commission says that the commission didn't trust some of the testimony from Pentagon officials about the timeline of events on that fateful day, September 11. The question we asked is: What does it mean if the 9/11 Commission thought the Pentagon wasn't telling the truth? Marie in Bartlett, Illinois, [writes]: "The 9/11 Commission failed. If they mulled criminal charges because they doubted the veracity of testimony from Pentagon personnel, why did they stop at that? And why say so now? If persons are suspected of lying, they must be brought up on charges, and found either guilty or innocent. The commission declared themselves to be judge and jury. And the kangaroo court verdict was not guilty." Paul in Rockville, Maryland [writes]: "The fact that Henry Kissinger and George Mitchell both took the job, and then quit, should have been a tip-off to how big a can of worms they were opening." BLITZER: And, as commercial airliners approached Washington and New York on 9/11, what did the Pentagon know and when?

Note: The above summary is taken from the section at the very bottom of the CNN News transcript at the link above. For a three-minute video clip of this report, click here. For a two-page summary of some other unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

Gov't says FBI agents can't testify about 9/11
2008-06-19, International Herald Tribune/Associated Press
Posted: 2008-06-26 11:04:10
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/19/america/Sept-11-Lawsuits.php

Government lawyers say the ongoing investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks could be compromised if the airline industry is allowed to seek more information from the FBI to defend itself against lawsuits brought by terrorism victims. The government urged a judge to block aviation companies from interviewing five FBI employees who the companies say will help them prove the government withheld key information before the 2001 attacks. The lawyers said it would be impossible to interview the employees without disclosing classified or privileged material that could "cause serious damage to national security and interfere with pending law enforcement proceedings." The largest investigation in FBI history has resulted in 167,000 interviews and more than 155,000 pieces of evidence and involved the pursuit of 500,000 investigative leads, the lawyers wrote. The airlines and aviation companies are defending themselves against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The companies filed separate lawsuits against the CIA and the FBI last August to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. Meanwhile, lawyers for the victims of the attacks ... recounted in court papers numerous hijackings and attacks aboard planes before Sept. 11 that they said should have put the airline industry on notice that a disastrous attack could occur.

Note: For a two-page overview of many unanswered questions about what really happened on 9/11, click here.

What happened to building 7?
2008-06-06, Financial Times
Posted: 2008-06-26 10:45:39
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d174b42-31fa-11dd-9b87-0000779fd2ac,s01=1.html

To the ["9/11 Truth movement"], Building 7 – the third building in the World Trade Center complex to collapse on September 11 – is evidence that the mainstream media is in on the plot. On that day, the BBC reported the building’s fall almost half an hour before it happened. Journalist Jane Standley was broadcast at 4.54pm eastern time reporting that the tower had collapsed – but in the background, it was still standing. It fell 26 minutes later, seven hours after the Twin Towers came down. When the Standley clip hit YouTube, truthers bombarded the BBC’s website with questions and accusations. Richard Porter, head of BBC world news, was forced to deny that the broadcaster was reading from the Bush conspirators’ script. He said the BBC had misreported warnings from fire crews of the building’s imminent collapse and instead stated that it had already happened. He blamed the confusion of the day for the mix-up. CNN had earlier reported rumours that a third building had either collapsed or was about to. This explanation was undermined by Porter’s admission that the BBC no longer had the original tapes of its coverage. Building 7 is [a] smoking gun for other reasons, too. How, they ask, could this modern, steel-framed skyscraper collapse merely because of fire, without even being hit by an airliner? The 47-storey WTC7 fell straight down, at almost free-fall speed, largely into its own footprint: all the hallmarks, the sceptics say, of a controlled demolition.

Note: To read a related Financial Times report on the 9/11 Truth movement's claims, click here.

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