9/11 Contradictions

	Book review on 9/11 Contradictions by Griffin, David Ray (2008) Reviewed by David Lorimer, 2009 published in Network Review No 99
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This is the fourth review I have written on books about 9/11, almost all of them by David Ray Griffin -- the last appeared in the April 2007 issue, and included a review of a book about the general nature of conspiracy theories and the rhetorical way in which the term is often used. For those who have not followed the whole process, David Ray Griffin is emeritus professor of philosophy of religion and at Claremont School of Theology and author of a series of books on process philosophy and parapsychology. He first got involved in the study of 9/11 when asked to write an article for a magazine. Like most people and perhaps many readers of this review, he assumed that the official account was both adequate and plausible. However, the father he dug, the more incredible the official version seemed to him. This resulted in his first book published in 2004 and entitled The New Pearl Harbor. Following the publication of the 9/11 report, Griffin published a devastating critique highlighting a vast number of errors and omissions and arguing, persuasively in my view, that the report simply assumed the correctness of the official account, and was charged with backing up; in other words the conclusion was already preordained in the premises. There are also books of essays giving the wider context and suggesting that 9/11 contained many of the features of false flag operations. It is significant, I think, that insofar as people have changed their minds about the explanations for 9/11, conversions go in only one direction, away from the official story. It is important to note that the outset that the official version is also a conspiracy theory, and one which turns out to be a great deal more shaky than what defenders of the official theory disparagingly call conspiracy theories. On issues relating to evidence and argument, the best unofficial theories turn out to be much stronger. These new books contain over 1000 pages of analysis,  which include 200 pages of notes and references. All this enables the reader to get to grips with the detail.

            The first book is a response to the defenders of the official conspiracy theory, including the book by Popular Mechanics, which I reviewed two years ago. The other chapters address the question of whether certain tapes verify the 911 commission report, points raised by the authors of this report and whether NIST has in fact refuted the theory that the towers -- and particularly WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane -- came down through controlled demolition. In the introduction, Griffin tells his own story, reminding the reader that over 40% of Americans believe that the government has concealed critical evidence that contradicts the official explanation of the attacks. Under normal circumstances, one would expect the kind of evidence presented by Griffin to come out in the press, but there has been a serious lack of investigative reporting. Indeed, the press has generally uncritically accepted the official theory while attacking those like himself trying to draw attention to the problems. They use the term conspiracy theory one-sidedly, assuming that it equates with woolly and wishful thinking, and they accept the assumption that if a document is written by scientists, it must be a scientific document. This means that, on the whole, the quality of evidence and analysis is ignored. Even a cursory reading of the quality of Griffin's analysis in relation to the evidence will convince the impartial reader that there are real questions to be pursued, and that the investigations up to this point have been incomplete and inadequate. Some critics go so far as to ignore Griffin's own explanations, commenting that he was thoughtful and well informed until he began to recycle what they regard as wild conspiracy theories. In saying this, Griffin responds that the reason he originally held the official conspiracy theory was that he was not well informed enough, which he now is; and the reader will certainly be well-informed after reading these books. A particularly telling example of the tactics used is when commentators appeal to the authority of official documents, using perfectly circular logic: alternative conspiracy theorists believe the government was responsible; but the government's reports and other studies that support them say that the government's conspiracy theory of 9/11 is accurate; therefore the major assertions of the alternative theorists are baseless.

            The second book addresses the internal contradictions within the public story about 9/11. No judgements requiring expertise are required, because each of the 25 chapters revolves around a simple contradiction; this book contains no new theory about what actually happened, but only a simple exposition of the various facts. It is a matter of simple logic that if a person claims that 'P' is a fact, and someone else that 'not P' is a fact, then one of these claims must be false. The reason for the structure of this book is that members of Congress and the press have been reluctant to look into possible difficulties about the official story from fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. However, they cannot be pilloried for pointing out factual contradictions, which abound in each of the 25 chapters and naturally lead to questions that need to be resolved. Griffin discusses how any contradictions have been handled, showing that they are more often than not ignored. For instance the testimonial evidence from police and firefighters that there witnessed explosions in the towers is ignored or even denied. And the claim that Hani Hanjour piloted Flight 77 into the Pentagon is inconsistent with everything else known about his flying ability. The conclusion summarises the 25 contradictions and reminds the reader of the standard criteria within philosophy of science for a good theory: that it should not be inconsistent with any of the relevant facts, and that it should be self-consistent, free of internal contradictions. Here there are 25 such internal contradictions, which makes the official theory not logically unacceptable.

            The last book - provocatively subtitled 9/11, the cover-up and the exposé - provides a chapter-by-chapter update of Griffin's original book, showing that the case against the official report by a growing number of independent researchers is now much stronger than five years ago. The emerging consensus in the 9/11 truth community is that 9/11 was a false flag operation subsequently used to justify the war on terror. The last chapter in Griffin's original book provided a summary of points indicating government complicity and comparing the plausibility of the complexity hypothesis with the coincidence hypothesis. Here in Griffin adds a further 33 points of evidence to his original 24, making the coincidence theory even more improbable than it was before. It turns out that the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, not only determined its conclusions in advance but was also the primary author of a 2002 document on national security strategy, which used 9/11 to justify a new doctrine of pre-emptive warfare; hence he had a clear conflict of interest, which he did not declare. He even attempted to insert sentences linking Al Qaeda to Iraq. This new chapter reinforces Griffin's original case that the Commission systematically omitted and distorted evidence that suggested that 9/11 might have been an inside job. Hence, together with the NIST report, the reader can see that the two most important official documents were prepared and directed by partisan White House insiders. Hence the demand for a new and genuinely independent investigation. If Griffin's conclusions are correct, then the Bush administration was complicit in one of the most outrageous crimes against humanity, and should be brought to account. Whether this will happen and whether there will be a new and independent investigation is up to pressure from the American public opinion.

 

 

 

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