- Book Review
- 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy
Succeed
- by David Ray Griffin
- Paperback, 328 pages, Olive Branch Press. Published September
6, 2011
-
- Reviewed by Thomas C. Fletcher (Petaluma, California)
- at Amazon.com
-
- David Ray Griffin in his new book, 9/11 Ten Years Later:
When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed, takes stock of what we know,
after the passage of a decade of intensive grassroots research and analysis,
about what really happened that day, and of the present state of the 9/11
truth movement - its strengths and its weaknesses, and how it can move
forward most effectively. The book is a combination of important lectures
given by Griffin in the last few years, revised and updated for publication,
and of completely new essays on key topics, such as the strong evidence
that the phone calls from the hijacked airliners must have been faked,
and the powerful consensus about the Pentagon events that has been achieved
by the movement.
-
- The first four chapters highlight the strongest evidence
that 9/11 was an inside job and the clearest implications of that evidence:
the lack of evidence that Muslims attacked the US on that day (making clear
that the ten-year-long series of wars on Muslim nations is morally and
legally unjustified); the multiple occasions on which the laws of physics
were miraculously inoperative in the destruction of the World Trade Center,
if the official account so ferociously defended by erstwhile critics of
government like Bill Moyers, Robert Parry, Alexander Cockburn and many
others is to be believed; and the extraordinary case of World Trade Center
(WTC) 7's classic demolition, which has been assiduously covered up by
the mainstream media and government agencies (its collapse was never even
mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report, and the final report on its destruction
issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in November
2008 was fraudulent).
-
- Chapter 5, "Phone Calls From The 9/11 Planes: Why
They Are Not Authentic," examines all the evidence that has been discovered
regarding phone calls from the hijacked airliners. The phone calls have
been a crucial part of the official story of the day's events, purportedly
establishing that the planes were hijacked by Arab Muslims and that Flight
77 crashed into the Pentagon. But after a careful, critical analysis Griffin
is forced to conclude that the phone calls were not made from the planes.
First he shows that there is no evidence that the alleged hijackers actually
were ever onboard any of the planes, and further, that the failure of any
of the eight pilots to "squawk" the hijack code into their transponders
is "strong evidence that the official story about the 9/11 planes
-- that the cabins were taken over by hijackers - is false." He then
shows that the calls to Deena Burnett, which registered on her caller ID
as calls from her husband Tom Burnett's cell phone (he was a passenger
on board Flight 93), could not have been completed because cell phone technology
in 2001 was not capable of completing calls from airliners at high elevation.
Griffin concludes the calls had to have been faked, and suggests that they
were faked by voice morphing, already a well-established technical capability
at the time. After examining the claims made for many other calls, including
those for Barbara Olson, wife of then Solicitor General Ted Olson, which
were the basis for the claim that Flight 77 was still in the air and subsequently
crashed into the Pentagon, Griffin concludes that "the evidence that
the 'calls from the planes' were faked is strong, ... far stronger than
the evidence for the view that the calls were made by passengers and flight
attendants, describing the activities of Middle-Eastern hijackers."
-
- Chapter 6 discusses Vice President Dick Cheney's changing
account of his whereabouts and activities at key times during the morning
of 9/11. After admitting on national TV five days later that he had been
present and in charge in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)
in the basement of the White House before the Pentagon was attacked, he
changed his story in November and claimed he did not reach the PEOC until
after the Pentagon attack. Griffin shows that the 9/11 Commission Report
upheld Cheney's otherwise unsupported second account, which absolved him
of responsibility during two key incidents, the Pentagon attack and the
destruction of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. He shows further that much evidence,
ignored by the Commission, contradicted Cheney's second story, including
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta's testimony before the Commission,
Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke's published account of the morning,
and reports from ABC News on the first anniversary of 9/11, all of which
the Commission buried without mention.
-
- The gem of the book is the seventh chapter, "The
Pentagon: A Consensus Approach." In this very detailed analysis Griffin
shows that the 9/11 truth movement has developed a complex, broad-based
refutation of the official story of what happened at the Pentagon (that
"the Pentagon was attacked by American Airlines Flight 77... under
the control of al-Qaeda"). He examines fourteen facts which have been
established by independent researchers, upon which there is universal agreement,
and any one of which is enough to demolish the official account. Griffin
argues that the movement should concentrate its Pentagon energies on further
strengthening and advocacy of these points of agreement, and avoid dissipating
time, energy and trust on a question which has taken up much of these resources
in recent years, the question of "what hit the Pentagon?" He
shows that this question is unanswerable with the evidence available; only
a genuine investigation of the 9/11 attacks will enable it to be answered.
-
- Chapter 8 illuminates the psychology of resistance to
the truth about the 9/11 events which is so widespread, arguing that the
real faith of the nominally-Christian US is "nationalist faith."
The critique of the official story laid out by the 9/11 truth movement
is literally unthinkable for many, even for devout Christians whose religion
calls upon them to avoid all kinds of idolatry, including nationalism.
Griffin concludes that "[w]hen Christian faith is subordinated to
faith in American goodness ... it becomes a blinding faith, producing Christians
with eyes wide shut."
-
- The subtitle of the book indicates that the 9/11 attacks,
in being a false-flag operation carried out by elements of the US government,
were a "State Crime Against Democracy" or SCAD, with the primarily
political purpose of imposing policies by force upon the country, and that
the failure to carry out a genuine investigation, arrest the perpetrators
and reverse the policies adopted by the government after 9/11 means that
the operation has succeeded. But only to this point in time: the future
is still open. Griffin provides in a powerful conclusion (Ch. 9, "When
State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed") suggestions for how the 9/11
truth movement can continue to press forward to the necessary investigation
of the 9/11 crimes and the reversal of the tragic course taken by the US
while under the control of the criminals.
-
- This superb book is written with the usual clarity, logic
and argumentative power readers have come to expect from David Ray Griffin,
which he has now employed in ten books on the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 Ten Years
Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed continues his advance
at the cutting edge of 9/11 truth, and should be read by everyone who wants
to take stock of what the movement has achieved and how to press on into
a future in which illegal, immoral wars have been stopped and the country's
democratic ideals reaffirmed. (End quote; emphasis supplied).
-
- ***
-
- Michael Hoffman is the founder of The Hoffman Center
for the Study of Anti-Goyimism. The Hoffman Wire is a public service of
Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 USA.
Copyright ©2011
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