9/11 Truth or Consequences

Daniel Hopsicker blackens the third eye of the "9/11 Truth Movement" in his Sept 28 piece, COINTELPRO 9.11. This makes uncomfortable, and essential, reading.

As my quotation marks hopefully suggest, I don't exactly embrace the term. Truth, especially with a capital "T," is elusive at the best of times, and these aren't they. We ought, rather, to be 9/11 skeptics, of not only the official story but also the competing narratives, because if we abandon critical thought and lapse into solipsistic dogma, we become nothing but evangelizing priests of a conspiracist cult. (And if that happens, then my wife is going to say "I told you so.")

I believe those perpetuating the cover-up wish precisely such irrelevence for us, and are never so happy as when they set us chasing phantom pods and missiles, sending us spiralling into silliness. For instance, consider this latest absurdity, touted on the website as the "Holy Grail": puffs of smoke as the WTC was hit somehow demonstrate "pre-demolition" charges. Such a page screams - at least to my sensitive ears - COINTELPRO. I'm wary of any "9/11 Truth" site which provides no genuinely valuable 9/11 links; seemingly arises out of nowhere; is graphically intensive and makes an extreme claim based solely upon interpretation of grainy video footage; and is registered by proxy, so we can't learn who's actually behind it.

Whether such a website is contrived with malice or well-meaning foolishness, the bad guys haven't lacked for any number of useful idiots.

And I feel Hopsicker's pain at the acclaim given theologian and 9/11 latecomer David Ray Griffin's rather addlepated The New Pearl Harbor, while Hopsicker's vastly more important Welcome to Terrorland remains widely unknown and unread by American readers, even those prepared to challenge the 9/11 Commission's insulting half-truths. (German readers, at least, are another matter.)

But I disagree with Hopsicker's thrashing of Michael Ruppert and Catherine Austin Fitts, because I value what I've learned from each of them. That they may have accepted speaking engagements from a company which functions as a glorified pyramid scheme suggests, to me, nothing more sinister than bad judgement.

Hopsicker has called Ruppert "Mr Peak Oil," and said he should be making better use of his detective skills. No one has done the on-the-ground and foot-in-the-door work that Hopsicker has, and he deserves some skilled company. Still, establishing motive is essential for solving a crime, and no less the crime of 9/11. And Ruppert's forthcoming Crossing the Rubicon looks likely to make a persuasive and comprehensive case.

A rapprochement someday would be welcome - it was nice when Dean Martin hugged Jerry Lewis - but it's irrelevent so long as they keep doing good work, and we skeptics reap the benefit.