Wissenswertes zum 11.9.2001

Spuren von Sprengstoff im Staub des World Trade Centers gefunden

2009-04-11T18:36:00.073+02:00

Neun Wissenschaftler, z.T. von renommierten Institutionen wie der BYU und dem Niels-Bohr-Institut, haben mit der gemeinschaftlichen Veröffentlichung einer spektakulären Entdeckung für Aufsehen gesorgt. Bei ihren Analysen des Staubs des World Trade Centers, der ihnen von vier verschiedenen Anwohnern des Ground Zeros zur Verfügung gestellt worden war, stießen sie nämlich auf Spuren des hochexplosiven Sprengstoffs Nanothermit. Nanothermit (oder auch „Superthermit“ genannt) ist von seiner Wirkung her in etwa mit TNT zu vergleichen. Die neuen Funde korrespondieren mit denen zweier angesehener Institute, die substanzielle Mengen eisenreicher Kugeln entdeckt hatten. Diese sind ein typisches Produkt von Nanothermit und anderweitig kaum erklärlich. Nanothermit ist seit den 90er Jahren für das US-Militär entwickelt worden und insofern wären die Implikationen gravierend und eindeutig, sollte es 2001 tatsächlich in den Zwillingstürmen eingesetzt worden sein.

Sprengt diese Studie die offizielle Version?

Schon die besagten eisenreichen Kugeln, welche die U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) und die RJ Lee Group gefunden hatten, konnten eigentlich nur von Nanothermit stammen. Die jeweiligen Proben waren so früh und so weit entfernt vom Ground Zero eingesammelt worden, dass sie unmöglich bei Aufräumarbeiten hätten kontaminiert werden können. Die Eisenkugeln waren durchgängig in allen Proben in außerordentlichen Konzentrationen zu finden, was noch weiter gegen eine zufällige spätere Verunreinigung spricht. Nanothermit hingegen, dessen typisches Produkt solche Kugeln ja sind, erscheint als Ursache bei weitem am naheliegendsten.

Jim Hoffman trifft präzise den Nagel auf den Kopf, wenn er es so veranschaulicht: Die eisenreichen Kugeln entsprechen am Tatort gefundenen abgefeuerten Patronen, die neuen Funde einer geladenen Waffe, deren Patronen mit den abgefeuerten übereinstimmen.

Professor Steven E. Jones und seine Kollegen haben bei ihren Tests zahllose hauptsächlich aus Eisen, Sauerstoff, Aluminium, Silikon und Karbon bestehende Chips mit jeweils einer roten und einer grauen Schicht gefunden. Diese Chips stechen, obwohl sie nur einen Durchmesser von bis zu ca. 3 mm haben, klar heraus und sind, obgleich dünn wie Eierschalen, nur schwer zerbrechlich. Die strukturelle und chemische Analyse der Chips zeigt, dass ihre Zusammensetzung exakt der von Nanothermit entspricht. Und auch, als sie sich während der Tests entzündeten, verhielten sie sich wie Nanothermit und produzierten eisenreiche Kugeln.

Es gibt ein Sprichwort: Was wie eine Ente watschelt, wie eine Ente quakt und wie eine Ente aussieht, wird sehr wahrscheinlich auch eine Ente sein. Und was wie Nanothermit eisenreiche Kugeln produziert, chemisch wie Nanothermit zusammengesetzt ist und strukturell wie Nanothermit zusammengesetzt ist, wird sehr wahrscheinlich Nanothermit sein.

Fahrstuhl zum Schafott?

Rechnet man die gefundenen Mengen hoch, müssten wohl Dutzende Tonnen verwendet worden sein. Das oft verwendete Argument, die hätten nicht unbemerkt in die Gebäude gebracht werden können, ist ohne Frage irrelevant: Sollte tatsächlich Nanothermit im Staub zu finden sein, dann hätte es zweifellos jemand unbemerkt in das World Trade Center geschmuggelt, ob uns diese Schlussfolgerung nun genehm ist oder nicht. Die Schlüsse müssen sich aus den Fakten ergeben und nicht die Fakten an vorgefertigte Schlüsse angepasst werden.

Und mindestens eine perfekte Möglichkeit hat es ja gegeben: Monatelang waren bis hin zum Morgen des 11.9. Fahrstuhlerneuerungsarbeiten in beiden Türmen durchgeführt worden. Und interessanterweise waren die Kernsäulen nur über die Fahrstuhlschächte erreichbar. Das wäre sicherlich eine fabelhafte Gelegenheit gewesen, als Fahrstuhltechniker getarnt die Sprengsätze zu montieren.

Ausführlich geprüft und für gut befunden

Die Abhandlung, in der die Funde präsentiert werden, ist die dritte innerhalb eines Jahres, die Professor Jones und seine Mitstreiter nach jeweils eingehender Peer-Review (Begutachtung durch Fachkollegen) in einem wissenschaftlichen Fachjournal veröffentlichen konnten. Im April 2008 war im „Open Civil Engineering Journal“ die Abhandlung „Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction“ erschienen, die 14 Schwachpunkte der offiziellen Version offenlegt. Im August folgte dann „Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials“ im „Environmentalist“. Und jetzt im April 2009 hat das „Open Chemical Physics Journal” die Studie „Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” herausgebracht, deren Ergebnisse das Zeug dazu haben, ihrerseits die offizielle Version des 11.9. zu sprengen.

Der Hauptautor Niels Harrit und Professor Jones kennen sich mit dem Peer-Review-Prozess besser aus als die meisten anderen, denn schließlich haben nur wenige Wissenschaftler öfter ihre Studien in Fachjournalen veröffentlicht als sie. Und nicht einmal beim renommierten Magazin „Nature“, in dem drei von Steven Jones' Arbeiten erschienen sind, sei die Überprüfung so anspruchsvoll und langwierig gewesen wie in diesem Fall, sagt Jones. Immer wieder seien seitenlange Kommentare der Prüfer eingegangen und erst, als alle Bedenken restlos ausgeräumt waren, konnte die Abhandlung erscheinen.

Dennoch behaupten manche verächtlich, es sei sehr leicht, im „Open Chemical Physics Journal“ zu veröffentlichen und dass dort quasi jeder Schund erscheine. Das entbehrt jeder Grundlage. Bentham ist ein seriöser Herausgeber, dessen Journale u.a. von sechs Nobelpreisträgern für ihre Qualität gelobt worden sind. Im „Directory of Open Access Journals“, das ausschließlich auf Journale verweist, die auf strenge Qualitätsstandards getestet worden sind, findet man sowohl das „Open Civil Engineering Journal“ als auch das „Open Chemical Physics Journal“. Diese Angriffe können also kaum verfangen.

Und außerdem könnten die Kritiker ja problemlos, wie Jones hintersinnig vorschlägt, selbst eine Erwiderung einreichen und sehen, ob die einfach so akzeptiert wird. Oder dasselbe bei irgendeinem anderen Journal ihrer Wahl versuchen. Das entspräche wissenschaftlichem Usus: Kritik an einer veröffentlichten Abhandlung wird in der Fachwelt nicht ernstgenommen, wenn der Kritiker sich damit nicht selbst der Peer-Review stellt. Dass die lautstärksten Kritiker da schon frühzeitig abgewinkt haben – das sei die Mühe nicht wert –, spricht wahrscheinlich Bände. Der bisher am häufigsten geäußerte Angriff jedenfalls – dass es sich bei den Chips um Farbe handle – ist so lächerlich, dass er von den Prüfern wohl nur mit Hohn und Spott bedacht werden würde. Farbe, die eisenreiche Kugeln produziert? Sogar Jones' profiliertester Kritiker, Dr. Frank Greening, hat dieser Theorie klar widersprochen. Und etwas Besseres scheint den Angreifern noch immer nicht eingefallen zu sein.

Und man sollte auch nicht vergessen, dass die Abhandlung darüberhinaus eine Art inoffiziellen Peer-Review-Prozess durchlief. Die BYU und das Niels-Bohr-Institut haben sie ihrerseits gründlich überprüft, bevor sie ihren Mitarbeitern genehmigten, ihre Namen auf die Abhandlungen zu setzen. Das Niels-Bohr-Institut hat sogar die, für Fachjournale überhaupt nicht unübliche, Veröffentlichungsgebühr übernommen und Ross Spencer, der Physik-Dekan der BYU, hat Professor Jones gegenüber zugegeben, dass die Abhandlung ihn von Sprengungen überzeugt hat. Diese Arbeit ist von zu vielen fähigen Wissenschaftlern geprüft und für gut befunden worden, als dass man sie leichthändig abtun sollte.

Nicht unbedingt eine Überraschung

Die Funde können ohnehin kaum überraschen, hatten doch vorher bereits vielerlei Fakten auf Sprengungen hingedeutet. Besonders seltsam erschien versierten Beobachtern schon lange, dass die völlig überkonstruierten Kerne mit ihren jeweils 47 massiven Säulen aus Stahl, die untereinander fest durch Stahlträger verbunden waren, sich in jeweils etwa 14 Sekunden komplett zerschreddern ließen, nur unwesentlich langsamer also als ein Ball dieselbe Strecke durch Luft gefallen wäre. Wer versucht, in 14 Sekunden bis 110 zu zählen, bekommt einen Eindruck davon, wie schnell jedes einzelne Stockwerk nachgegeben hat. Schwer erklärlich ist das vor allem auch, weil die Türme ja speziell konstruiert waren, dem Einschlag einer vollbetankten Boeing 707 mit 600 Meilen pro Stunde standhalten zu können und die jeweilige kinetische Aufprallsenergie der Boeings 767 gut im Rahmen der Designparameter lag. Noch Anfang 2001 hatte der Construction Manager der Türme, Frank De Martini, spekuliert, dass die Gebäude wahrscheinlich mehrere Einschläge verkraften könnten, ohne ernsthaft in Gefahr zu geraten. Gemäß der Designvorgaben hätten auch 25 % aller Säulen komplett ausfallen können und die Zwillingstürme wären stehengeblieben; am 11.9. waren nur 14 % bzw. 15 % der Kernsäulen beschädigt worden. Auch die Feuer waren, wie man heute weiß, nicht annähernd heiß und anhaltend genug, um dem Stahl gefährlich werden zu können; sogar offizielle Tests haben das untermauert.

Was NIST vergisst

Wie aber konnten die Gebäude dann einstürzen? Genau an dieser Stelle kommt Nanothermit ins Spiel. Und es schließt sich ein Kreis, wie es scheint. Das National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) war beauftragt worden, die Einsturzursache der Türme zu ermitteln. NIST veröffentlichte etwa 10.000 Seiten und entkräftete viele populäre Mythen – dass das Kerosin eine Rolle bei den Einstürzen gespielt habe, z.B. –, musste aber letztlich selbst eingestehen, die Kollapse nicht vollständig erklären zu können. Einige Beobachter führen dieses bemerkenswerte Versagen auf Scheuklappen zurück: Von vornherein hatte NIST Sprengungen kategorisch ausgeschlossen und dementsprechend auch nicht nach Spuren von Sprengstoff gesucht. Obwohl der NFPA-921-Code für Brand- und Explosionsuntersuchungen eindeutig besagt, nach Sprengstoffrückständen sei zu suchen und dabei explizit Thermit als Beispiel nennt, hielt NIST dies nach eigener Aussage für überflüssig. Die Begründung hierfür muss man sich auf der Zunge zergehen lassen: man habe nicht die eigene Zeit und das Geld der Steuerzahler verschwenden wollen. Angeblich aus Rücksichtnahme auf den Steuerzahler wurde auf eine relativ unaufwendige selbstverständliche Standardprozedur verzichtet und das allein hat für manche einen fauligen Beigeschmack. Und auch der Nachgeschmack wird umso unangenehmer, wenn man erfährt, dass viele leitende Wissenschaftler von NIST entscheidend an der Entwicklung von Nanothermit beteiligt waren. Jenem Sprengstoff also, nach dem zu suchen sie sich mit recht fadenscheiniger Begründung geweigert hatten und der jetzt von anderen Forschern entdeckt worden ist. Und von dem sie heute auf Nachfrage nichts zu wissen behaupten.

Die jetzige Veröffentlichung wird es ihnen zunehmend unmöglich machen, den berechtigten Zweifeln an ihren Ergebnissen länger unbeholfen auszuweichen, wie sie es seit Jahr und Tag tun. Endlich werden die Zweifel, die Experten wie die „Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth“ schon seit langem äußern, Gehör finden und schon bald könnte die offizielle Version des 11.9.2001 ähnlich zertrümmert daliegen wie die Zwillingstürme nach den Einstürzen. Insofern handelt es sich wahrlich um Funde von einiger Sprengkraft.

WEITERFÜHRENDE LINKS

Study: Scientists Discover Active Thermitic Material in WTC Dust

Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust

Wake Up and Smell the Aluminothermic Nanocomposite Explosives

A Hypothetical Blasting Scenario

Thermitic Pyrotechnics in the WTC made simple

Traces of explosives in 9/11 dust, scientists say

9/11 Media Breakthrough in Denmark

What you need to know about "Peer-Review"

Wikipedia editors livid over new paper

JREF, Paint, Kaolin, Bentham and Media Coverage of the 'Active Thermitic Material' Paper

Exklusiv: Explosivstoffe im WTC-Staub gefunden!

Visibility 9-11 Welcomes Chemist Dr. Niels H. Harrit

Visibility 9-11 Welcomes Back Dr. Steven E. Jones

Visibility 9-11 Welcomes Back Kevin Ryan

50 Fakten, 1 Debatte und 0 Verschwörungstheorien

2009-01-18T12:01:00.011+01:00

Der unermüdliche Jon Gold hat die vorläufigen Ergebnisse seiner jahrelangen Recherchearbeit in einem Artikel gebündelt, in „The Facts Speak For Themselves“. Diese 50 Fakten sind Zeile für Zeile durch glaubwürdige Quellen belegt und sie sprechen wirklich für sich, ohne irgendwelche Theorien zu erfordern. Und wer nach ihrer Lektüre noch immer meint, die offizielle
Version sei so richtig, wie sie ist, dem wird wohl nicht zu helfen sein.

Ebenfalls ohne Verschwörungstheorien kommt Jon Gold in der Debatte mit
Pat Curley von „Screw Loose Change“ aus. Wie er den selbsternannten „Debunker“ mit der Wahrheit und nichts als der Wahrheit nach Punkten klar besiegt, lässt sich hier (leider nicht in optimaler Soundqualität) bewundern:

Prominente Zweifler: Peter Scholl-Latour

2009-01-17T18:58:00.015+01:00

Peter Scholl-Latour bedarf wohl keiner weitschweifenden Vorstellung. Deutschlands erfahrenster Auslandskorrespondent wird von vielen zu Recht sehr respektiert und auch wenn man ihn sicher nicht kritiklos beurteilen sollte, ist er fraglos ein großer Experte für die islamische Welt. Da dürfte es den meisten, so sie nicht Henryk M. Broder heißen, sicherlich schwerfallen, seine Aussagen als die eines paranoiden Verschwörungstheoretikers abzutun.

Am 26.11.2002 wurde er im ZDF-Morgenmagazin interviewt:

Peter Scholl-Latour: „Kampf gegen den Terror“ ist ein Phantom-Krieg. Und wenn wir sagen, wir befinden uns in einem Kampf gegen den Terror - so viel ist ja nicht passiert; ...es ist die Tragödie vom World Trade Center gewesen, und dann sagt man bei jedem Attentat, was jetzt stattfindet, Al Qaida ist dahinter. ich bin vor ein paar Monaten...

Cherno Jobatey: Glauben Sie das nicht? Glauben Sie nicht, dass das Al Qaida war?

Peter Scholl-Latour: Nein, es gibt diese zentrale Organisation für Al Qaida in der Form nicht; ich war vor kurzem ja noch in Afghanistan, ich habe mich wirklich umgehört; alle Leute, die haben mir geschworen, den Namen Al Qaida haben sie vor dem 11. September nicht gehört…

Gegenüber der Neuen Presse blies er später ins gleiche Horn: Al-Qaida sei „eher ein Mythos, den die Amerikaner hochgespielt haben, der im Irak und der gesamten arabischen Welt aber keine so große Rolle spielt."

Zu einem der möglichen Motive des 11.9., die Wiederherstellung des
2000 plötzlich versiegten und für die Weltwirtschaft lebensnotwendigen afghanischen Drogenexports, hatte er an anderer Stelle indirekt ebenfalls etwas Interessantes zu sagen:

Welche Aufbauleistungen? Was gibt es da, außer dem Drogenanbau? Die Opiumernte ist 2005 um 40 Prozent gestiegen, aus Afghanistan
werden jetzt 92 Prozent der weltweiten Nachfrage bedient. Und die Bundeswehrsoldaten stehen in Sichtweite der Mohnfelder und schreiten nicht ein.

Und im selben Interview äußerte er sich auch zum angeblichen Mastermind des 11.9., gegen den das FBI nach eigener Auskunft ja nicht einmal stichhaltige Beweise in der Hand hat:

Wobei man nicht alles auf Osama bin Laden schieben sollte. Der hat die Anschläge des 11. September bestimmt nicht organisiert. Er hatte doch in seiner afghanischen Höhle keine Flugpläne aus den USA, um irgend- etwas zu koordinieren. Und falls er heute überhaupt noch lebt, kann er kein Telefon, kein Fax und kein Internet benutzen, wenn er nicht sofort geortet werden will. Wie kann er da Terror in Auftrag geben?

Dass Osama Bin Laden dazu logistisch gar nicht in der Lage gewesen wäre, erläuterte er in seinem Buch „Zwischen den Fronten“ auf Seite 348:

Die resignative Formel „mundus vult decipi - die Welt will betrogen werden“, muss allzuoft als Regierungsrezept herhalten. Wann werden die deutschen Politiker auf die erwiesenermaßen falsche Argumentation verzichten, die exakte Planung, die präzise Ausführung von Nine Eleven seien in den Höhlen des Hindukusch erfolgt. Mag sein, dass Osama Bin Laden, der bis 1991 als Rekrutierungs-Agent der CIA in diesem Raum tätig war, nach seiner plötzlichen, religiös motivierten Kehrtwendung gegen die USA den Auftrag zur Zerstörung des World Trade Centers erteilte. Das hätte er aber auch von jedem beliebigen Punkt der Erde aus tun können. In den vielgenannten El-Qaida-Lagern Afghanistans fand nicht viel mehr statt als infanteristische Grundausbildung und eine rudimentäre Anleitung zum Bau von Sprengsätzen. Das Spezialtraining der überwiegend saudischen Todeskandidaten als Piloten vollzog sich ausschließlich in den USA, und nur dort konnten die Flugpläne eingesehen und koordiniert werden, die den Todesengeln den Zeitplan vorgaben.

Und auf Seite 50 wies er auf einen der kontroversesten Aspekte des 11.9. hin:

Bemerkenswert ist ebenfalls die exakte Durchführung dieser Selbstmordmission. Unter dem Anprall der beiden Flugzeuge sind die monumentalen Wolkenkratzer beinahe senkrecht in sich zusammen- gesackt, wie das bei der sorgfältig vorbereiteten Sprengung eines abbruchreifen Hochhauses geschähe. Die Umgebung blieb weitgehend verschont.

Diesen Durchblick würde man sich von jüngeren Journalisten auch wünschen. Aber die sind ja zu sehr damit beschäftigt, offizielle Verlautbarungen einfach nachzuplappern, da bleibt für eigene Gedanken nun mal keine Zeit. Peter Scholl-Latour hingegen verkörpert auch mit 84 Jahren noch immer, was guter Journalismus sein sollte, und bleibt uns hoffentlich noch viele weitere Jahrzehnte erhalten.

Prominente Zweifler: Michael Parenti

2009-01-17T12:15:00.011+01:00

Michael Parenti ist ein beängstigend kluger Mann. Sei’s über das alte Rom oder das Christentum, über den Faschismus oder den Kapitalismus, die Ermordung John F. Kennedys oder die Julius Caesars, über Venezuela oder Jugoslawien, über Wahlbetrug oder Medienmanipulation, stets weiß er etwas Gescheites zu sagen. Seine mit Witz und Charme vorgetragenen Einsichten vermögen es immer wieder, auch die am härtesten zementierten Denkdogmen in Stücke zu sprengen. Und im Gegensatz zu anderen linken Intellektuellen wie Noam Chomsky oder Alexander Cockburn, die sich mit ihrer diesbezüglichen Sturheit ein um’s andere Mal blamieren, schreckt er auch vor dem Igitt-Wort „Verschwörung“ nicht zurück. Seinen Artikel „Conspiracy phobia on the left“ (Verschwörungsphobie auf der Linken) über die seltsame Realitätsverleugnung der Linken, die Verschwörungen partout nicht Verschwörungen nennen wollen und denen hanebüchene Zufälle noch jedes Mal plausibler erscheinen als die triftigsten Verschwörungsindizien, sollte man gelesen haben.

So dürfte es nicht verwundern, dass Dr. Michael Parenti wie jeder kluge Mensch, der sich vorurteilsfrei mit ihr beschäftigt hat, an der offiziellen Version des 11.9. zweifelt. Schon 2004 unterschrieb er eine Petition von 911truth.org, die u.a. den Insiderhandel, die ignorierten Warnungen und den Ausfall der Luftabwehr ansprach. Und in „Contrary Notions“ schrieb er später auf Seite 334:

There are the classified documents and disappeared materials and many unanswered questions relating to the mind boggling events of 9/11.

In seinem Vortrag „Lies, War, and Empire“ sagte er:

The findings or non-findings of the 9/11 commission... There are many unanswered questions about 9/11 that really do need further investigation. I mean, would you really accept a commission that's been hand-picked by George Bush? Think of it that way.

In einem Artikel über das Project for the New American Century [PNAC] wies er auf dessen Ruf nach einem „neuen Pearl Harbor“ hin und ließ zwischen den Zeilen seine wirkliche Meinung zum 11.9. durchschimmern:

The PNAC report bemoaned the fact that US public opinion might not go along with a totalistic global policy unless it felt compelled to do so in response to “some catastrophic and catalyzing event---like a new Pearl Harbor.” In another of those seemingly fortuitous happenings that work so well for the plutocracy, the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon served as just such a catastrophic catalyst.

Der 11.9. war für ihn „ein weiteres jener scheinbar zufälligen Ereignisse“, die der Plutokratie so gut dienen. Im nächsten Satz wies er außerdem auf die unzähligen ignorierten Warnungen hin:

The White House seems to have done nothing to prevent the attacks despite any number of warnings.

2008 sprach Peter Dale Scott in einem gemeinsamen Interview mit Tariq Ali und Michael Parenti PNAC und das „neue Pearl Harbor“ an. Parenti nannte den 11.9. daraufhin „godsend… very godsend“, ein Geschenk des Himmels also.

Barrie Zwickers Buch „Towers of Deception“ ist folgender Kommentar Parentis vorangestellt:

Even skeptics like myself will find much in Barrie Zwicker’s book to
ponder, enjoy, and, yes, even embrace. Interestingly researched and well written, a valuable aid to correct thinking about “conspiracy theory.”

Und das über ein Buch, das u.a. sehr deutlich die kontrollierten Sprengungen der World Trade Center anspricht. Da erstaunt es einen dann auch nicht mehr, wie Jon Gold Michael Parenti aus ihrer Email-Korrespondenz zitiert:

Yes, it could well have been an inside job. Most certainly Bush et al knew that an attack was pending (they say so) and they looked the other way (tho they deny looking the other way of course).

„Gut möglich, dass es ein Inside Job gewesen ist“, meint Parenti. Auf jeden Fall habe die Bush-Regierung gewusst, dass ein Anschlag bevorstand, und ihn geschehen lassen. Und zumindest darauf werden sich mittlerweile die meisten Menschen einigen können.

Er spricht selten über dieses Thema, aber wenn er darauf angesprochen wird, zeigt sich der wunderbare Michael Parenti auch in Sachen 9/11 unerschrocken wie eh und je und stellt damit alle anderen großen linken Intellektuellen, die entweder zu zahm oder blind sind, weit in den Schatten.

Hoch soll er leben.

NIST im freien Fall

2009-01-14T17:55:00.014+01:00

Der Physiklehrer David Chandler hat NIST in die Enge getrieben und dazu gezwungen, den Bericht über World Trade Center 7 zu ändern. Jetzt gibt NIST zu, dass WTC 7 2,25 Sekunden lang in der Geschwindigkeit des freien Falls einstürzte, auf einer Strecke von 8 Stockwerken.

In Stage 2, the north face descended at gravitational acceleration, as the buckled columns provided negligible support to the upper portion of the north face. This free fall drop continued for approximately 8 stories or 32.0 m (105 ft), the distance traveled between times t = 1.75 s and t = 4.0 s.

Die neue offizielle Version lautet demzufolge: Die Nordseite ist für etwa 2 Sekunden in der Geschwindigkeit des freien Falls kollabiert. Und die Videos zeigen eindeutig, dass die Südseite der besagten 8 Stockwerke parallel zur Nordseite und demnach gleich schnell absackt.

„Freier Fall“ bedeutet de facto, dass kein Widerstand vorherrscht. Jeder noch so geringe Widerstand hätte den Einsturz so sehr verlangsamt, dass es nicht mehr freier Fall gewesen wäre. In diesem Sinne hatte Dr. Shyam Sunder von NIST ja vorher auch erklärt, weshalb der freie Fall für WTC 7 ausgeschlossen wäre:

The analyses show there is a difference in time between a free-fall time-- free-fall time would be an object that has no structural components below it. ... And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case and you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place where everything was not instantaneous.

Sunder stellte richtig fest: Freier Fall kann nur stattfinden, wenn sich keine strukturellen Komponenten unter dem fallenden Objekt befinden und hier traf das fallende Objekt (die oberen Stockwerke) auf eine weitgehend intakte Gebäudestruktur, die Widerstand hätte leisten müssen. Das heißt also, dass die oberen Stockwerke so durch 8 Stockwerke fielen, als gäbe es diese nicht. 8 Stockwerke mit 24 Kernsäulen und 57 Perimetersäulen aus Stahl - sie wurden praktisch zu Luft.

Kann so etwas auf natürliche Weise in unserer schönen und heiß und innig geliebten Realität geschehen? Die Antwort hat vier Buchstaben und reimt sich auf „klein“. Als einzig sinnvolle Erklärung bleibt also, dass jemand diese acht Stockwerke mit Sprengstoff aus dem Weg geräumt hat - ob uns dieser Gedanke nun gefällt oder nicht.

WTC 7 in Freefall:

NIST Finally Admits Freefall, Part I:

NIST Finally Admits Freefall, Part II:

NIST Finally Admits Freefall, Part III:

Und so stürzt auch der auf Sand gebaute Wolkenkratzer namens „Offizielle Version des Einsturzes von World Trade Center 7“ in sich zusammen in der Geschwindigkeit des freien Falls. Todesopfer fordert er zum Glück keine, wohl aber die Reputation einiger Journalisten, Wissenschaftler und Politiker, die sich ihre Schlussfolgerungen offensichtlich von Vorurteilen hatten bestimmen lassen. Möge es ihnen eine Lehre sein.

Conspiracy and the State of the Union

2009-01-01T23:31:00.001+01:00

by Jamey Hecht, PhD

Assistant Managing Editor, From The Wilderness

http://www.911inquiry.org/Presentations/JameyHecht.htm

Based on a presentation at the Internation Citizen’s Inquiry Into 9-11, Phase Two: Toronto, May 2004

www.jameyhecht.com

www.fromthewilderness.com

John Judge: Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, so long as you call yourself a coincidence theorist. - Coalition On Political Assassinations (COPA) presentation, 2002

Philip Berg: Conspiracy is among the most common legal categories of crime – conspiracy to commit murder; conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist act, and on and on. -International Citizen’s Inquiry Into 9-11, Phase One: San Francisco presentation, 2004

Greg Palast: People tell me they don’t believe in conspiracy; I tell them, look – I have the minutes of the meetings! What more do you want? -Interview

John Newman: Let me introduce myself. I’m a conspiracy theorist.-JFK Lancer’s ‘November In Dallas’ conference presentation, 1999

Peter Dale Scott: “If a nation decides to live by lies, it has chosen a course of intellectual stagnation, and ultimately of political decay.” -The Assassinations, 1975 (ix).

Kevin Costner in Bull Durham: “I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone; I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter…”

E. Martin Schotz: “One of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed and nothing can be known…nothing of significance, that is.” -History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy

INTRODUCTION: 9-11, 11-22, AND THE STATE OF THE UNION

Let me begin by saying that the United States is extraordinary in that the idealism of our founding documents proceeded straight from the 18th Century’s Enlightenment principles of the universal rights of human beings. Though the Indian genocide, the genocidal African slave trade, and the lack of women’s suffrage tore gaping holes in the American application of these principles, our Constitution remained among the world’s best hopes for the achievement of equality, opportunity, and civic peace. The French Revolution emulated our own; the 1994 post-apartheid Constitution of South Africa — one of the most beautiful documents of hope ever conceived — was modeled on these same American documents, and as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out, national liberation movements the world over (including post-French Vietnam in 1945) have taken our Declaration of Independence as the template of their own Declarations. Rather than list each of the remarkable advances our democracy has made — from the Bill of Rights to the Progressive legislation of the Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson administrations, to Robert Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 — let me point out that each significant improvement was driven by popular participation in civic life: in a word, democracy.

Dissidents are patriotic critics — in the best cases, anti-nationalist cosmopolitans — whose arguments have not yet won the day. If ever the merits of their cases are established and their ideals legitimated, others come to recognize the urgent benevolence that motivated their dissent, and their faces appear on postage stamps with those of Thom Paine, Crazy Horse, and Paul Robeson. A critic is an interpreter who uses his or her mind and heart to clarify a text or a situation for the effective benefit of the larger public. Political criticism is a vexed but noble attempt to think past the limits of official opinion and earnestly diagnose the legitimacy of our political institutions and their occupants. Critics of the national security state are marginalized as dreamers, sometimes brilliant in their efforts at information gathering and critique, but finally unable to dramatically change the brutal order of realpolitik they denounce. The public they address is mostly indifferent, powerless, and thoroughly distracted from issues of the greatest possible relevance to their own well-being.

The forces of violence, reaction, and American exceptionalism can claim a long series of epochal triumphs, of which I will name only the most egregious: Operation Paperclip, which brought the Nazi Intelligence “community” into the nascent CIA (thereby rescuing the most depraved murderers in history from certain death at the hands of British military tribunals); the National Security Act of 1947, which established the CIA as a secret society of military adventurism and political sabotage under the guise of an intelligence-gathering body; the murders of President Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, which issued in a disastrous Vietnam War that killed up to three million people and pitched the U.S. economy into a permanent free-fall of debt; the Savings and Loan Robbery, which did so much to bankrupt the vanishing middle class; the 1990’s three trillion dollar theft under the auspices of the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which motivated America’s international creditors to begin withdrawing their confidence from the dollar; and the “velvet coup” of the fraudulent presidential election of 2000, which openly discredited the residual myth of popular sovereignty. But perhaps 11-22-63 and 9-11-01 are the deepest wounds they have inflicted upon the body politic so far. These represent two seizures of state power by the most violent elements of the longstanding elites who make policy in the absence of popular sovereignty and genuine legislative oversight. In the long meantime, they have consolidated their power and expanded their domain of operations and propaganda with an inexorable momentum.

Policy is no longer driven by leadership figures, but by consortia of mutually interested elites. The forty years since 11-22 have seen exponential growth in defense spending as a portion of the USG’s annual budget. Forty-six cents of every tax dollar we pay goes to military debt payments, salaries, deployments, and weapons stockpiling. This flood of capital into the arms industry drives a domestic policy of despair and a “foreign” policy of violence. Weapons are expended so that they can be replaced; their manufacture enriches Lockheed-Martin, the largest purveyor of lethal weapons in the world, and its competitive partners. In pursuit of new raw materials to seize and new markets to monopolize, corporations and their clients drive policy toward aggressive expansionism. CIA is the spearhead of the war process, so its activity has been cloaked from all genuine Congressional oversight. The beauty of the CIA’s position is that it apparently always takes its orders from the President, but for the most part it also insures that the President orders roughly what CIA wants. When he doesn’t do so, and insists on forming his own intelligence apparatus inside the White House or the Pentagon — as in the Nixon and G. W. Bush administrations, respectively — the CIA is likely to destroy the administration. Whenever that happens, the administration is unseated on the strength of some nonviolent crime like a “third rate burglary” or the disclosure of a CIA operative’s identity. Bombing Cambodia or Afghanistan at the cost of thousands of lives never ranks as an impeachable offense.

Only a handful of Senators have endured the overwhelming personal and political risk of applying even a kernel of real power to the disciplining of the Intelligence “community”: Senators Frank Church, Gary Hart, Richard Schweiker, John Kerry, James Trafficant; Richard Shelby, and Charles Grassley are among this small number.

Since the Vietnam War, the diplomatic arm of the U.S. government has withered into a propagandistic rubber-stamp instrument. Whereas the Department of State was once so powerful that its Secretary shaped foreign policy by reporting viable options to the Chief Executive, today the Department has been reduced to visa functions, information gathering, and statute enforcement. But as we’ve seen, CIA regularly overrides the visa authority of State (often with murderous results), and intelligence agents of all sorts violate the Arms Export Control Act at with an institutionalized impunity. To view the heartbreaking laxity of this law, see the page on the website of the State Department which explains its mandate.[1]

One more bitter irony is the CIA’s use of the State Department as a hidden channel for its covert programs; more broadly, State is a tool for the implementation of policies driven by the lobbies from oil, arms, drugs, and construction. If it were really a public (and not a private) institution, the diplomatic arm of a democratic government, it would advance diplomacy-based solutions to international crises[2]. Instead, private firms (e.g., Kellog, Brown and Root; DynCorp; Halliburton; Bell; Bechtel; Boeing; etc.) and their proxies in the NSA and NSC (e.g. Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter, etc) and CIA (e.g. Ray Cline, Laili Helms, etc.) wield it as one special sword-and-shield in their vast tactical arsenal.[3] Colin Powel, the current Secretary, is a military man whose rise to power began with his cover-up of the Mi Lai massacre.[4] Where the public perception of Powell’s role in the months leading up to Gulf War II was that of a moderate who pushed for diplomacy, at the crucial moment Powell neither strategized for such a policy, nor resigned in protest: he became the very spokesperson of the martial policy he had formerly seemed to oppose. In doing so by means of false documents, it’s been suggested that Powell made the State Department look both servile and conniving. And he certainly committed a repetition of the “moral suicide” that started his political career.

So much for diplomacy. As for an informed electorate, all major American newspapers and television networks are owned by defense corporations like G.E. The Permanent Warfare State has absorbed the media into its own project, neutralizing mainstream American journalism. Even the largest and oldest Leftist journal, The Nation, utterly fails the 9-11 test that any reliable news outlet must pass. In this case, as in that of 11-22, journalistic integrity can be measured by the frequency with which the phrase “intelligence failures” appears in its pages. As I’ve written elsewhere, crime and failure are not the same thing.[5]

Elsewhere on the Left, Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn seem to me quite wrong about 9-11 and its significance, but they are vocal and passionate critics of the long history of global CIA / NSC / JCS violence and political sabotage. Yet both writers argue that leadership figures count so much less than the elites they represent, that it doesn’t much matter who is in office. This kind of thinking prizes independence more than insight; since everyone else quarrels over who killed JFK and what it means, one can easily find a fresh position by simply declaring that the assassination itself is a red herring, the wrong place to look for an understanding of politico-economic reality. A single hearing of the American University Speech, a single reading of NSAM-263, ought to persuade anyone so circumspect as Noam Chomsky that unique officeholders do emerge, at least once or twice per century.

By the same token, Chomsky and Cockburn are important critics of the crypto-fascism of the G.W. Bush administration. But their insight is sometimes limited by their commitment to a structural view of society. Admittedly, had it not been for Adolph Hitler, Hermann Goering, and Heinrich Himmler, some other successful fascists might well have shattered the Weimar Republic and begun a domestic and international reign of terror. But I believe that the Nazi regime was staffed by especially damaged and talented individuals whose capacity for sadistic destruction exceeded that nearly-universal disposition demonstrated in Stanley Millman’s obedience experiments and the Stanford Prison simulation study. So it is with the neocons and most of the executive branch in the G.W. Bush administration. The now-famous Operation Northwoods provided for American deaths, but on 9-11 those deaths ran into the thousands, and most of the people murdered that day were well within the ethnic and socio-economic identity with which their actual killers identify to the most vulgar extremity of white supremacy and social Darwinism. That’s not quite typical, even among imperial dynasties.

Disputes among critics are harmless compared to the government’s assault on the public mind. Given what we now know about the national and global consequences of this assassination, our trouble in 2002 has grown more or less directly out of 11-22-63. And in response to the pressures of recession, the Patriot Act, endless war, and the events of 9-11-01 — in other words, in response to the dawning reality of Peak Oil — the Political Justice movement is indeed growing, and many of those drawn to it find themselves led on as if by a specter to the 9-11 and / or the Kennedy Assassinations. Whether their initial interest is in heroin traffic, CIA black ops, police malfeasance, Constitutional history, the Federal Reserve, US-Latin American economic partnership, or any other aspect of the modern world, sooner or later the myriad implications of these events become relevant, and on looking at the evidence, another critic is born.

THE TERM ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.

“Theory” is a term from Plato, derived from the Ancient Greek theorein, “to see.” From it we get the word “theater.” Theory is a conceptual overview of the way something works. In science, the word refers to a guiding set of concepts derived from testable hypotheses about a domain of facts in nature or procedures in an art.[6]

When the evidence is gathered together, some observer sees it in such a way that it configures an hypothesis.

When that hypothesis is verified by induction and experiment, it can be gathered together with similar hypotheses from analogous cases.

If we say, 9-11 was orchestrated by the bin Laden organization, the Pakistani intelligence agency, and elements of the neoconservative group that seized power in 2000, that’s an hypothesis, derived logically from a set of documented facts that constitute evidence. It isn’t a theory. It can become part of a theory if it’s joined with other hypotheses into a coherent descriptive pattern that can help to predict future events in general terms.

For instance, the amply demonstrated hypothesis that the 35th President of the United States was murdered by a consortium of interests including the CIA, Cuban exiles, organized crime, and the military. 11-22 and 9-11 are examples of premeditated murder by more than one person – in law, they are cases of conspiracy to commit murder (and fraud, and perjury, and treason). Taken together, they imply a theory whose greatest expression is the work of Peter Dale Scott, who coined the term deep politics: “the constant, everyday interaction between the constitutionally elected government and forces of violence, forces of crime, which appear to be the enemies of that government.”[7] Deep politics is a robust theory, a powerful explanatory account of demonstrable phenomena; it applies to myriad cases and offers a unified understanding of their causes and meanings. Like Goethe’s conceptual account of color, and like Newton’s rival account which refuted it, Scott’s deep-political theory applies uniformly to the domain it describes.

Conspiracy, on the other hand, is a hypothesis about a particular case at hand. The only rigorous meaning that the phrase “conspiracy theory” can have would be that political crimes involving more than one actor are usually exceptional episodes unrelated to one another – rather than the ongoing, systemic and unacknowledged relationships between authorities and the criminals they are paid to hinder and to punish.

The appeal of the phrase “conspiracy theory” lies in the slang meaning of “theory”: unproven and even unprovable claims about the way things get done in government and business. But there are two problems here.

First, a theory is still rightly called a theory long after it has been proven, even to the limits of human understanding. Einstein’s theory of Relativity and Darwin’s theory of evolution are incomplete, like every product of human thought. But they are as certain as any grounds we can give for them, as certain as the palpable facts on which they rest. The public imagines that this word “theory” implies confusion and controversy. It doesn’t.

The second problem is this: in order for a theory to be worthy of that name, it must be falsifiable. This is a term invented by Karl Popper; it means that your description of events has to be demonstrably true based on valid experiments – or genuine evidence – that might otherwise have proven it demonstrably false. Like the hypotheses that form its bones and flesh, a theory must turn out to be either true or false, or it’s not a theory. For instance, consider the beautiful claim that the world is governed by a God who rules by reward and punishment. Nothing observable counts as evidence for or against the claim. If I say “show me a sign,” an immediate lightning bolt on my head is not evidence of a God any more than the absence of a sign is evidence against it. Nothing can count as a test, so theism is not a theory; it may be something wonderful, but it’s something else. Relativity, however, is a theory of the natural world, verified by experiments like Michaelson-Morley which demonstrated its conformity to observable facts – and had the experiments turned out differently, the theory would have been falsified. The public thinks falsifiability means that the theory can already be disproved and is therefore wrong. It actually means that the theory is either right or wrong, but not meaningless.

• In a criminal conspiracy, Arthur Anderson and Enron defrauded investors and employees of billions of dollars. But they also compromised the S.E.C., the Congress, the executive branch, and the duck-hunting judicial branch in order to make part of this activity technically legal. That’s deep politics.

• In a criminal conspiracy, a core group of Secret Service personnel (Roberts, Greer, Boring, etc.) conspired with elements of the CIA (Phillips, Angleton, Dulles, etc.) to murder the 35th President of the United States. But they also collaborated with organized crime figures (Trafficante, Giancana, Marcello, etc.), paramilitary groups, and international heroin traffickers. That’s deep politics.

"We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th, malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty."

-George W Bush speaking before the UN General Assembly 11/10/2001

When somebody does something really terrible, he tries to attribute it to somebody else. Sometimes this gets out of hand, and he unconsciously betrays himself. This applies to intolerable feelings just as it applies to the criminal guilt that generates them. Here are some definitions and examples of what psychologists mean by “defense mechanisms”:

Projective Identification

The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by falsely attributing to another his or her own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or thoughts. Unlike simple projection, the individual does not fully disavow what is projected. Instead, the individual remains aware of his or her own affects or impulses but mis-attributes them as justifiable reactions to the other person. Not infrequently, the individual induces the very feelings in others that were first mistakenly believed to be there, making it difficult to clarify who did what to whom first.

If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier... just as long as I’m the dictator... –G.W.B. in Washington, Dec.18, 2000, during first trip to DC as President-Elect

The nature of the terrorists is evidenced once again - we see their utter contempt for innocent life. They hate freedom, they hate free nations. –G.W.B., at joint news conference with Tony Blair, Thursday, 20 November, 2003

Omnipotence

The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by feeling or acting as if he or she possesses special powers or abilities and is superior to others.

‘Of course not,’ he said. “I’m the commander. See, I don’t have to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation. –G.W.B., when asked Bob Woodward whether he talked with staff and advisers about what he was doing.

Splitting

The individual deals with emotional conflict or stressors by compartmentalizing opposite emotional states, and by failing to integrate the positive and negative qualities of the self or others into cohesive images. Images of the self – and of other persons and institutions – tend to alternate between polar opposites: exclusively loving, powerful, worthy, nurturing, and kind, or exclusively bad, hateful, angry, destructive, rejecting, or worthless. Splitting may compromise an adult’s ability to function well in many ways. In order to maintain a view of oneself or one’s world that is either completely ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’, aspects of reality must be denied. Splitting acts as a set of blinders that keep all contradicting evidence out of sight.

Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. –G.W.B at the pulpit of Washington National Cathedral, Sept. 15, 2001

Projection

Projection is attributing your own unacceptable impulses to someone else. The impulses are still judged unacceptable but they belong to someone else, not you. This defense mechanism is commonly over utilized by the paranoid.

The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages -- leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. – G.W.B. State of the Union Address, Jan 29, 2003

One source of [WMD’s] is dangerous and secretive regimes that build weapons of mass destruction to intimidate their neighbors and force their influence upon the world… The former dictator of Iraq possessed and used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. For 12 years, he defied the will of the international community. He refused to disarm or account for his illegal weapons and programs. – G.W.B., Remarks by the President on Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation, Fort Lesley J. McNair - National Defense University, Washington, D.C.

DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. – Amy Worthington, Triangle Free Press, July 11, 2003

As many as 400,000 U.S. troops entered into and some lived as long as two months inside areas heavily contaminated by more than 640,000 pounds (300,000,000 grams) of very fine, yet highly toxic, DU dust particles. – National Gulf War Resource Center, August 27, 1999

Dr. Asaf Durakovic explains that the initial symptoms will be mostly neurological, showing up as headaches, weakness, dizziness and muscle fatigue. The long-term effects are cancers and other radiation-related illnesses, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, joint and muscle pain, rashes, neurological and/or nerve damage, mood disturbances, infections, lung and kidney damage, vision problems, auto-immune deficiencies and severe skin conditions. It also causes increases in miscarriages, maternal mortality and genetic birth defects. – Sara Flounders, “Another US war crime? Iraqi cities ‘hot’ with depleted uranium” www.globalresearch.ca, 18 August 2003

The Pentagon and the United Nations estimate that the U.S. and Britain used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium during attacks on Iraq in March and April--far more than the 375 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War… By now, half of all the 697,000 U.S. soldiers involved in the 1991 war have reported serious illnesses. According to the American Gulf War Veterans Association, more than 30 percent of these soldiers are chronically ill and are receiving disability benefits from the Veterans Administration. Such a high occurrence of various symptoms has led to the illnesses being named Gulf War Syndrome.

Let me close with a passage from what I consider the best book on the subject, Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics:

Bureaucratic struggles, even when not officially acknowledged, could be discussed in mainstream journals like the New York Review of Books. My articles which focused on underlying economic motives for U.S. intervention were denied such outlets, but could still be published in journals like The Nation, or what I have come to think of as the establishment left. But even the Nation is fiercely hostile to the notion that criminal interventions… can themselves be part of the system or process by which we are governed. (Scott, 10)

APPENDIX: CONSPIRACY STATUTE

http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/web/sdocuments.nsf/0/dd07ed3536d4559b882564b5000eb4fe?OpenDocument

Office of the Circuit Executive

Ninth Circuit Model Criminal Jury Instructions

8.18 CONSPIRACY—KNOWING OF AND ASSOCIATION WITH OTHER CONSPIRATORS

A conspiracy may continue for a long period of time and may include the performance of many transactions. It is not necessary that all members of the conspiracy join it at the same time, and one may become a member of a conspiracy without full knowledge of all the details of the unlawful scheme or the names, identities, or locations of all of the other members.

Even though a defendant did not directly conspire with [the other defendant] [or] [other conspirators] in the overall scheme, the defendant has, in effect, agreed to participate in the conspiracy if it is proved beyond a reasonable doubt that:

(1) the defendant directly conspired with one or more conspirators to carry out at least one of the objects of the conspiracy,

(2) the defendant knew or had reason to know that other conspirators were involved with those with whom the defendant directly conspired, and

(3) the defendant had reason to believe that whatever benefits the defendant might get from the conspiracy were probably dependent upon the success of the entire venture.

It is no defense that a person's participation in a conspiracy was minor or for a short period of time.

Comment

A person may be a member of a conspiracy even though the person does not know all of the purposes of or participants in the conspiracy. United States v. Escalante, 637 F.2d 1197, 1200 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 856 (1980); United States v. Kearney, 560 F.2d 1358, 1362 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 971 (1977).

A single conspiracy can be established even though it took place during a long period of time during which new members joined and old members dropped out. United States v. Green, 523 F.2d 229, 233 (2d Cir.1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1074 (1976). See also United States v. Thomas, 586 F.2d 123, 132 (9th Cir.1978) (holding that proof that the defendant "knew he was plotting in concert with others to violate the law was sufficient to raise the necessary inference that he joined in the overall agreement"); United States v. Perry, 550 F.2d 524, 528 (9th Cir.) (holding that the law of conspiracy does not require the government “to prove that all of the defendants met together at the same time and ratified the illegal scheme”), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 918, 434 U.S. 827 (1977).

[1] Licenses for India and Pakistan: H.R. 1646 also amended Section 9001(e) of Public Law 106-79, making applicable to munitions authorizations for India and Pakistan the dollar amount thresholds of Section 36 of AECA (i.e., the global non-NATO thresholds of $14/50 million for MDE/non-MDE respectively).

Firearms Notification Requirements: Sales or exports of U.S. Munitions List Category I articles at $1 million or more will also, henceforth, require prior notification to Congress pursuant to a new provision H.R. 1646 added to Section 36 of the AECA. (Exporters are reminded that, as with other notification requirements, contracts and orders may not be split to avoid notification.)

Reports to Congress: Recently posted reports include the Section 655 Report on all authorizations for Fiscal Year 2001 and the End Use Monitoring Report for 2001, which points out the continued need for the utmost care by U.S. defense exporters in assuring that all appropriate measures are in place in order to prevent U.S.-origin military equipment from falling into the wrong hands.

[2] For an example of a State official who espouses this view and has resigned in protest as a result, see the Kiesling letter at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030103_resignation.html

[3] The evidence for this claim is so massive that any choice of references is quite arbitrary, but see for example Forbidden Truth, Jean-Charles Brisard, p.7; Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, p.xviii.

[4] http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/reagan.htm http://www.mathaba.net/news/news1/zc10528panafegal.htm http://www.lutte-ouvriere-journal.org/art_prt.php?LO=1805&ARTICLE=28

[5] “Bad Faith Again: An Open Letter to The Nation Magazine,” Media Monitors Network (MMN), May 12, 2003: www.mediamonitors.net/jameyhecht1.html; “Failure and Crime Are Not the Same: 9/11's Limited Hangouts,” From The Wilderness, November 22, 2003: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112203_failure_crime.html

[6] http://www.google.com/search?q=define:theory

[7] http://www.math.unl.edu/~lcharbon/JFK/presentations/debate

The Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy

2009-01-01T20:05:00.000+01:00

from:
The Illuminati Conspiracy - The Sapien System
Donald Holmes, MD(C)(1987)
New Falcon Publication
655 East Thunderbird
Phoneix, AZ 85022
602-246-3546
Introduction by Robert Anton Wilson

The Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy

by

ROBERT ANTON WILSON

WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

—Oz the Omnipotent

It is characteristic of the primitive conditions on this backward planet that virtually nobody knows any of the basic facts about how the human race is actually governed. For instance—

1. Governments are not nearly as important as most people think. Since we live in a post-barter economy—a money economy—those who control the money supply effectively control the planet. Governments gave up all attempt to coin or control money in the 19th Century, mostly because they did not trust one another, i.e. no nation had faith that the coinage or currency of another nation was really worth what it claimed to be worth. The great International
Banks stepped into this vacuum and, by demonstrating more fiscal rectitude than governments had in the past, became the creators of money in the modern world.

After the banks had control, they no longer needed to be quite so prim in their fiscal rectitude. Nobody could challenge them.

This means that governments cannot do anything—good or ill, wise or foolish—unless the banks first lend them the money for the project. The power is in the banks. The governments survive on the permission of the banks. If the banks cut off their credit, governments die. Any government that resists has its credit cut off and dies.

As Buckminster Fuller stressed in all his writings (especially Critical Path and Grunch of Giants) this means that, in the modem world, banks act and governments only re-act to the situations the bankers have ordained. Even earlier, historian Brooks Adams wrote of the British financier Samuel Loyd, in The Law of Civilization and Decay,

He comprehended that, with expanding trade, an inelastic currency must rise in value; he saw that, with sufficient resources at command his class might be able to establish such a rise, almost at pleasure; certainly that they could manipulate it when it came, by taking advantage of foreign exchange.

In other words, as soon as the great multi-national banks had control of the money supply, they saw that they could manipulate cash and credit to maximize profits. They would have been rather dense if they had not seen this. Nonetheless, while these financiers quite sanely and legally maximize profits, the rest of us are at their mercy; but we never elected them to this position of power, and, by and large, we do not even know who they are.

2. In the present decade, it costs $50,000,000 to run a campaign for the presidency of the United States, $10,000,000 to run a campaign for the Senate and $5,000,000 for the House of Representatives. (These figures are documented in Buckminster Fuller's Grunch of Giants.) This means that the U.S.—the strongest country in the West—is not only "owned" (in trillion-dollar debt to) the banks, but also governed by persons who are either (a) millionaires or (b) heavily in debt to millionaires. In the words of ex-Senator Pettigrew, we now have "government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations

3. As Edward Luttwak documents in his cheerfully Machiavellian little text, The Coup d'Etat, more governments have been changed, since World War II by the coup d'Etat than by any other method. More governments have been changed by coup than by all the democratic elections and revolutions combined.

Since every coup is by definition a conspiracy, this means that conspiracies have had more effect on the past 40 years of world history than all the electoral politics and all the popular revolutions added together. That is rather ominous, in a period when "educated" opinion holds that it is infamous, nutty, eccentric or downright paranoid to think about conspiracies at all. We are, in effect, forbidden to think about how the planet is actually governed.

4. If governments cannot act without permission of the banks— without loans or "lines of credit" granted by the banks—and if the U.S. government is "owned" by the multi-millionaire (or billionaire) banking and corporate elite, and if other governments are, more often than not, changed by conspiratorial coup, the major portion of humanity is economically-politically controlled by persons who are largely unknown to the general public and/or have never been elected to any office. Democratic theory is beautiful and inspirational, but has nothing to do with the actual situation of the domesticated primates of this boondocks planet.

5. If the masses of the planet are politically-economically controlled by shadowy financiers and conspiratorial adventurers, the same masses are intellectually controlled by persons who are more visible but equally unpalatable to the Rationalist view of history. In blunt language, nearly 300 years after the Age of Reason was prematurely announced, most people in most nations most of the time are mentally in total bondage to religious leaders who operate on sheer bluk, i.e. on the basis of claims that cannot be proven and appear clearly insane to everybody who hasn't been raised within their frameworks.

The Methodist can see how absurd are the beliefs of Roman Catholics. The Catholics can see the obvious insanity of the Sikh militants who blow up airplanes because there are a few Hindus aboard. The Sikhs, no doubt, can see how nonsensical Scientology is. But none of the people processed by any of these cults can see how crazy their own cult is. It is often quite hard for a
rational observer to determine if the leaders of these cults are just cynically raking in the cash or are genuinely as deluded as their brainwashed followers.

One can acquire a reputation as a satirist, a wit, a cynic, etc. simply by stating blunt facts. For instance, it is quite clear from the above that the human race is largely governed politico-economically by unknown financial cliques and criminal scoundrels and governed intellectually by borderline psychotics and charlatans. But we have all been so conditioned and indoctrinated that to state the facts simply makes it sound as if one is being sarcastic or perhaps even trying to be"shocking."

Let us look at the situation of this planet in a little more detail.

SOCIOBIOLOGY OF DECEIT

All men are born liars.

—Liam O'Flaherty, Autobiography (first sentence)

Conspiracy is the first manifestation of intelligent life.

The original organic molecules formed affinity groups and conspired to exploit the resources of this planet. Working in small cells originally, these DNA conquistadores quickly developed organizations of higher complexity and spread a network of hungry, predatory Life over the previously dead Earth. In less than 3,500,000,000 years this network has expanded from the ocean beds to the very peaks on the Himalayas. No square centimeter of Earth is uninfested.

The trapdoor spiders formed their own secret society and went underground. They lurked silently, hidden beneath a plausible surface of twigs and soil, waiting to pounce out and devour any beetle or other tasty-looking morsel that happened to pass by.

The day of the undercover agent had come.

This technique of cover-up and disguise has proven an evolutionary success and is widely copied everywhere. Thousands of species of conspiratorial insects even today still hide behind ingenious make-up that deceives us into thinking they are only branches or rocks.

Other species got even smarter even faster. Polar bears donned white fur coats to fade into snowy landscapes. The leopard's spots make it hard to distinguish from speckled sunlight on foliage. The Norway rat (mus rattus Norwegious) learned to hide by day and come forth under cover of darkness.

The first human beings looked about them and very sensibly concluded, "It's a jungle out there." Human psychology has remained jungle psychology. As historian Carl Oglesby writes in The Yankee and Cowboy War

... a multitude of conspiracies contend in the night.... Conspiracy is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means . . . and where there is no limit to power, there is no limit to conspiracy

As soon as we find evidence of human beings on this planet, we find evidence of secret societies. Paleolithic paintings show that they met, typically, in the deepest, darkest caves, and they plotted sorcery and mischief against all competing species.

In every tribe known to anthropology, we still find secret societies. Most tribes have all-male secret societies, but many also have all-female secret societies. Most readers will probably remember that they had their own secret societies as children, with passwords and quasi-Freemasonic grips determinedly hidden from the adults.

>From this evolutionary perspective, every paranoid is partly right. The major error of the paranoid appears to be his characteristic belief in one jumbo Mega-Conspiracy that explains everything This is impossible, because it violates basic laws of primate psychology. Domesticated primates like wild primates are mischievous, sly and have a keen sense of humor: the double-cross is their most characteristic invention.

George Washington, who rose to power by conspiring against his king, said with blunt honesty, "Nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests." This is why governments, corporations and other large-scale conspiracies all have a natural life-span, like other living systems. There is no government on this planet that has existed in its present form for more
than 200 years; aside from the Dutch East India Company, most corporations rise and fall within 100 years (average). Outside of paranoid fantasy and Romantic fiction, most conspiracies collapse of their own"internal contradictions"within months or years. (Thus, if there actually is one big jumbo-conspiracy governing this planet, it must be, as Donald Holmes wittily
suggests in the following pages, of non-human origin.)

The study of conspiracy as a branch of primate psychology, has great interest in itself, as Machiavelli knew; but real conspiracies are not as clever or long-lived as the ones that paranoids and ideologists imagine; they are simply much dirtier.

It is one of the ironies of our time that conspiracies and secret societies have proliferated more than ever at precisely the same time it has become impolite and uncouth to discuss them. In this sense, the Nazis defeated the Liberal Democracies in World War II, because they have achieved a form of Thought Control over the Liberal Mind. Liberals are afraid to think of conspiracies because that might lead to the One Big Mega-Conspiracy, i.e. to"thinking like Hitler." But a mind chained by Tabu is a mind unfree. I believe it is time we broke Hitler's power over our minds and began to think in terms of the facts instead of being restrained by Tabu.

Disguise, deception and group-action have a long evolutionary history, and primates have all these traditional evolutionary habits, which in political jargon are called conspiratorial habits. Even if it is Tabu to think about it, that seems to be the way things are on this planet.

TRUE CONFESSIONS

When four sit down to conspire, three are fools and the fourth is a government agent.

—Duncan Lunan, Interstellar Communication

Frankly I myself never dared to violate the Liberal Tabu—"Thou shalt not think about conspiracies"—until I was virtually forced to think about them.

In the 1960s in Chicago, I was involved in the anti-war movement. Congressional investigators later revealed that there were over 5000 government agents assigned to infiltrate peace groups in Chicago alone—some working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), some for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and some for Army Intelligence. From 1968 on, the
FBI was following a program code-named COINTELPRO. The purpose of COINTELPRO was to make sure the anti-war movement knew it was infiltrated, in order to spread suspicion, distrust and paranoia among individuals and groups who might otherwise have cooperated harmoniously. Working in the peace movement in those days was, accordingly, like living in an Eric Ambler novel. In any given week I would be warned perhaps three times that somebody I trusted was really a government agent, and, of course, somebody who was accused one day might very well be around to accuse somebody else the next day. Over 20 years later, I still don't know who was a government agent and who was not. I enjoyed it all rather than being terrified only because I basically agree with Helen Keller that "Life is either a great adventure or it is nothing."

I encountered the same Spy Story atmosphere in the early 1970s when involved in the campaign to secure the release from prison of the controversial scientist, Dr. Timothy Leary. At one time or another, everybody in the Leary Defense Committee suspected everybody else of being a government agent (I think the poet, Allen Ginsberg, suspected me for over a year) and eventually government "leaks" in the press attempted to persuade us that Dr. Leary himself had become a government agent. I still relish that classic John Le Carre touch, especially since some people believed it.

Eventually it was confirmed that Leary's son-in-law, Dennis Martino, had been entrapped into becoming a government agent. Dennis later died in Spain and three press reports in two days claimed the cause of death had been murder, suicide and accident. That mystery is still unsolved, at least in America. Presumably, the Spanish authorities finally came up with a coroner's verdict,
which may or may not be the truth, but by then the U.S. media had lost interest. As far as you can learn from American sources, Dennis Martino accidentally overdosed, committed suicide and was murdered, all on the same day. Evidently, nobody in the U.S. media wanted to find out what the hell really happened.

But there are wheels within wheels in this modern Machiavellian world.

During the last year of my employment as Associate Editor of PLAYBOY, a certain executive came into my office one day and closed the door behind him. He told me that my home phone was tapped and that I was under heavy surveillance by the Red Squad of the Chicago Police Force.

I was stunned, and asked how the hell he knew this.

He replied that certain people in the PLAYBOY empire had made an arrangement with a Chicago police official. The official received regular money through some circuitous route that was not explained to me; in return, he notified his PLAYBOY contacts whenever an executive of the firm was under police investigation.

That was when I first realized how often there are spies spying on spies.

Incidentally, my informant told me why I was under heavy surveillance. A police informer in the Black Panthers, he said, had reported that I was involved with a group of white radicals who were buying guns for the Panthers.

Despite my cynicism about cops, I was shocked. I explained heatedly that there was no truth in this at all. "We know, we know," said the executive, who was very close to Hefner. "We trust you." And they did trust me. They never made any attempt to ease me out the back door, or dissociate the Bunny Empire from me. They even offered to pay my legal expenses if the police ever busted me on this absurd charge.

It was years before I wondered why the Bunny Empire decided to trust me in such an explosive matter. My guess, now, is that they had me under surveillance, too, along with their other editors—but that's only a guess. Maybe it was just that I have an honest face. I'd like to think that. Of course, I was not buying guns for the Black Panthers. I had met a few Panthers at Peace rallies, and the informer had seen me. He or she had probably "improved" the story to impress the Red Squad. A PLAYBOY editor talking to Black Panthers is not all that sensational, but a PLAYBOY editor buying guns for the Panthers was a story that made the informer seem on the edge of discovering a major conspiracy.

I could tell several similar stories, but I would again have to conceal the names of my sources and you would probably not believe me. Truth is much, much stranger than melodrama. Instead I will examine the neuro-economics of conspiracy and then relate some notable conspiracies that have become matters of public record. We will see that the theories outlined by Dr. Holmes in this book are, however shocking, no more bizarre than the world in which we live.

WEALTH AND "MONEY"

A banker is a man who will loan you money if you can prove you don't need it.

—attributed to Mark Twain

Just as most people have no idea how this planet is governed at this barbaric stage of evolution, most people have no concept of where "wealth" comes from. This is because most of us have never learned to distinguish between wealth and money.

Money was originally created by the State, as I mentioned at the beginning; this is why King Lear says his persecutors can't accuse him of counterfeiting. The State was, in those days, the only legal creator of coin: a legal coin was, by definition, a State coin.

As States learned the advantages to be gained by issuing debased coinage—a matter discussed with great clarity and wit in Jonathan Swift's little-known but brilliant Drapier Letters every State and every individual became the potential victim of coins that did not contain the amount of gold stamped on them. Eventually, no State would trust any other State in this area and, more
and more, the paper of the great banking firms began to seem the only"safe" medium of exchange.

The U.S. Constitution, amusingly, says that Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, but Congress has not exercised that power in over a century. Official U.S. money is issued by a private bank, just like the money of all other nations (except Albania, a lonely heretic), but, because U.S. money says "Federal Reserve Note" on it, most Americans assume it is issued by the Federal government. It is issued, actually, by the Federal Reserve Corporation, a private bank, owned largely by the Rockefellers and Morgans. We do not "owe the National Debt to ourselves" as the late Franklin Roosevelt once said; we owe it to the Rockefellers and Morgans.

Irish money says "Bank of Ireland" on it and English money says "Bank of England," and so on; all across Europe, most people know that the banks are in control of the creation of money. Only in America, because the word "Federal in Federal Reserve is thought to mean "federal" and because the Constitution says Congress shall coin money, is there a lingering belief that the government is still a sovereign entity not owned by the bankers to whom it is in debt.

None of this has anything to do with Real Wealth in the sense of classical
economics.

Real Wealth, in the economic sense, consists of tangible assets. It includes, not only plants in operation "owned" by individual or corporate capitalists, but known resources, inventions, bridges, roads, scientific data—all the creations of human intelligence that can be concretely applied to make the human environment more pleasant for somebody or for everybody.

Thus, if all the Real Wealth disappeared over night, the world would be entirely different. We would literally be back in the Old Stone Age, and no amount of Federal Reserve Notes or other paper would change our situation. We would have to re-invent and re-create all the science and technology of the past 30,000 years step by step.

On the other hand, all the money in the world—all the Federal Reserve Notes, Bank of England notes, etc. and all the stocks and bonds—could disappear over night and the world would be exactly the same physically. There might be a hell of a fight over who owned what, but the human world of Real Wealth would still be here.

In kindergarten language, Real Wealth consists of "things" that can't be stored in banks or computers, while money consists of "tickets" or symbols that can be stored in banks or computers.

Of course, Real Wealth is more than solid "things." I have been arguing for 30 years, in various publications, that Real Wealth is essentially pure information. It has finally dawned on me that nobody understands that but a few mathematicians and computer buffs; so I now say, more simply, that Real Wealth is ideas that work. In the terminology of General Semantics, Wealth is
ideas that are similar in structure (isomorphic) to the energy systems of space-time.

Wealth is created by analysis: by extracting higher-order structure from the raw signals perceived by the senses. You can starve to death in a wheat field if your mind has not analyzed the energy system of space-time sufficiently to recognize that wheat is edible and nourishing. Money, then, is not Real Wealth, but consists of tickets for the exchange of Real Wealth. Such tickets are necessary in an advanced technology-economy-society, because barter becomes cumbersome and unwieldy.

Most money, however, does not exist in tangible form at all, not even as paper. Most money, in today's advanced techno-society, exists only as computer records or, in less advanced outposts, notations in ledgers. Banks may legally lend up to eight times the amount they have on deposit, and as Penny Lernoux documents in her invaluable In Banks We Trust, they often go far beyond this and hope to cover their tracks before the bank examiner comes around.

Michele Sindona, a kingpin of the Vatican/Mafia/P2 clique and founder of the infamous Franklin National Bank, was convicted of murdering a bank examiner in Italy, after being convicted of 65 counts of bank fraud in the U.S. His principle flaw appears to have been that he was more reckless than older and wiser financiers who have been running the world longer and more judiciously. (We shall return to the Sindona/P2 case history.)

When banks lend eight times what they have on deposit, or more than that, they are gambling that everybody will not come in and withdraw their funds on the same day. It is a safe gamble, most of the time. But it means that paper wealth has become even more metaphysical and ghostly than the most debased coinage of the most corrupt Tudor or Stuart monarchs. It means that, by a species of magic, the Real Wealth of the planet can be manipulated as the ghostly paper is maneuvered from one computer to another. And it means that the really bold adventurers and pirates can alchemically transform totally unreal paper into ownership of resources, factories, roads, bridges and whole nations on occasion, as they, following Samuel Loyd, establish a rise . . . at their pleasure," or just as easily establish a fall.

The reader should consult some of the books I will be summarizing here especially illuminating is Richard Hammer's The Vatican Connection, which tells how Johnny Roselli and his friends in the American Mafia printed one billion dollars worth of counterfeit stocks which disappeared into the
Vatican Bank/Banco Ambrosiano feedback loop in such a manner that the New York District Attorney's office, which had wiretaps on most of the felons, never did find out where the $900,000,000 of the $1,000,000,000 finally landed.

Buckminster Fuller, in Grunch of Giants, describes the modern world as governed by MMA&O—Machiavelli, Mafia, Atoms and Oil. You know the Mafia. Atoms and Oil are the multi-national corporations. Machiavelli is the symbol of the paper-magic wizards, or international banks, who make the whole system possible. GRUNCH stands for GRoss UNiversal CAsh Heist. It's another book you really ought to read.

NEURO-GEOGRAPHY OF CONSPIRACY

Go West, young man.

—Horace Greeley

As I pointed out in Prometheus Rising (Falcon Press, 1983), the Real Wealth of the world has been doubling every generation since statistical economists started collecting data in the 18th Century. This is a side-effect of the accelerated doubling of knowledge that has been occurring in the past two milleniums. (Information, or ideas-that-work, is the source of Real Wealth.
Remember?) As George Anderla, a French statistician, determined, if we take all the knowledge of 1 A.D. as our base, then knowledge has doubled at the following rate since then:

AD 1 unit
500 AD 2
750 AD 4
1900AD 8
1950 AD 16
1960 AD 32
1967 AD 64
1973 AD 128

A glance at world-historical trajectories indicates that this doubling of knowledge-and-wealth has followed a western (and mildly northern) vector, as has been documented e.g. in Brooks Adams' Law of Civilization and Decay, Timothy Leary's The Intelligence Agents and Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path.

Bronze Age tools first appeared in Southeast Asia, followed by large-scale agriculture, slavery and war. By 1 A.D. all the technology thusfar produced was being processed through the schools and banking establishments of Rome. By the time this knowledge/wealth doubled in 1500, the universities of North Italy and the great Florentine banking families like the Medici held the hot center of power. By 1750, the next doubling was occurring mostly in England, the first Empire on which the sun never set."

By 1900, the U.S. was becoming a rival to England; by 1950, the American Empire had replaced the English Empire. The years since 1950 have witnessed what Prof. Oglesby calls "the Yankee and Cowboy war" as Eastern bankers like the Rockefellers try to hold on to control and are challenged by Western mavericks like Howard Hughes.

The more adventurous and innovative persons—those with nervous systems programmed by maverick genes and/or bizarre imprints and conditioning: the "misfits"—have been moving steadily westward for about 5000 years. They have been moving away from centralized Authority, out into the perimeters and frontiers, because that is where misfits and geniuses can function.

Clausewitz described war as a continuation of politics by other means; Oglesby calls conspiracy "the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means." Conspiracy, the murky territory between politics and war, is part of our glorious primate heritage, which is why Ambrose Bierce defined peace as "a period of cheating between two periods of fighting."

The role of conspiracy in human history, I suggest, is a period of cheating during which two power centers are struggling,-one of them Eastward and representing established ideas and old wealth, the other Westward and generally representing maverick ideas and new wealth. Enclaves of "outlaws" move in the shadowy territory between these two power poles, running their own games and exploiting the paranoia of each side where and when they can.

Anthropologist William Irwin Thompson has suggested, in a recent address in Oslo, Norway, that the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative—the so-called "Star Wars" program—is more radical, and less reactionary, than it looks on the surface. Thompson alleges that, under the
pretext of military bluster, SDI actually represents the total re-alignment of American society into a scientific-technological paradigm. Only the most "patriotic" rhetoric, Thompson says, could sell to the American people a program which amounts to the most expensive and most daring scientific research-and-development project humanity has ever attempted. In this context, Reagan represents the "Cowboy elite" that Oglesby sees as being on the edge of toppling the Rockefeller and other Yankee empires. The Cowboys are looking for a High Frontier, and they are computerized Cowboys now.

Werner von Braun used Disneyworld—both the amusement park and the TV show—to "sell" NASA's more adventurous ideas to the politicians by first selling them to the people. General Graham, who gave the "Star Wars" idea to Reagan, is following the same scenario. Amid the 24 separate-and-interlocking conspiracies struggling over the turf on this planet, the Cowboys are
struggling for higher and more imaginative lands in the stars. Why not? They are, in the 20th Century, the same sort of mavericks the Yankees were in the 18th Century— namely, "the products of the Protestantism of the Protestants and the dissidence of dissent," as Edmund Burke said of the wealthy radicals who wrote the Declaration of Independence. The coming dominant looks to be, like California, a mad mixture of Hollywood, computers, special effects,
apocalyptical visions and dope. Reagan does not fully understand the neuro-geography of the historical forces he represents.

The next dominant will probably be further west and more technological.

If we revise our chart of the doubling of knowledge (Real Wealth) to include
these factors we find:

                                KNOWLEDGE      CENTER OF       PRINCIPLE
DATE                         FACTOR                 POWER           ENEMIES
               1 AD   1                 Rome  Greece, Egypt


  1500 AD 2               Florence    Turks
  1750 AD 4               England France, Spain
  1900 AD 8              England  Germany
  1950 AD 16             New York       Russia
  1960 AD 32           California Russia
  1967 AD 64          California  Russia
  1973 AD 128        California   New York
           ?                                         Japan    California

The rising power always seems to the West or Northwest of the declining power that struggles against it; it is always richer and more powerful than any previous Empire; it always seems to the older power center (and its kept intellectuals) exactly what California seems today—a kind of sociological Granola made up of equal parts of fruits, nuts and flakes.

THE C.I.A. & THE MAFIA

Patriotism, sir, is the last recourse of the scoundrel.

—Dr. Samuel Johnson

In the 1960s, the CIA conspired with two Mafia leaders, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli. Mr. Giancana and Mr. Roselli provided professional Mafia assassins and the CIA trained them and sent them to Cuba to kill Fidel Castro. Like most real conspiracies, this was unsuccessful, Senor Castro is still alive. This conspiracy was also well documented in Congressional hearings and broadcast in the news media internationally, so you are not considered a crank if you write about it.

You will begin to understand what I call the Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy when I remind you that Johnny Roselli was also involved in printing one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) worth of counterfeit stock for the Vatican Bank. That is documented fully in The Vatican Connection by N.Y. Times reporter Richard Hammer, which I again recommend to your attention.

According to Anthony Summers' book, Conspiracy there is a good prima facie case that Johnny Roselli was also an instigator of the assassinations of both John and Bobby Kennedy, in collaboration with Sam Giancana—the same Giancana who had previously collaborated with Roselli in providing assassins for the CIA. While Summers' evidence is not conclusive, it is chillingly plausible.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded, on the basis of the hard scientific evidence of acoustics, that there were two gunmen shooting at John Kennedy in Dealy Plaza, one from the front and one from the back. On the basis of softer but persuasive supporting evidence, the Committee concluded further that a conspiracy of more than two persons was probable and that the possibility of Mafia involvement was worthy of deeper investigation. The Chief Counsel for the Committee, Prof. Howard Blakey, was willing to be more definitive in a press conference. 'I am now firmly of the opinion that the mob did it,n he said. "It is a historical truth." (Quoted by Summers in Conspiracy.)

Sam Giancana was shot dead in June 1975, after testifying once before the committee and while negotiating with their investigators about further questions they wished to ask him under oath. Giancana was shot through the mouth—the sasso in bocca, traditional Mafia punishment for suspected informers.

Johnny Roselli was shot dead in July 1976, after he, too, had been called once before the Assassinations Committee. According to journalist Jack Anderson, Roselli had told him that he was not involved in the Kennedy assassinations but another Mafia "family" was.

The Mafia has acquired its international empire only because the most popular drugs of our time are illegal. In the past 40 years, the rulers of the Mafia have graduated from multi-millionaires to billionaires only because these absurd anti-drug laws remain on the books.

It is permissible in "liberal""educated" circles to say that these laws remain in force because of stupidity or conservatism or superstition. If you say the laws remain because somebody is making a profit out of them, you are supposed to be eccentric or downright nutty.

Nonetheless, the ancient Romans knew that the basic question about any social policy was cui bono? (Who profits from it?)

INTERLUDE & KOAN

In CIA jargon, a "useful idiot" means somebody who is working for them but doesn't know it.

My involvements with controversial politics have left me with one lasting legacy. Whenever I suspect that I am taking myself or my theories too seriously, I stop and ask myself, "Have I become a useful idiot yet?"

THE STATE AS CONSPIRACY

The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced.

—Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching

It is likely that the State as we k[n]ow it is an innately conspiratorial organism. As the sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out in his remarkable book, The State, there is no anthropological or historical evidence that anything like Rousseau's "Social Contract" ever happened in pre-history; on the contrary, the State appears in human affairs only after conquest by armed force. It is to maintain themselves in power over the conquered that a conquering elite create those institutions— police, army, taxation—that make up the skeleton of the State as we know it historically. There is no record of a tribal people peacefully "contracting" to set such a machinery of oppression above themselves. Conquerors impose it upon them.

Bakunin argued in God and the State that nobody has ever seen "God" or the "State." This, although startling, is true. Human beings, called priests, claim to represent "God," and other human beings, called civil servants, claim to represent the "State," and this metaphysical sleight-of-hand is alleged to justify acts which would be regarded as not only criminal but barbarous if it were remembered that mere human beings were doing these things. Similar verbal magic—meaningless words like "heresy and "treason"—are used to convince the victims that resistance is evil, escape or flight is just as evil, and even thinking that you are being victimized is somehow sinful.

In simple language, anybody who robs you is a thief, unless he claims to be an agent of the "Staten—in which case, he is not a thief but only a tax-collector. By the same metaphysical trick, anybody who murders millions is a lunatic, unless he claims to be an agent of "Gods—in which case he is a Crusader. You can resist an ordinary bandit with a perfect sense of righteousness, but you feel guilty about resisting the Churchman or Statesman, since that is called "heresy" or "treason"

Since the State was founded in conquest and is maintained by metaphysics (or, in the Logical Positivist jargon, "abuse of language"), it follows Oglesby's rule—"where there is no limit to power, there is no limit to conspiracy.

We have already cited Anthony Summers' book Conspiracy, to indicate that there is real evidence, not mere paranoia, behind the claim that the Mafia was involved, perhaps centrally, in the Kennedy assassinations. According to Summers' more recent book, Goddess, there is also good evidence that Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli had arranged for the electronic bugging of the bedroom of a house belonging to Peter Lawford, where Marilyn Monroe and Bobby Kennedy met for romantic dalliance in what they thought was privacy. Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters' Union, who had been imprisoned by Bobb's get-tough" Justice Department, was allegedly also involved in this plot, which was intended to obtain material with which Bobby could be blackmailed. A BBC documentary on Summers' book—"Say Goodnight to the Presidents BBC-TV 1985—supported all of Summers' charges.

Giancana and Roselli were both shot in the mid-l970s as we have seen. Jimmy Hoffa simply disappeared and has never been found dead or alive. Rumor claims he is buried beneath an interstate highway in Illinois.

Norman Mailer, many of you might remember, became convinced, while researching his biography of Marilyn Monroe, that there was some kind of "cover-up" connected with her death. Mailer even implied that there was a definite possibility of murder.

According to Summers' Goddess and the BBC documentary previously cited, there was indeed a conspiracy in which Marilyn's death was concealed for three hours while persons unknown removed from her house all documentia of her love affairs with John and Bobby Kennedy. The weight of circumstantial evidence suggests that this conspiracy was instigated by Peter Lawford, who had, as we noted, loaned his house as a trysting place for Marilyn's affairs, and who was also brother-in-law to the Kennedys. It is not demonstrable that Lawford ever thought, or allowed himself to think, that he might also be concealing clues in a murder case. He probably thought, or wanted to think, that he was merely concealing politically embarrassing sexual dalliances. The possibility of murder remains only a possibility, although it is still insisted upon by Hank Messick, a former consultant to the New York Joint Legislative Committee on Crime. Messick claims that unnamed informants in the Mafia told him Marilyn was killed to lure Bobby Kennedy into a trap and then blackmail him into ending his crusade against the Mob. All one can say about that theory is "Maybe.”

Nonetheless, another of John Kennedy's mistresses—although he did not pass her on to Bobby—was one Judith Exner. Ms. Exner, the House Select Committee on Assassinations later noted, was, curiously enough, the mistress of Mafioso Sam Giancana before, during and after her affair with the President. The Committee was of the opinion that it was probable that Mr. Giancana more or less shoved Ms. Exner into the President's bet, for blackmail purposes. Mr. Giancana, you may remember, was also suspected by the Committee of having a hand in JFK's assassination, and diet of gunshot wounds—through the mouth—while under investigation.

Another of JFK's amours was with a Mary Pinchot Meyer, a most interesting lady. She was married to Cord Meyer, a top CIA official who happens to be the only man to have received the Agency's Distinguished Intelligence Metal three times. Mary Pinchot Meyer was also a dear and good friend of Dr. Timothy Leary; and, according to his book, Flashbacks, Mary told Dr. Leary in 1962 that the CIA wanted to stop him and other scientists from publishing LSD experiments, because they wanted to keep the mind-altering properties of LSD one of their own little secrets. In 1964, about a year after John Kennedy was assassinated (or about two years after the somewhat mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe), Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot dead on a street in Washington.

Thereafter Dr. Leary was repeatedly arrested, and although every case against him except one was dismissed by the courts, he was finally convicted in that one case, which involved alleged possession of one half of one marijuana cigarette. He was sentenced to 37 years— although the penalty for that crime in that state (California) was normally six months—and was released after
serving over five years. Dr. Leary claims he was framed by the arresting officer; he also claims there was a cover-up in the shooting of Mary Pinchot Meyer. Nobody much cares what Dr. Leary claims, because for over a year before his release government officials had leaked to the press claims that he had become an informer. There is no record of any person or persons convicted on the basis of Dr. Leary's testimony, oddly, but the rumor has stuck to his name and "everybody knows" he is a government agent these days.

As the French say, it gives one ferociously to think.

Conspiracy Phobia on the Left

2009-01-01T19:58:00.001+01:00

From Dirty Truths by Michael Parenti
(1996, City Lights Books)
(Pages 172 - 191)

THE JFK ASSASSINATION II:
CONSPIRACY PHOBIA ON THE LEFT

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.

Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon's downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as "a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery," the greatest financial crime in history.

Conspiracy or Coincidence?

Often the term "conspiracy" is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against "overheating" the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, "Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?" In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.

At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, "Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?" I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that "free-market reforms" are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, "more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies" (New York Times 11/25/95).

Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: "Do you actually think there's a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?" For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together - on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot - though they call it "planning" and "strategizing" - and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

Yet there are individuals who ask with patronizing, incredulous smiles, do you really think that the people at the top have secret agendas, are aware of their larger interests, and talk to each other about them? To which I respond, why would they not? This is not to say that every corporate and political elite is actively dedicated to working for the higher circles of power and property. Nor are they infallible or always correct in their assessments and tactics or always immediately aware of how their interests are being affected by new situations. But they are more attuned and more capable of advancing their vast interests than most other social groups.

The alternative is to believe that the powerful and the privileged are somnambulists, who move about oblivious to questions of power and privilege; that they always tell us the truth and have nothing to hide even when they hide so much; that although most of us ordinary people might consciously try to pursue our own interests, wealthy elites do not; that when those at the top employ force and violence around the world it is only for the laudable reasons they profess; that when they arm, train, and finance covert actions in numerous countries, and then fail to acknowledge their role in such deeds, it is because of oversight or forgetfulness or perhaps modesty; and that it is merely a coincidence how the policies of the national security state so consistently serve the interests of the transnational corporations and the capital-accumulation system throughout the world.

Kennedy and the Left Critics

In the winter of 1991-92 Oliver Stone's film JFK revived popular interest in the question of President John Kennedy's assassination. As noted in part I of this article, the mainstream media launched a protracted barrage of invective against the movie. Conservatives and liberals closed ranks to tell the public there was no conspiracy to murder the president for such things do not happen in the United States.

Unfortunately, some writers normally identified as on the Left have rejected any suggestion that conspiracy occurred. While the rightists and centrists were concerned about preserving the legitimacy of existing institutions and keeping people from seeing the gangster nature of the state, the leftists had different concerns, though it was not always clear what these were.

Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and others challenge the notion that Kennedy was assassinated for intending to withdraw from Vietnam or for threatening to undo the CIA or end the cold war. Such things could not have led to his downfall, they argue, because Kennedy was a cold warrior, pro-CIA, and wanted a military withdrawal from Vietnam only with victory. Chomsky claims that the change of administration that came with JFK's assassination had no appreciable effect on policy. In fact, the massive ground war ordered by Johnson and the saturation bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos ordered by Nixon represented a dramatic departure from Kennedy's policy. On some occasions, Chomsky says he refuses to speculate: "As for what JFK might have done [had he lived], I have nothing to say." Other times he goes on to speculate that Kennedy would not have "reacted differently to changing situations than his close advisers" and "would have persisted in his commitment to strengthen and enhance the status of the CIA" (Z Magazine, 10/92 and 1/93).

The evidence we have indicates that Kennedy observed Cambodian neutrality and negotiated a cease-fire and a coalition government in Laos, which the CIA refused to honor. We also know that the surviving Kennedy, Robert, broke with the Johnson administration over Vietnam and publicly stated that his brother's administration had committed serious mistakes. Robert moved with the tide of opinion, evolving into a Senate dove and then a peace candidate for the presidency, before he too was murdered. The two brothers worked closely together and were usually of like mind. While this does not provide reason enough to conclude that John Kennedy would have undergone a transition comparable to Robert's, it still might give us pause before asserting that JFK was destined to follow in the direction taken by the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

In the midst of this controversy, Chomsky wrote a whole book arguing that JFK had no intention of withdrawing from Vietnam without victory. Actually, Kennedy said different things at different times, sometimes maintaining that we could not simply abandon Vietnam, other times that it ultimately would be up to the Vietnamese to fight their own war.1

One of Kennedy's closest aides, Kenneth O'Donnell, wrote that the president planned to withdraw from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. According to Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who headed military support for the clandestine operations of the CIA, Kennedy dictated "the rich parts" of NSAM 263, calling for the withdrawal not only of all U.S. troops but all Americans, meaning CIA officers and agents too. Prouty reflects that the president thereby signed "his own death warrant." The Army newspaper Stars and Stripes ran a headline: "President Says - All Americans Out by 1965." According to Prouty: "The Pentagon was outraged. JFK was a curse word in the corridors."

Concentrating on the question of withdrawal, Chomsky says nothing about the president's unwillingness to escalate into a ground war. On that crucial point all Chomsky offers is a speculation ascribed to Roger Hilsman that Kennedy might well have introduced U.S. ground troops in South Vietnam. In fact, the same Hilsman, who served as Kennedy's Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, the officer responsible for Vietnam, noted in a long letter to the New York Times (1/20/92) that in 1963 "President Kennedy was determined not to let Vietnam become an American war - that is, he was determined not to send U.S. combat troops (as opposed to advisers) to fight in Vietnam nor to bomb North Vietnam." Other Kennedy aides such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and General Maxwell Taylor made the same point. Taylor said, "The last thing he [Kennedy] wanted was to put in our ground forces . . . I don't recall anyone who was strongly against [the recommendation], except one man and that was the President." Kennedy opposed the kind of escalation embarked upon soon after his death by Lyndon Johnson, who increased U.S. troops in Vietnam from 17,000 to approximately 250,000 and committed them to an all-out ground war.

Kennedy and the CIA

Chomsky argues that the CIA would have had no grounds for wanting to kill JFK, because he was a dedicated counterinsurgent cold warrior. Chomsky arrives at this conclusion by assuming that the CIA had the same reading of events in 1963 that he has today. But entrenched power elites are notorious for not seeing the world the way left analysts do. To accept Chomsky's assumptions we would need a different body of data from that which he and others offer, data that focuses not on the Kennedy administration's interventionist pronouncements and policies but on the more private sentiments that festered in intelligence circles and related places in 1963.

To offer a parallel: We might be of the opinion that the New Deal did relatively little for working people and that Franklin Roosevelt actually was a tool of the very interests he publicly denounced as "economic royalists." From this we might conclude that the plutocrats had much reason to support FDR's attempts to save big business from itself. But most plutocrats dammed "that man in the White House" as a class traitor. To determine why, you would have to look at how they perceived the New Deal in those days, not at how we think it should be evaluated today.

In fact, President Kennedy was not someone the CIA could tolerate, and the feeling was mutual. JFK told one of his top officials that he wanted "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" (New York Times, 4/25/66). He closed the armed CIA camps that were readying for a second Bay of Pigs invasion and took a number of other steps designed to bring the Agency under control. He fired its most powerful and insubordinate leaders, Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell. He tried to reduce its powers and jurisdiction and set strict limits as to its future actions, and he appointed a high-level committee to investigate the CIA's past misdeeds.

In 1963, CIA officials, Pentagon brass, anti-Castro Cuban émigrés, and assorted other right-wingers, including FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, hated JFK and did not believe he could be trusted with the nation's future. They referred to him as "that delinquent in the White House." Roger Craig records the comments of numerous Dallas police officers who wanted to see Kennedy done away with. Several years ago, on a San Francisco talk show on station KGO, I heard a listener call in as follows: "this is the first time I'm saying this. I worked for Army intelligence. In 1963 I was in Japan, and the accepted word around then was that Kennedy would be killed because he was messing with the intelligence community. When word came of his death, all I could hear was delighted comments like 'We got the bastard'."

In his book First Hand Knowledge, CIA operative Robert Morrow noted the hatred felt by CIA officers regarding Kennedy's "betrayal" in not sending the U.S. military into the Bay of Pigs fiasco. One high-level CIA Cuban émigré, Eladio del Valle, told Morrow less than two weeks before the assassination: "I found out about it last night. Kennedy's going to get it in Dallas."2 Morrow also notes that CIA director Richard Helms, "knew that someone in the Agency was involved" in the Kennedy assassination, "either directly or indirectly, in the act itself - someone who would be in a high and sensitive position . . . Helms did cover up any CIA involvement in the presidential assassination."

Several years after JFK's murder, President Johnson told White House aide Marvin Watson that he "was convinced that there was a plot in connection with the assassination" and that the CIA had something to do with it (Washington Post, 12/13/77). And Robert Kennedy repeatedly made known his suspicions that the CIA had a hand in the murder of his brother.

JFK's enemies in the CIA, the Pentagon, and elsewhere fixed on his refusal to provide air coverage for the Bay of Pigs, his unwillingness to go into Indochina with massive ground forces, his no-invasion guarantee to Krushchev on Cuba, his overtures for a rapprochement with Castro and professed willingness to tolerate countries with different economic systems in the Western hemisphere, his atmospheric-test-ban treaty with Moscow, his American University speech calling for reexamination of U.S. cold war attitudes toward the Soviet Union, his antitrust suit against General Electric, his curtailing of the oil-depletion allowance, his fight with U.S. Steel over price increases, his challenge to the Federal Reserve Board's multibillion-dollar monopoly control of the nation's currency,3 his warm reception at labor conventions, and his call for racial equality. These things may not have been enough for some on the Left but they were far too much for many on the Right.

Left Confusions and the Warren Commission

Erwin Knoll, erstwhile editor of the Progressive, was anther left critic who expressed hostility toward the conspiracy thesis and Oliver Stone's movie in particular. Knoll admitted he had no idea who killed Kennedy, but this did not keep him from asserting that Stone's JFK was "manipulative" and provided false answers. If Knoll had no idea who killed Kennedy, how could he conclude that the film was false?

Knoll said Stone's movie was "a melange of fact and fiction" (Progressive, 3/92). To be sure, some of the dramatization was fictionalized - but regarding the core events relating to Clay Shaw's perjury, eyewitness reports at Dealey Plaza, the behavior of U.S. law officers, and other suspicious happenings, the movie remained faithful to the facts unearthed by serious investigators.

In a show of flexibility, Knoll allows that "the Warren Commission did a hasty, slipshod job" of investigation. Here too he only reveals his ignorance. In fact, the Commission sat for fifty-one long sessions over a period of several months, much longer than most major investigations. It compiled twenty-six volumes of testimony and evidence. It had the investigative resources of the FBI and CIA at its disposal, along with its own professional team. Far from being hasty and slipshod, it painstakingly crafted theories that moved toward a foreordained conclusion. From the beginning, it asked only a limited set of questions that seemed to assume Oswald's guilt as the lone assassin.

The Warren Commission set up six investigative panels to look into such things as Oswald's background, his activities in past years and on the day of the assassination, Jack Ruby's background, and his activities on the day he killed Oswald. As Mark Lane notes, there was a crying need for a seventh panel, one that would try to discover who killed President Kennedy. The commission never saw the need for that undertaking, having already made up its mind.

While supposedly dedicated to bringing the truth to light, the Warren Commission operated in secrecy. The minutes of its meetings were classified top secret, and hundred of thousands of documents and other evidence were sealed for seventy-five years. The Commission failed to call witnesses who heard and saw people shooting from behind the fence on the grassy knoll. It falsely recorded the testimony of certain witnesses, as they were to complain later on, and reinterpreted the testimony of others. All this took careful effort. A "hasty and slipshod" investigation would show some randomness in its errors. But the Commission's distortions consistently moved in the same direction in pursuit of a prefigured hypothesis.

Erwin Knoll talks disparagingly of the gullible U.S. public and says he "despises" Oliver Stone for playing on that gullibility. In fact, the U.S. public has been anything but gullible. It has not swallowed the official explanation the way some of the left critics have. Surveys show that 78 percent of the public say they believe there was a conspiracy. Both Cockburn in the Nation and Chomsky in Z Magazine dismiss this finding by noting that over 70 percent of the people also believe in miracles. But the fact that people might be wrong about one thing does not mean they are wrong about everything. Chomsky and Cockburn are themselves evidence of that.

In any case, the comparison is between two opposite things. Chomsky and Cockburn are comparing the public's gullibility about miracles with its unwillingness to be gullible about the official line that has been fed to them for thirty years. If anyone is gullible it is Alexander Cockburn who devoted extra column space in the Nation to support the Warren Commission's tattered theory about a magic bullet that could hit both Kennedy and Connolley while changing direction in mid-air and remaining in pristine condition.

Chomsky says that it is a "curious fact that no trace of the wide-ranging conspiracy appears in the internal record, and nothing has leaked" and "credible direct evidence is lacking" (Z Magazine, 1/93, and letter to me, 12/15/92). But why would participants in a conspiracy of this magnitude risk everything by maintaining an "internal record" (whatever that is) about the actual murder? Why would they risk their lives by going public? Many of the participants would know only a small part of the picture. But all of them would have a keen sense of the immensely powerful and sinister forces they would be up against were they to become too talkative. In fact, a good number of those who agreed to cooperate with investigators met untimely deaths. Finally, what credible direct evidence was ever offered to prove that Oswald was the assassin?

Chomsky is able to maintain his criticism that no credible evidence has come to light only by remaining determinedly unacquainted with the mountain of evidence that has been uncovered. There has even been a decision in a U.S. court of law, Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, in which a jury found that President Kennedy had indeed been murdered by a conspiracy involving, in part, CIA operatives E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, and FBI informant Jack Ruby.4

Nixon advisor H.R. Haldeman admits in his memoir: "After Kennedy was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic coverup." And "In a chilling parallel to their coverup at Watergate, the CIA literally erased any connection between Kennedy's assassination and the CIA."

Indeed, if there was no conspiracy, why so much secrecy and so much cover-up? If Oswald did it, what is there to hide and why do the CIA and FBI still resist a full undoctored disclosure of the hundreds of thousands of pertinent documents? Would they not be eager to reveal everything and thereby put to rest doubts about Oswald's guilt and suspicions about their own culpability?

The remarkable thing about Erwin Knoll, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and others on the Left who attack the Kennedy conspiracy findings is they remain invincibly ignorant of the critical investigations that have been carried out. I have repeatedly pointed this out in exchanges with them and they never deny it. They have not read any of the many studies by independent researchers who implicate the CIA in a conspiracy to kill the president and in the even more protracted and extensive conspiracy to cover up the murder. But this does not prevent them from dismissing the conspiracy charge in the most general and unsubstantiated terms.

Let's Hear It for Structuralism

When pressed on the matter, left critics like Cockburn and Chomsky allow that some conspiracies do exist but they usually are of minor importance, a distraction from the real problems of institutional and structural power. A structural analysis, as I understand it, maintains that events are determined by the larger configurations of power and interest and not by the whims of happenstance or the connivance of a few incidental political actors. There is no denying that larger structural trends impose limits on policy and exert strong pressures on leaders. But this does not mean that all important policy is predetermined. Short of betraying fundamental class interests, different leaders can pursue different courses, the effects of which are not inconsequential to the lives of millions of people. Thus, it was not foreordained that the B-52 carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos conducted by Nixon would have happened if Kennedy, or even Johnson or Humphrey, had been president. If left critics think these things make no difference in the long run, they better not tell that to the millions of Indochinese who grieve for their lost ones and for their own shattered lives.

It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in your approach to politics or a "conspiracist" who reduces historical developments to the machinations of secret cabals, thereby causing us to lose sight of the larger systemic forces. As Chomsky notes: "However unpleasant and difficult it may be, there is no escape from the need to confront the reality of institutions and the policies and actions they largely shape." (Z Magazine, 10/92).

I trust that one of the institutions he has in mind is the CIA. In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy.

As I pointed out in published exchanges with Cockburn and Chomsky (neither of whom responded to the argument), conspiracy and structure are not mutually exclusive dynamics. A structural analysis that a priori rules out conspiracy runs the risk of not looking at the whole picture. Conspiracies are a component of the national security political system, not deviations from it. Ruling elites use both conspiratorial covert actions and overtly legitimating procedures at home and abroad. They finance everything from electoral campaigns and publishing houses to mobsters and death squads. They utilize every conceivable stratagem, including killing one of their own if they perceive him to be a barrier to their larger agenda of making the world safe for those who own it.

The conspiracy findings in regard to the JFK assassination, which the movie JFK brought before a mass audience, made many people realize what kind of a gangster state we have in this country and what it does around the world. In investigating the JFK conspiracy, researchers are not looking for an "escape" from something "unpleasant and difficult," as Chomsky would have it, rather they are raising grave questions about the nature of state power in what is supposed to be a democracy.

A structuralist position should not discount the role of human agency in history. Institutions are not self-generating reified forces. The "great continuities of corporate and class interest" (Cockburn's phrase) are not disembodied things that just happen of their own accord. Neither empires nor national security institutions come into existence in a fit of absent-mindedness. They are actualized not only by broad conditional causes but by the conscious efforts of live people. Evidence for this can be found in the very existence of a national security state whose conscious function is to recreate the conditions of politico-economic hegemony.

Having spent much of my life writing books that utilize a structuralist approach, I find it ironic to hear about the importance of structuralism from those who themselves do little or no structural analysis of the U.S. political system and show little theoretical grasp of the structural approach. Aside from a few Marxist journals, one finds little systemic or structural analysis in left periodicals including ones that carry Chomsky and Cockburn. Most of these publications focus on particular issues and events - most of which usually are of far lesser magnitude than the Kennedy assassination.

Left publications have given much attention to conspiracies such as Watergate, the FBI Cointelpro, Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, CIA drugs-for-guns trade, BCCI, and savings-and-loans scandals. It is never explained why these conspiracies are important while the FJK assassination is not. Chip Berlet repeatedly denounces conspiracy investigations while himself spending a good deal of time investigating Lyndon LaRouche's fraudulent financial dealings, conspiracies for which LaRouche went to prison. Berlet never explains why the LaRouche conspiracy is a subject worthy of investigation but not the JFK conspiracy.

G. William Domhoff points out: "If 'conspiracy' means that these [ruling class] men are aware of their interests, know each other personally, meet together privately and off the record, and try to hammer out a consensus on how to anticipate and react to events and issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR [the Council for Foreign Relations], not to mention the Committee for Economic Development, the Business Council, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency." After providing this useful description of institutional conspiracy, Domhoff then conjures up a caricature that often clouds the issue: "We all have a tremendous tendency to want to get caught up in believing that there's some secret evil cause for all of the obvious ills of the world." Conspiracy theories "encourage a belief that if we get rid of a few bad people, everything will be well in the world."

To this simplistic notion Peter Dale Scott responds: "I believe that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to a few bad people but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed." In sum, national security state conspiracies are components of our political structure, not deviations from it.

Why Care About JFK?

The left critics argue that people who are concerned about the JFK assassination are romanticizing Kennedy and squandering valuable energy. Chomsky claims that the Nazi-like appeals of rightist propagandists have a counterpart on the Left: "It's the conspiracy business. Hang around California, for example, and the left has just been torn to shreds because they see CIA conspiracies . . . secret governments [behind] the Kennedy assassination. This kind of stuff has just wiped out a large part of the left" (Against the Current 56, 1993). Chomsky offers no evidence to support this bizarre statement.

The left critics fear that people will be distracted or misled into thinking well of Kennedy. Cockburn argues that Kennedy was nothing more than a servant of the corporate class, so who cares how he was killed (Nation 3/9/92 and 5/18/92). The left critics' hatred of Kennedy clouds their judgment about the politcal significance of his murder. They mistake the low political value of the victim with the high political importance of the assassination, its implications for democracy, and the way it exposes the gangster nature of the state.

In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a conservative militarist. Clemenceau once conjectured that if the man's name had not been Dreyfus, he would have been an anti-Dreyfusard. Does that mean that the political struggle waged around l'affaire Dreyfus was a waste of time? The issue quickly became larger than Dreyfus, drawn between Right and Left, between those who stood with the army and the anti-Semites and those who stood with the republic and justice.

Likewise Benigno Aquino, a member of the privileged class in the Philippines, promised no great structural changes, being even more conservative than Kennedy. Does this mean the Filipino people should have dismissed the conspiracy that led to his assassination as an event of no great moment, an internal ruling-class affair? Instead, they used it as ammunition to expose the hated Marcos regime.

Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated. If he had not been murdered, I doubt that Salvadoran history would have been much different. Does this mean that solidarity groups in this country and El Salvador should not have tried to make his murder an issue that revealed the homicidal gangster nature of the Salvadoran state? (I posed these questions to Chomsky in an exchange in Z Magazine, but in his response, he did not address them.)

Instead of seizing the opportunity, some left writers condescendingly ascribe a host of emotional needs to those who are concerned about the assassination cover-up. According to Max Holland, a scribe who seems to be on special assignment to repudiate the JFK conspiracy: "The nation is gripped by a myth . . . divorced from reality," and "Americans refuse to accept their own history." In Z Magazine (10/92) Chomsky argued that "at times of general malaise and social breakdown, it is not uncommon for millenarian movements to arise." He saw two such movements in 1992: the response to Ross Perot and what he called the "Kennedy revival" or "Camelot revival." Though recognizing that the audiences differ, he lumps them together as "the JFK-Perot enthusiasms." Public interest in the JFK assassination, he says, stems from a "Camelot yearning" and the "yearning for a lost Messiah."

I, for one, witnessed evidence of a Perot movement involving millions of people but I saw no evidence of a Kennedy revival, certainly no millenarian longing for Camelot or a "lost Messiah." However, there has been a revived interest in the Kennedy assassination, which is something else. Throughout the debate, Chomsky repeatedly assumes that those who have been troubled about the assassination must be admirers of Kennedy. In fact, some are, but many are not. Kennedy was killed in 1963; people who today are in their teens, twenties, thirties, and forties - most Americans - were not old enough to have developed a political attachment to him.

The left critics psychologize about our illusions, our false dreams, our longings for Messiahs and father figures, or inability to face unpleasant realities the way they can. They deliver patronizing admonitions about our "conspiracy captivation" and "Camelot yearnings." They urge us not to escape into fantasy. They are the cognoscenti who guide us and out-left us on the JFK assassination, a subject about which they know next to nothing and whose significance they have been unable to grasp. Having never read the investigative literature, they dismiss the investigators as irrelevant or irrational. To cloak their own position with intellectual respectability, they fall back on an unpracticed structuralism.

It is neither "Kennedy worship" nor "Camelot yearnings" that motivates our inquiry, but a desire to fight back against manipulative and malignant institutions so that we might begin to develop a system of accountable rule worthy of the name democracy.

________________________________

1 Kennedy's intent to withdraw is documented in the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers ("Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces, 1962-1964," vol. 2, pp. 160-200). It refers to "the Accelerated Model Plan . . .. for a rapid phase out of the bulk of U.S. military personnel" and notes that the administration was "serious about limiting the U.S. commitment and throwing the burden onto the South Vietnamese themselves." But "all the planning for phase-out . . . was either ignored or caught up in the new thinking of January to March 1964" (p. 163) - the new thinking that came after JFK was killed and Johnson became president.

2 Del Valle's name came up the day after JFK's assassination when Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade announced at a press conference that Oswald was a member of del Valle's anti-communist "Free Cuba Committee." Wade was quickly contradicted from the audience by Jack Ruby, who claimed that Oswald was a member of the leftish Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Del Valle, who was one of several people that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison sought out in connection with the JFK assassination, was killed the same day that Dave Ferrie, another suspect met a suspicious death. When found in Miami, del Valle's body showed evidence of having been tortured, bludgeoned, and shot.

3 The bankers of the Federal Reserve System print paper money, then lend it to the government at an interest. Kennedy signed an executive order issuing over $4 billion in currency notes through the U.S. Treasury, thus bypassing the Fed's bankers and the hundreds of millions of dollars in interest that would normally be paid out to them. These "United States Notes" were quickly withdrawn after JFK's assassination.

4 See Mark Lane, Plausible Denial; Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991). For testimony of another participant see Robert Morrow: First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992).

The Israel Lobby Controversy

2009-01-01T19:47:00.000+01:00

Elite Factionalism or Elite Conspiracy Theory?

“The criticism surrounding The Israel Lobby paper was sparked by the fact that two card-carrying members of the American intellectual establishment finally pointed out the elephant in the room.”

by Will Banyan

http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/israellobby.html

The publication in March 2006 of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, as a working paper for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and as an article in the London Review of Books, aroused much comment in the American media and academia -- most condemnatory. The authors, academics John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt from Harvard University, have had their work widely dismissed as being both conspiratorial and anti-Semitic.

"[T]his paper is anti-Semitic" declared Professor Eliot Cohen from Johns Hopkins University, in the Washington Post (April 5, 2006); nor was it "research in any serious sense," claimed Marty Peretz in The New Republic, but "the labor of obsessives with dark and conspiratorial minds." According to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, the authors shared with white supremacist David Duke "the same interest in vilifying Jewish leaders and spouting conspiracy theories about Zionist plots against American interests" (Dershowitz 41). Even Stephen Zunes, a left-wing critic of U.S. support for Israel, implied that in subscribing to an "exaggerated claim of Jewish clout," Mearsheimer and Walt were "flirting with anti-Semitism" (Zunes 2006a, 15).

At the same time, there were some observers who were clearly overjoyed at the appearance of The Israel Lobby as it seemed to confirm their belief that the U.S. is, in fact, ruled by a "Zionist Occupation Government," or some other sinister Jewish cabal. David Duke, for example, praised it for having "told the truth about the proverbial gorilla in the room: the Zionist lobby and its enormous political and media power" (Duke 2006). The Israel Lobby, claimed a commentator for Rense.com, left "absolutely no doubt that Israel not only controls our entire government, our Pentagon, our foreign policy and our political parties, but our media as well" (Lang 2006).

Missing from these critiques and the praise - most of which represented the paper as a conspiratorial account of Jewish influence over U.S. foreign policy - was any acknowledgement of Mearsheimer and Walt’s careful caveats to the contrary. Some were explicit: "the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." To be sure, Mearsheimer and Walt attribute to the Lobby an "ability to manipulate the American political system," but they stress that it is not "a unified movement with central leadership," but an ethnic lobby; one of many, though arguably the most successful (Mearsheimer and Walt 14-16).

According to Walt, the firestorm of criticism surrounding The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy was not sparked by what they said, but by "the fact that two card-carrying members of the American intellectual establishment finally pointed out the elephant in the room" (Washington Times, August 29, 2006). But why did they say it?

Aside from viewing The Israel Lobby controversy as confirming the unpalatable anti-Semitic nightmares of David Duke and others, there are from a conspiratorial perspective at least two more plausible ways of interpreting the storm.

The first is to see The Israel Lobby as a well-crafted attempt to divert blame for the costly debacle that the invasion of Iraq has become from the rest of the Establishment, especially the oil lobby, to the age-old scapegoat, the Jews (Zunes 2006a; Peretz 2006). In this counter-narrative Israel is the victim. Consider Zunes’ commentary on Israel’s recent attack on Lebanon - a military adventure he suggests Israel instigated "largely at the behest of the United States" - where Israel is painted as a U.S. "proxy in the Middle East." Zunes contends this use of Israel "corresponds to historic anti-Semitism" with the ruling elite using the Jews as the "most visible agents of the oppressive social order," who were always "convenient scapegoats" when the elites were seeking to redirect the anger of the restive masses. So now the scapegoating continues, evident in the blame placed on the "Zionist lobby" by Establishment critics (Zunes 2006b).

The second and more plausible interpretation (in this author’s opinion) is that the Mearsheimer-Walt paper is another salvo in an ongoing struggle between competing elites for control of the War on Terror. Rather than the U.S. power-elite being a monolithic entity, the increasingly shrill dispute over The Israel Lobby paper reveals that the fissures at the highest levels of the food chain have become deep and suppurating.

Rather than being a crude attempt to unfairly smear a single ethnic lobby, there really is an Israel Lobby (as AIPAC’s own website proudly attests), which has been successful (despite some exaggerations), and not surprisingly its agenda is opposed by elements in the Establishment. The paper suggested that the usual suspects in most conspiratorial accounts of the "New World Order" -- the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderbergers -- have some serious competition when it comes to influencing American foreign policy.

Continuing on with the argument raised in an earlier piece (Banyan 2006), it is the contention of this article that while the Mearsheimer-Walt article perhaps overstates the influence of the Israel Lobby, it exposes an aspect of elite factionalism missing from most mainstream and alternative narratives of the seemingly endless War on Terror.

The Ultimate Ethnic Lobby
At 82 pages including nearly 40 pages of footnotes, The Israel Lobby is an impressive tome, though inevitably controversial due to its central contention that a lobby group based in America’s Jewish community has distorted U.S. foreign policy. Mearsheimer and Walt are unequivocal, asserting that the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the Middle East is due "almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics … especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’." In fact, they state, no other lobby groups have "managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest."

Israel, Mearsheimer and Walt point out, has been the recipient of an extraordinary amount of aid from the U.S., totaling some $140 billion since the early 1970s. The U.S. has also given Israel privileged access to its intelligence and turned a blind eye towards its covert nuclear program. Yet despite this generous aid, which far exceeds that given to poorer countries, Israel has become a "strategic burden" to America. Continuing U.S. support for Israel has antagonized Arab oil states and has been one of the key factors in motivating terrorists, especially Osama bin Laden, to attack Americans at home and abroad (Mearsheimer and Walt 4-5).

Despite these costs, U.S. support is assured because of the "unmatched power of the Israel Lobby," described as a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations" which actively works "to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction" (p. 14). The "most powerful and well-known" organization in the Israel Lobby is the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), ranked by members of Congress in 1997 as the second most powerful lobby active in Washington DC. AIPAC is a "de facto agent for a foreign government" claim Mearsheimer and Walt, which has a "stranglehold on the U.S. Congress" (pp. 15, 18).

Mearsheimer and Walt assert that AIPAC’s power stems from its ability to "reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it." Others have confirmed this contention. Michael Massing, writing in the New York Review of Books, for instance, notes that AIPAC has a "formidable network of supporters throughout the U.S.," comprising 100,000 members, nine regional offices, ten satellite offices, a Washington office with 100 staff and an annual budget of $47 million (Massing 67). But according to Massing, AIPAC’s real power lies not in its direct lobbying of Congressmen, but in its ability to control the flow of campaign financing:

A candidate will contact AIPAC and express strong sympathies with Israel. AIPAC will point out that it doesn't endorse candidates but will offer to introduce him to people who do. Someone affiliated with AIPAC will be assigned to the candidate to act as a contact person. Checks for $500 or $1,000 from pro-Israel donors will be bundled together and provided to the candidate with a clear indication of the donors' political views (p. 67).

Failing to toe the pro-Israel line, however, can cut short a Congressional career; those candidates who challenge AIPAC "can find their funds suddenly dry up," while their opponents receive generous funding from pro-Israeli sources (Massing 67). But the Lobby is not just AIPAC, it's also represented by a host of think tanks in Washington DC. Aside from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, founded by the Lobby in 1985, "pro-Israel forces" have, according to Mearsheimer and Walt:

…established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of U.S. support for Israel (pp. 21-22).

The Lobby also has "significant leverage over the executive branch," partly due to the disproportionate influence of Jewish voters and financial contributors on presidential elections (Mearsheimer and Walt 18). Another factor is the presence of "fervently" pro-Israel individuals in important positions in the executive branch - such as Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross during the Clinton Administration; and Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz in the Bush Administration - while opponents are generally excluded (Mearsheimer and Walt 17-19).

To achieve its goals - described by Massing as, "a powerful Israel free to occupy the territory it chooses; enfeebled Palestinians; and unquestioning support for Israel by the United States" - the Lobby, especially AIPAC, makes a lot of "background noise," mobilizing the media and Congress to pressure the White House into pursuing policies favorable to Israel (Massing 67-68). There are numerous examples:

In his Memoirs, President Nixon blamed an "unyielding and shortsighted pro-Israeli attitude prevalent in large and influential segments of the American Jewish community, Congress, the media, and in intellectual and cultural circles," for undermining his attempt to create a more "balanced" Middle East policy (p. 481).
In 1975 President Ford was forced to retreat from his six-month suspension of aid to Israel after a campaign by AIPAC, including a letter signed by 76 senators "confirming their support for Israel" (Blankfort 2003, pp. 4-5).
AIPAC has been linked to the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, a piece of legislation apparently designed to disrupt the Oslo accords by trying to shift the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (Massing, pp. 67-68).
In a 2005 speech, former President George H. W. Bush suggested AIPAC was partly to blame for his electoral defeat in 1992 by campaigning against him (Desch 2006, p. 28).

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Lobby, according to Mearsheimer and Walt, has been the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They assert that "pressure" from the Israel Lobby was a "critical factor" behind the invasion, which was part of a "larger plan to reorder the Middle East"; in fact, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was "motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure," rather than a push to dominate the region’s oil. They note that a number of Bush Administration officials, including Perle, Feith and David Wurmser, were co-authors of the Clean Break report of 1996 for then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which recommended ousting Saddam (Mearsheimer and Walt 30-35).

The Lobby also works to suppress commentary critical of Israel, including manipulating the media, stifling debate on university campuses, and labeling as anti-Semites those who suggest the pro-Israel Lobby has excessive influence. "In fact," they observe, "anyone who says that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism" (Mearsheimer and Walt 6, 24). It seems to have been self-fulfilling prophecy. According to one observer, the Lobby "produced an attempt to silence discussion and discredit the authors, sometimes employing character assassination and the technique of guilt by association" (Pfaff 2006).

Mearsheimer and Walt have also been tarred as propagandists in the pay of the Arabs. Some overtly pro-Israel commentators linked publication of The Israel Lobby to a $20 million grant to Harvard from Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal. More recently, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, derided Mearsheimer and Walt as "handmaidens of the Arab propaganda machine" for speaking at an event organised by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) (Jewish Telegraph, August 29, 2006).

The Elephant in the Room
The Mearsheimer-Walt paper is by no means the first attempt by Establishment representatives to criticize the Israel Lobby. In 2002, for example, Michael Lind, a former editor of The National Interest, wrote in Prospect magazine about the "disproportionate influence of the Israel lobby," claiming that its efforts were "distort[ing] U.S. foreign policy." Two years later, Anatol Lieven, a former journalist with the London Times and at the time a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, criticised the Lobby in his book America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (2004).

Other critics of note have included George W. Ball, an Undersecretary of State during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, who attacked the Lobby in his book The Passionate Attachment (1992), arguing that it had "distorted America's policies and imposed an enormous burden on the nation's economy." No friend of the Lobby, Ball once likened members of Congress to "trained poodles," beholden to Israel’s interests, who would "jump dutifully through hoops held by Israel’s lobby" (quoted in Findley, p.19). Ball’s other credential was as one of the founding members of the Bilderberg group; in fact, he attended every Bilderberg meeting but one from 1954 until his death in 1994 (Ball 52-53).

It was through Bilderberg that Ball first developed his association with another occasional enemy of the Israel Lobby, mega-plutocrat David Rockefeller. Self-confessed believer in a "more integrated global political and economic structure: one world," it was perhaps inevitable that Rockefeller would come to grief with the more limited and parochial objectives of the Israel Lobby; though it would also suit his interests to divert blame for dubious policy choices to such a grouping.

Thus in Rockefeller's 2002 Memoirs, we find him agreeing with "expert" opinion that the "end of détente" could be traced to the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1972, which demanded the Soviets lift all restrictions on Jewish emigration in exchange for Most Favored Nation trading status (Rockefeller 236). That Amendment -- conceived by neo-con icon Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson in consultation with an “informal group on Capitol Hill" led by Perle that was “intensely supportive of Israel” (Isaacson 612) -- was, in Rockefeller’s view, a "shortsighted congressional action" (Rockefeller 236).

Rockefeller’s autobiography is filled with details of his many meetings with Arab leaders, but he mentions relatively few visits to Israel. In fact, as "one of relatively few Americans" with access to Arab leaders during the early 1970s - due to his role as President of Chase Manhattan - David Rockefeller boasts he became a "diplomatic go-between," passing messages between the White House and the Arab world (Rockefeller 272).

This role soon got him into trouble with the Israel Lobby. A New York Times report claimed that on December 9, 1969, David Rockefeller and a group of oil executives had allegedly prevailed upon Nixon to adopt a "pro-Arab" position. Rockefeller rejects this characterization, claiming they merely pushed Nixon for a "more balanced U.S. policy" in the Middle East. Secretary of State William Rogers later called on Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders in return for a binding peace with the Arabs. But, laments Rockefeller, Israel "rejected it out of hand" and announced it would open the Arab part of Jerusalem to settlement (Rockefeller 276-78).

A bitter Rockefeller suspected they had been "set-up" by Nixon to be the "scapegoats" if the public turned against Nixon’s policy (Rockefeller 278). But worse was to follow when the Chase bank was "swamped" with letters and prominent visitors from New York’s Jewish community complaining about Rockefeller’s "alleged anti-Israeli bias." A boycott was organized by "several Jewish businessmen" and a "number of important accounts were withdrawn." In January 1970, David Rockefeller issued a public statement clarifying his position, announcing his new found belief the U.S. "must to do everything it can" to support Israel (Rockefeller 279).

There was more to Rockefeller’s reversal than meets the eye. Among those complainants Rockefeller met with was Democrat Congressman Ed Koch, who waged a public campaign against the plutocrat, seeking confirmation that he had advised Nixon to adopt a policy "favorable to the Arabs." Koch claims David Rockefeller admitted to making the offending statement, though he insisted it was done in the interest of the U.S., not because of the oil. Informing the plutocrat that his brother, Nelson Rockefeller, had just come out in unequivocal support of Israel, Koch declared his intention to make a public statement about their meeting (Koch). It has been alleged that Nelson’s support for Israel was not heartfelt, but was due to the Israeli Mossad blackmailing him for consorting with South American fascists and trading with the enemy during World War II (Loftus and Arons 166-171). In the game of public relations Rockefeller had been checkmated.

David Rockefeller's setback was temporary. He has challenged the Israel Lobby’s consensus more than most. An example is his 1999 visit to Israel and the Gaza Strip as part of a CFR delegation, where he met with then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Rockefeller’s account artfully denigrates Israel. He complains of being detained at the border crossing into Gaza by Israeli soldiers for "more than an hour." He describes Arafat as a "charming man," and Gaza as a "ghetto" and "one of the most forlorn places" he had ever visited. As for his Israeli hosts, Barak was a "self-confident, assertive man" who explains why Arafat’s demands will be rejected; but whose replacement by the "hardliner" Ariel Sharon threatens "an even wider war" (Rockefeller 409-410).

The Fight Continues
If we pursue this notion of elite factionalism, we might note the consistency of the links among those who have taken issue with the Israel Lobby. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, not only described the neo-cons as "fucking crazies" (quoted in Naughtie, p. 127), but repeatedly suggested their first loyalty was to Israel. Powell reportedly referred to most of Rumsfeld’s team as the "JINSA crowd" (LA Times, 9 Oct. 2006), and in his exit interview with Bush described Feith as a "card carrying member of the Likud Party" (Packer 445). Powell, no doubt by mere coincidence, is on record publicly thanking the Lobby’s other antagonist, David Rockefeller, for being his "great mentor."

Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department, and, since his own retirement, an outspoken critic of the "cabal" around Cheney, has lauded Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis as containing "blinding flashes of the obvious." Wilkerson has reportedly assigned the paper to his students at George Washington University and the College of William and Mary "for discussion" (Amos 2006).

Other odd coincidences and connections also emerge. Anatol Lieven and Michael Lind, after coming under sustained criticism for their attacks on the Lobby, both found refuge at the New American Foundation (NAF). The mission of the NAF, which was founded in January 1999 and describes itself as an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit public policy institute," is to invest in "outstanding individuals and policy ideas that transcend the conventional political spectrum." Lind is currently the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the NAF. Former Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead, who counts Rockefeller as one of his "old friends" (Whitehead, p.7) -- and who has also been publicly lauded as a "friend" by Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage -- is the largest individual donor to the NAF, as well as a public critic of the Bush Administration’s policies in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Whitehead also marked himself as an opponent of the Israel Lobby/neo-conservative consensus with his public and private attacks on John Bolton, back in 2004 when Bush nominated him to be Ambassador to the UN. Bolton, a former Senior Vice President at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), received enthusiastic support from AEI, JINSA and the Zionist Organization of America. In addition to the controversial efforts of Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, Whitehead personally lobbied Senators to reject Bolton’s nomination.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, long-time Rockefeller acolyte, Trilateral Commission co-founder and lead speaker at a number of NAF forums, praised Walt and Mearsheimer for performing a "public service" by "initiating a much needed public debate" on the role of the Israel Lobby (Brzezinski 63)

Uniting these figures has been their opposition to the invasion of Iraq. On the eve of the invasion, Mearsheimer and Walt (2003, 52) had derided the case for war as "flimsy," arguing instead for the continued containment of Saddam Hussein. Brzezinski had taken issue with the Bush Administration’s "demagogic fixation on Iraq" (Financial Times, Mar. 4, 2003), warning that invading Iraq may come "at too high a cost to America’s global leadership" (Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2003). And Lind (2003) found fault with Washington’s "failure to come up with a convincing rationale for the war."

Whitehead and Rockefeller also indicated disquiet, though less obviously. Sometime after the invasion, Rockefeller declared his support for Colin Powell’s failed attempt to evade war through the UN route (Banyan 2006). Whitehead was a signatory to a letter to Bush from the United Nations Association of the USA (Oct. 25, 2002), which declared its opposition to "unwarranted unilateral military action against Iraq" as a "compelling case has not been made" that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S.

The plot thickens further when we see the forces recently arrayed for and against Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. According to Massing, "pro-Israel forces" were "targeting" Chafee for taking "a number of positions that run counter to AIPAC’s" such as voting against the Syria Accountability Act (Massing 67). In early 2006, the founder of the Washington Political Action Committee, former AIPAC executive director Morris Amitay, told the New York Sun (Jan. 3, 2006) that they would "like to see the young Chafee retired from the Senate" as he had "one of the worst records of anyone in the Senate" when it came to "pro-Israel initiatives." WPAC had already donated $5000 dollars to Chafee’s GOP challenger, Stephen P. Laffey, whose pro-Israel stance was judged by a Rhode Island paper to be "so strong that it sometimes puts him in the minority" (Providence Journal, April 17, 2006).

As the September 12 primary loomed, it was reported that the Republicans Who Care Individual Fund, a group affiliated with the Republican Main Street Partnership, had emerged in support of Chafee, funding a $100,000 advertising campaign targeting his pro-Israel opponent, Laffey. Patrons of the fund, reported the Providence Journal (Sept. 6, 2006), were "some pillars of the old-line GOP establishment," including David Rockefeller ($25,000) and John C. Whitehead ($25,000). Whitehead was also a sponsor of a Chafee fundraiser at the Yale Club, hosted by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on September 5, 2006. This was not enough to save Chafee in the November elections, however, and he was trounced by his Democrat opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse, who received $31,000 from pro-Israel PACs.

The Split Capstone
Speaking in Washington DC in August 2006 as guests of CAIR, Walt made the point that they never said "the Israel lobby was all powerful." It was "not some secret cabal that controls [U.S.] foreign policy"; rather, there were "countervailing forces out there, though they are much weaker, and the lobby doesn’t get its way on every single issue." Walt’s important caveats highlight something missing from both the leftist analysis, exemplified by Zunes, and the more traditional conspiratorial analysis, both of which seem to contend that the ruling elites are monolithic and unfractured.

Among conspiracists, particularly those concerned with the New World Order, the dominant assumption is that all groups are so interconnected that the same objective-- world government - must predominate. Any evidence to the contrary is usually dismissed as a contrivance designed to deceive the public, or as a grubby squabble for control of the same project. David Icke, for instance, assures us that most world leaders (Illuminati) "only appear to be in conflict for the purposes of deluding the people into a false reality" (Icke 477).

Yet indisputable evidence of elite factionalism - of the upper echelons of the food chain chasing different agendas than world government - has long been apparent. In his magnum opus, Tragedy and Hope (1966), for example, Carroll Quigley had observed how, since the 1950s, Wall Street had been challenged by the "new wealth springing up outside the eastern cities, notably in the Southwest and Far West." As early as 1964, the representatives of this "new wealth," based in oil, aviation or armaments, had engaged in a financial struggle with the "old wealth" of the East for control of the political process - and ultimately of the White House - to ensure that high government spending on military and space continued (Quigley 1245-1246). This split between the so-called East Coast "Yankees" and the "Cowboys" of the Southwest was subsequently explored at length by Kirkpatrick Sale (1975) and Carl Oglesby (1977).

Seen through the prism of elite factionalism, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is a valuable addition to this neglected field. It highlights in some detail the workings and influence of yet another private grouping that subverts democratic processes in service of a narrow agenda. Of course, some caution is necessary as the outcry over its activities is driven by elite, rather than popular, angst at losing the initiative. But to disregard it, either out of fears of being labeled as anti-Semitic or because it conflicts with pet theories, would be shortsighted.

©2006 Will Banyan. This article appeared in Paranoia issue 44, Spring 2007. Will Banyan has a graduate degree in Information Science and is a writer specializing in the political economy of globalization. He has worked for local and national governments, international organizations and the private sector. He is currently working on a revisionist history of the New World Order and an analysis of the War on Terror. Banyan's six-part series, "Rockefeller Internationalism" and four-part series "A Short History of the Round Table" were published in Nexus. His article "Outflanking the Nation-State" appears on the Paranoia website, and research papers "The Invisible Man of the New World Order: Raymond B. Fosdick" and "The Proud Internationalist: The Globalist Vision of David Rockefeller" appear at: www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/third_section.html. He may be reached at banyan007@rediffmail.com.

The Israel Lobby paper may be read at the London Review of Books website (www.lrb.co.uk). See also video (and transcript) of the Sept 2006 debate at Cooper Union in NYC, “The Israel Lobby: Does it Have Too Much Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy?” (www.scribemedia.org/2006/10/11/israel-lobby/)

References
Amos, Deborah. "Paper on Israel Lobby Sparks Heated Debate," NPR -- Morning Edition, April 21, 2006. www.npr.org.

Banyan, Will. "A Neo-Con Counter-Conspiracy," Paranoia (issue 40), Winter 2006.

Bill, James A. George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy. Yale University Press, 1997.

Blankfort, Jeffrey. "Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel Palestine Conflict,” www.dissidentvoice.org, May 25, 2005.

Blankfort, Jeffrey. A War for Israel. (Left Curve No. 28). If Americans Knew, 2004.

Blankfort, Jeffrey. The Israel Lobby and the Left: Uneasy Questions. If Americans Knew, 2003.

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. "A Dangerous Exemption," Foreign Policy, July/August 2006.

Dershowitz, Alan. Debunking the Newest - and Oldest - Jewish Conspiracy: A Reply to the Mearsheimer-Walt "Working Paper." Harvard Law School, April 2006.

Desch, Michael C. "The Myth of Abandonment: The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust Analogy," Security Studies, January 2006.

Findley, Paul. "Silence of the Poodles," Washington Report, May/June 2006, p. 19.

Icke, David. Tales from the Time Loop. Bridge of Love, 2004.

Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger: A Biography. Touchstone: New York, 1992.

Koch, Ed. Reminiscences of David Rockefeller (1976 interview), “Notable New Yorkers” in the Oral History Research Office Collection of the Columbia University Libraries (OHRO/CUL), www.columbia.edu.

Lind, Michael. "Can A Government Wage War Without Popular Support?," January 28, 2003.

Lind, Michael. "The Israel Lobby," Prospect, April 1, 2002.

Loftus, John, and Mark Aarons. The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People. St. Martin's Griffin, 1997 (Reprint).

Massing, Michael. "The Storm over the Israel Lobby," The New York Review of Books, June 8, 2006.

Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen M. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Harvard University, March 2006.

Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen M. "An Unnecessary War," Foreign Policy, January/February 2003.

Naughtie, James. The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency. Pan Books, 2004.

Oglesby, Carl. The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate and Beyond. Berkley: Medallion Books, 1977.

Peretz, Martin. "Oil and Vinegar," The New Republic, March 10, 2006.

Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time. Angriff Press, 1974.

Rockefeller, David. Memoirs. Random House, 2002.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. Power Shift: The Rise of The Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment. Random House, 1975.

Whitehead, John C. A Life in Leadership: From D-Day to Ground Zero. New America Books, 2005.

Zunes, Stephen. The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really? Foreign Policy In Focus, May 16, 2006a.

Zunes, Stephen. "How Washington Goaded Israel to Invade Lebanon," Aug. 19, 2006b, www.commondreams.org.

Who knows what happened on 9/11?

2009-01-01T19:01:00.000+01:00

by Dan Hind

Wide-ranging conspiracies do take place, whether you or I, or Charlie Brooker, are inclined to believe it or not

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/17/september11

Earlier this week Charlie Brooker generated the largest number of online responses to an article in the history of Comment is free. His theme was conspiracy theory in general and the 9/11 conspiracy theories in particular – and it collected more than 1,700 comments. Brooker thinks conspiracy theories console those who find reality too dull and complicated without the garnish of a hidden agenda: "Embrace a conspiracy theory and suddenly you're part of a gang sharing privileged information; your sense of power and dignity rises a smidgeon and this troublesome world makes more sense, for a time."

Brooker's line belongs to a mini-genre of attempts to explain the public's willingness to entertain conspiracy theories in psychological terms. Indeed he is very close to that stern rationalist Melanie Phillips, who has decided that, in the absence of religion, conspiracy theories satisfy "our desperate need to make order out of chaos".

The conspiratorial world view does have its consolations. But so does Brooker's. There's a certain pleasure and drama in declaring that the world is driven by incompetence and error, and that things are more or less as they seem. You can preen yourself on how well-adjusted you are, how you haven't fallen for that stuff about lizards, or Illuminati. You have learned to live without magic. You're saying "I don't believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories", but you are signalling that you are sceptical and rational and that you don't have personal hygiene issues. There's a psychological pay-off for both the cock-up and the conspiracy theory of history.

Our willingness to entertain conspiracy theories is doubtless influenced by our life experiences. A man in his 20s with time on his hands is more likely to be drawn to the wilderness of mirrors that surrounds that death of John Kennedy than a successful columnist in his 30s.

But this is beside the point. Wide-ranging conspiracies do take place, whether we are inclined to believe that they do or not. It might well be consoling to believe that the CIA plots the overthrow of unhelpful foreign regimes. But it is also true. To insist that, say, the CIA had nothing to do with the fall of Guatemalan leader Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, or the overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973 might feel terrifically sensible and sane – we can't always be seeing the hidden hand of the CIA, there's no call for reductionism. It is also, you know, wrong.

What happened on 9/11 is, in the end, a matter of fact – whatever our worldview might incline us to consider plausible or possible. The true authorship of the attacks is as difficult to establish as anything else about the world of international terrorism and espionage.

For myself, I have no idea what happened, because I have no more idea of how the business-intelligence-political nexus works than I have about what chess grandmasters are up to when they are staring at the board, looking all thoughtful.

The attacks on the US on September 11 2001 were part of a web of events that interconnect with oil, drugs, money, organised crime, imperialism, existing institutions and us. And religion, and a lot more money.

It might feel wise and sensible to declare that any explanation that differs from the official account requires hundreds of impossibly tight-lipped bureaucratic killers. But that presupposes that we know how the world works, and we don't.

Maybe the 9/11 attacks were all about a small team of terrorists who managed to hold it together in a world otherwise characterised by crossed wires and blundering incompetence. But I don't know, and nor does Charlie Brooker.

The most important conspiracy theory about 9/11 rarely gets mentioned by writers like Brooker and Phillips. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq the White House made every effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida. Far from being a production of what commentators like to call the tinfoil hat brigade, this particular paranoid fantasy emerged from the work of a highly focused and skilled group of people.

They worked in secret to manipulate the American and the global public and we can trace the impact of the efforts over time. So here is a (true) conspiracy to promote a (false) conspiracy theory. The White House's psy-war operatives were doubtless a professional and measured lot. I am sure that they knew how to behave in socially appropriate ways and enjoyed their work. They also helped pave the way for an illegal war in which more than half a million people have died. There's a 9/11 conspiracy theory hard at work, right there. It doesn't matter what sort of person you are, whether you are coolly rational or groping around for meaning in an indifferent world, America's spooks conspired to stampede the public into war on a false prospectus.

Some of the same people are now working hard to convince us that Iran poses an unacceptable threat to the peace-loving nations of the world. If they can they will use conspiracy theories of various kinds to do it, all the while acting conspiratorially. So it is hardly surprising that people – intelligent, level-headed people – are willing to believe that sophisticated conspiracies exist and that they are sometimes extremely important drivers of events. Given that they demonstrably do exist.

And while elements in the American state angle for another war in the Middle East, Melanie Phillips and Charlie Brooker will doubtless continue to heap scorn on an irrational public. Which seems a little, well, paranoid, under the circumstances.

When's a conspiracy theory not a conspiracy theory? When it's your own

2009-01-01T00:55:00.001+01:00

By Stephen Gowans

http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/selective.html

It has become fashionable these days, in a kind of snobbish way, to denounce 9/11 conspiracy theories. "Conspiracy theories," the growing legion of detractors snort, "are absurd, ridiculous, and beneath contempt. Not only that, they're harmful."

And, indeed, it's true; some conspiracy theories are absurd, and some are harmful, but it's doubtful the absolutist position that all conspiracy theories are absurd is also true. Couldn't some conspiracy theories be true?

But my purpose isn't to defend this conspiracy theory or that, or to pick the good from the bad, but to look at the way "conspiracy theory" is used as a handy derogatory label to dismiss unpalatable and disturbing views, while other views that are not so unpalatable or disturbing and are just as much conspiracy theories, are accepted as reasonable; some even as received truth.

In fact, what's branded a "conspiracy theory" and therefore is said to be worthy of contempt, seems to depend on who's said to be doing the conspiring.

Take the theory that holds that US President George W. Bush had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks on US buildings, but did nothing to warn Americans, knowing he could use their deaths to his advantage. This theory is denounced as a monstrous slur, as having no basis in fact. And it's branded a "conspiracy theory."

But if the same theory were invoked to explain the behavior of an official enemy of the United States, or of the leader of a country Washington considers a rival, what are the chances it would be denounced as a monstrous slur, that has no basis in fact, and amounts to nothing more than base conspiracy theorizing?

Slim to none, I'd say. And I believe this to be so, because there is such a theory, and it has hardly been treated as absurd, ridiculous or unthinkable. Indeed, it hasn't even been labelled a conspiracy theory. But its features are no different than the "Bush had foreknowledge and deliberately failed to act" theory.

Advanced by the chief UN prosecutor Carla del Ponte, this (unlabelled conspiracy) theory says that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, had foreknowledge of NATO attacks on Serb buildings, and did nothing to warn Serbs, knowing he could use their deaths to his advantage. In other words, he did what some conspiracy theorists allege Bush did (or didn't do.) And del Ponte has threatened to add the charge -- a conspiracy view, just as much as the Bush one -- to the list of indictments against Milosevic. So why isn't del Ponte's view branded a "conspiracy theory" and dismissed as beneath our notice?

Or what of Russian president Vladimir Putin? How would a theory that says Putin conspired to organize terror attacks against Russian civilians to justify military intervention in Chechnya be received? Like the theory that holds Bush responsible for conspiring to arrange terror attacks against US civilians? Would the Putin-did-it view be denounced, as the views of Jared Israel, Michael Rupert, and Michel Chossudovsky have been (who argue the Bush administration was complicit in 9/11.) Indeed, would the Putin as conspirator view even be called a conspiracy theory, or would it be accepted as a view worthy of consideration by level-headed, reasonable people -- hardly a "conspiracy theory" at all (though it very clearly involves a conspiracy)?

The following, published in The Globe and Mail (June 27, 2002), Canada's establishment newspaper, by Amy Knight, a respected university professor, says yes; it would be considered reasonable, and wouldn't be called a "conspiracy theory."

"In a third FSB-motivated case," (the FSB is the successor of the KGB) "a Moscow court on Monday convicted former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko of abuse of office and stealing explosives. (He was given a suspended sentence of three-and-a-half years.)
"Mr. Litvinenko, who lives under political asylum in Britain and was...tried in absentia, fled abroad in late 2000, after running afoul of the FSB when he came out with accusations that his employers had ordered him to kill business tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
"More recently, Mr. Litvinenko co-authored a book accusing the FSB of complicity in the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people. The bombings, which Russian officials blamed on Chechen rebels, aroused wide public support for a second invasion of Chechnya and helped to catapult Vladimir Putin to power in 2000.
"The fact that the culprits were never found and that the FSB was subsequently caught red-handed with explosives in an apartment building in the city of Ryazan (the FSB claimed it was just a "training exercise") led Mr. Litvinenko and many other Russians...to voice suspicion about FSB involvement in the bombings.
"The prosecution...of Mr. Litvinenko, hurried through before a law making in-absentia trials illegal comes into force on July 1, may be intended largely as a warning to potential defectors from the security and intelligence services that they would face severe reprisals if they followed in the footsteps of these men.
"Given that both so openly and scathingly attacked their former employers, the verdicts against them are not that surprising. Nonetheless, their cases demonstrate that politically motivated trials, a holdover from the Soviet era, are still a part of the Russian judicial system."

Notice that Litvinenko's allegations, not materially different from the allegations of those who charge the US government with complicity in the 9/11 attacks, are discussed in the context of a serious think-piece, written by a serious academic, in a serious, establishment newspaper. Notice too that Litvinenko's charges are not dismissed, and that the quality of his evidence (whatever it might be), is not called into question. And importantly, Litvinenko's views of a Kremlin-based conspiracy aren't called a conspiracy theory.

Notice, moreover, that you haven't seen the views of Israel, Rupert or Chossudovsky discussed in the mainstream press as serious allegations worthy of anyone's attention. Indeed, the only sustained attention they've received is in the Left American media, where they've been hysterically denounced on the flimsiest grounds. (David Corn, writing in The Nation, argues that Bush's fear of being caught would have deterred him from conspiring in 9/11. Perhaps, Corn would have argued that Richard Nixon would have never ordered the break-in of the Watergate Hotel, for the same reason: he would have been afraid of being found out.)

Yet, notice how close the parallel is between the two views.

One theory says, Putin orchestrated attacks on Russian buildings, which he then blamed on Islamists, to justify a war in Central Asia. The other says, Bush orchestrated attacks on US buildings, which he then blamed on Islamists, to justify a war in Central Asia. Suspicions are aroused because Putin has offered not a shred of evidence that the Islamists did it, and because the alleged culprits never actually said, "we did it," an odd thing for terrorists to do. Moreover, the Russian security service was caught placing bombs in Russian buildings. Suspicions are also aroused because Bush has offered no sound evidence that the Islamists did it, and because the alleged culprits have never actually said "we did it," an odd thing for terrorists to do. Moreover, the US security service has a long association with the alleged perpetrator.

Yet, despite the parallel, one's treated sympathetically and escapes being branded a "conspiracy theory," while the other is reviled and ridiculed as a "conspiracy theory" and circulates on the margins.

There's another parallel. While NATO was laying waste to Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, I was struck by how the media attributed base and manipulative motives to non-NATO governments, particularly those of Yugoslavia, Russia and China, while angelizing the motives of NATO countries. So, for example, Milosevic's government was said to be inspired by ethnic hatred, Russia's opposition to the bombing was imputed to Slavic ethnic solidarity, while NATO governments were motivated by humanitarian concerns. Isn't dismissing conspiracy as the basis for our own government's actions, while accepting it as a possible basis for the actions of foreign governments, another instance of angelizing our own leaders while demonizing foreign leaders?

And there' another level on which the labelling of views as conspiracy theories is selective. While views that hold the US government responsible for, or as being complicit in, the 9/11 attacks, are disparaged as "conspiracy theories," the official view, which is every bit as much a conspiracy theory, is accepted as a received truth. That theory, it will be recalled, presented on no evidence at all, but with the demand that it be accepted on faith, holds that Osama bin Laden, "a sinister mastermind", conspired to have aircraft flown into the WTC and Pentagon because he hates American "freedom and democracy." What's more, the White House peremptorily dismissed requests to see evidence, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair's brief he claimed proved the Saudi terrorist's culpability was a pathetic farrago of leaps of logic and old newspaper clippings. In other words, the evidence for the official conspiracy theory is no better, and a thousand times weaker, than the evidence for antigovernment theories of only mediocre quality. It's as if what amounts to a conspiracy theory and is worthy of contempt is any set of unsubstantiated allegations other than the one set forth by the White House, State Department and Pentagon.

You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain that. You need only point to patriotism; the patriotism that holds foreign leaders conspire; American leaders never do.

14 Punkte

2008-05-06T20:16:00.041+02:00

Dieser Text ist ursprünglich in Benthams "The Open Civil Engineering Journal" veröffentlicht worden. Ich habe ihn ins Deutsche übersetzt - Verbesserungsvorschläge sind ausdrücklich erwünscht:

Vierzehn Punkte der Übereinstimmung mit den offiziellen
Regierungsberichten zur Zerstörung der World Trade Center

von Steven E. Jones, Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan,
Anthony F. Szamboti und James R. Gourley

Übersicht:

Die Berichte von FEMA und NIST legen die offizielle Darstellung der Zerstörung der World Trade Center am 11.9.2001 dar. Mit diesem Schreiben möchten wir das Fundament für eine produktive Diskussion und ein Verständnis schaffen, indem wir uns auf jene Bereiche fokussieren, in denen wir eine gemeinsame Basis mit FEMA und NIST finden können, und gleichzeitig verschiedenen populären Mythen über die WTC-Kollapse entgegentreten.

EINFÜHRUNG

Am 11. September 2001 wurden die Zwillingstürme des World Trade Centers (WTC) von Flugzeugen getroffen. Die totale Zerstörung dieser Hochhäuser in Geschwindigkeiten nahe des freien Falls folgte innerhalb zweier Stunden, und ein weiteres Hochhaus, welches nicht von einem Flugzeug getroffen worden war (WTC 7), kollabierte etwa sieben Stunden später um 17 Uhr 20.

Der US-Kongress erlegte speziell dem National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) die Verantwortung auf, „festzustellen, warum und wie WTC 1 und WTC 2 infolge der Flugzeugeinschläge kollabierten und warum und wie WTC 7 kollabierte“ [1]. Die Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hatte bei ihrer früheren Studie dieser tragischen Kollapse aus einer ähnlichen Motivation heraus gehandelt [2]. NIST und FEMA hatten nicht den Auftrag, herauszufinden, wie Feuer die spezifische Kollapsursache war, jedoch wählten beide offensichtlich diese eingeschränkte Herangehensweise und ließen dabei eine Reihe unbeantworteter Fragen offen. Unser Ziel hier ist, ein Fundament für eine wissenschaftliche Diskussion zu schaffen, indem wir jene Bereiche auflisten, in denen wir mit NIST und FEMA übereinstimmen. Die Mechanismen, welche zur Zerstörung der World Trade Center führten, zu verstehen, wird es Wissenschaftlern und Ingenieuren ermöglichen, ähnliche Gebäude benutzenden Menschen eine sicherere Umgebung zu bieten, und Feuerwehrleuten, die ihr Leben riskieren, um andere zu retten, nützen.

DISKUSSION

1. Der Kollaps des WTCs 7

FEMA: „Die Besonderheiten der Feuer im WTC 7 und wie sie das Gebäude zum Kollabieren brachten bleiben unbekannt zu dieser Zeit.
Obwohl der komplette Dieseltreibstoff im Gebäude eine massive potentielle Energie besaß, hat die beste Hypothese nur eine geringe Auftrittswahrscheinlichkeit. Weitere Forschung, Untersuchungen und Analysen werden benötigt, um diese Angelegenheit zu klären“ [2].

FEMA analysierte den bemerkenswerten Kollaps des WTC-Gebäudes 7, dem 47stöckigen Wolkenkratzer, der, obwohl nicht von einem Flugzeug getroffen, etwa sieben Stunden nach dem Kollaps des zweiten Turms kollabierte. Wir stimmen klar zu, dass FEMAs beste auf Feuer basierende Hypothese „nur eine geringe Auftrittswahrscheinlichkeit“ hat. NISTs abschließender Bericht zu WTC 7 wurde lange aufgeschoben und wird sehnsüchtig erwartet [3]. Offensichtlich ist es schwer, den kompletten und rapiden Kollaps von WTC 7 mit einer allein auf Feuer basierenden Hypothese vollends zu erklären.

2. Dem Flugzeugeinschlag standhalten

FEMA: „Die WTC-Türme waren entworfen worden, dem versehentlichen Einschlag einer Boeing 707, die an einem naheliegenden Flughafen zu landen versucht, standzuhalten…“
[2]

NIST: „Sowohl WTC 1 als auch WTC 2 waren stabil nach dem jeweiligen Flugzeugeinschlag und blieben 102 bzw. 56 Minuten stehen. Die Gesamtanalysen mit strukturellem Einschlagsschaden zeigten, dass beide Türme über beträchtliche Reservekapazität verfügten“ [4].

Ja, dem stimmen wir zu, wie dies auch vorher veröffentlichte Berichte tun:

„Die 110stöckigen Türme des World Trade Centers waren entworfen worden, im Ganzen den durch einen horizontalen Einschlag eines großen kommerziellen Flugzeugs verursachten Kräften standzuhalten. Warum also trat ein kompletter Kollaps auf?“ [5]

John Skilling, ein führender Bauingenieur der WTC-Türme, wurde 1993, gerade nachdem eine Bombe in einem Lastwagen im Nordturm hochgegangen war, interviewt:

„Wir haben uns jede erdenklich mögliche Sache angeschaut, die den Gebäuden hätte zustoßen können, sogar bis hin zu einem Flugzeug, das eine Seite trifft“, sagte John Skilling, der führende Bauingenieur…

Besorgt wegen eines Falles, bei dem ein Flugzeug das Empire State Building [das nicht kollabierte] getroffen hatte, machten Skillings Leute eine Analyse, die zeigte, dass die Türme dem Einschlag einer Boeing 707 standhalten würden.

„Unsere Analyse zeigte an, dass das größte Problem all der Treibstoff (des Flugzeugs) wäre, der ins Gebäude geschüttet würde. Es gäbe ein entsetzliches Feuer. Eine Menge Menschen würden getötet werden“, sagte er. „Die Gebäudestruktur würde immer noch da sein.“

Skilling - ein anerkannter Experte für große Gebäude - glaubt nicht, dass eine einzige 100-Kilo-Autobombe einen Trade-Center-Turm stürzen oder ihm bedeutenden strukturellen Schaden zufügen könnte. Die Stützsäulen sind dicht platziert und selbst wenn mehrere außer Kraft gesetzt wären, würden die anderen die Last tragen.

…Obwohl Skilling kein Sprengstoffexperte ist, sagt er, es gäbe Menschen, die genug über Gebäudesprengungen wüssten, um eine Konstruktion wie das Trade Center zu Fall bringen zu können.

„Ich kann mir vorstellen, wenn man den Topexperten für diese Art von Arbeit nimmt und ihm den Auftrag gibt, diese Gebäude mit Sprengstoff abzureißen, würde ich wetten, dass er es könnte.“ [6]

Also hat Skillings Team gezeigt, dass ein kommerzieller Jet einen WTC-Turm nicht zu Fall bringen würde, genau wie das Empire State Building nicht, nachdem es von einem Flugzeug getroffen worden war, kollabierte, und er hat erklärt, dass ein Experte mit Sprengstoff die Gebäude hätte abreißen können. Dem stimmen wir zu.

3. „Pfannkuchen“-Theorie wird nicht gestützt

NIST: „NISTs Ergebnisse stützen nicht die ‚Pfannkuchen’-Kollapstheorie, die auf einem fortschreitenden Ausfall der Böden in den WTC-Türmen basiert… Die Böden versagten nicht fortschreitend, um ein ‚Pfannkuchen’-Phänomen zu verursachen“ [3].

Richtig: Die „Pfannkuchen-Kollapstheorie“ ist inkorrekt und sollte verworfen werden. Diese Kollapstheorie wurde vom früheren FEMA-Bericht vorgeschlagen und in der von NOVA produzierten Dokumentation „Why the towers fell“ verbreitet [7]. Die „Pfannkuchen-Kollapstheorie“ wird in einem Popular-Mechanics-Artikel zusammen mit einer Reihe anderer diskreditierter Ideen stark beworben [8, 9]. Wir hingegen stimmen mit NIST überein, dass die „Pfannkuchen-Theorie“ wissenschaftlich nicht haltbar ist und in ernsthaften Diskussionen über die Zerstörung der WTC-Türme und von WTC 7 beiseite getan werden sollte.

4. Massive Kernsäulen

NIST: „Wie oben festgestellt, waren die Kernsäulen entworfen worden, etwa 50 % der Schwerkraftlasten zu tragen“ [4]. „Die Trägerkonstruktion verband den Kern mit den Außenwänden der Türme und ermöglichte es dem Gebäude auf diese Weise, den Auswirkungen des Flugzeugeinschlags und der folgenden Feuer für eine viel längere Zeit standzuhalten - was einer großen Anzahl der Bewohner zur sicheren Evakuierung verhalf“ [10].

„Pacific Car und Foundry of Seattle, Washington, stellten die dicht plazierten Außenwandsäulen her, die den Gebäuden deren sofort erkennbare Form verliehen. Stanray Pacific aus Los Angeles, Kalifornien, stellten die enormen Säulen, die den Kern bildeten, her… Den Kern der Gebäude, der hauptsächlich die Schwerkraftlasten trug, bildete eine Mischung aus massiven Stahlsäulen, gemacht aus dreistöckig langen Platten, und schweren gewalzten Flanschprofilen.“ „Die Kernsäulen waren dafür entworfen worden, die Schwerkraftlasten zu tragen und waren vor dem Flugzeugeinschlag zu ungefähr 50 % ihrer Kapazität beladen… Die äußeren Säulen waren vor dem Flugzeugeinschlag zu ungefähr nur 20 % ihrer Kapazität beladen“ [11].

Wir stimmen absolut zu, dass die WTC-Türme über „massive“ miteinander verbundene Stahlsäulen in ihren Kernen verfügten, zusätzlich zu den Säulen in den Außenwänden. Die zentralen Kernsäulen trugen viel der Schwerkraftlasten, also waren die Türme definitiv NICHT hohl. Dennoch scheint die falsche Vorstellung, die Türme wären „hohle Röhren“ gewesen, deren Böden nur von den Außensäulen getragen wurden, breite Akzeptanz erlangt zu haben. Zum Beispiel behauptete ein emeritierter Professor für Bauingenieurwesen: „Das Baudesign der Türme war insofern einzigartig, als die stützende Stahlstruktur aus dicht plazierten Säulen in den Wänden aller vier Seiten bestand. Die resultierende Konstruktion war ähnlich wie eine Röhre…“ [12].

Tatsache ist, dass die Türme mit einer starken lastentragenden Kernstruktur konstruiert wurden, zusätzlich zu den Außensäulen - und in diesem Punkt stimmen wir mit NIST darin überein, falsche populäre Vorstellungen zerstreuen zu wollen.

5. Praktisch im freien Fall

NIST: [Frage:] „Wie konnten die WTC-Türme in nur 11 Sekunden (WTC 1) und 9 Sekunden (WTC 2) kollabieren - Geschwindigkeiten, die denen eines aus ähnlicher Höhe fallengelassenen Balles durch ein Vakuum (ohne Luftwiderstand) entsprechen?“ [Antwort:] …Wie in Abschnitt 6.14.4 von NIST NCSTAR 1 dokumentiert, zeigen diese Kollapszeiten, dass: „…die Struktur unter der Ebene der Kollapsinitiierung der fallenden Gebäudemasse an und über der Einschlagszone minimalen Widerstand bot. Die potentielle von der Abwärtsbewegung der großen Gebäudemasse freigesetzte Energie überstieg die Kapazität der intakten Struktur darunter, diese Energie durch Deformationsenergie zu absorbieren, bei weitem. Da die Stockwerke unter der Ebene der Kollapsinitiierung der enormen von der fallenden Gebäudemasse freigesetzten Energie geringen Widerstand boten, kam der obere Gebäudeabschnitt praktisch im freien Fall herunter, wie in den Videos zu sehen ist“ [3].

Wir stimmen zu, dass das Gebäude „praktisch im freien Fall“ herunterkam, „wie in den Videos zu sehen ist.“ Dies ist ein wichtiger Ausgangspunkt. (Wegen der verhüllenden Staubwolken ist es schwierig, die exakten Fallzeiten zu bestimmen, aber die Aussage, dass die Gebäude „praktisch im freien Fall“ herunterkamen, erscheint korrekt, wenn man sich die Beschleunigungen anschaut, bei den WTC-Türmen wie auch bei WTC 7.) [13, 14] Des weiteren stimmen wir mit NIST darin überein, dass „die Stockwerke unter der Ebene der Kollapsinitiierung“ dem Fall „geringen Widerstand“ boten, aber wir fragen: Wie kann das sein? NIST erwähnt die „Deformationsenergie“, die für die gewaltigen Kernsäulen in den Türmen beträchtlich wäre, und sie müssten ausführlich darauf eingehen (was sie nicht getan haben), um behaupten zu können, die „intakte Struktur“ darunter würde die Bewegung nicht signifikant verlangsamen.

Darüber hinaus vernachlässigt NIST offensichtlich ein fundamentales Gesetz der Physik, indem es den bemerkenswerten „Freifall“-Kollaps jedes Turms als selbstverständlich betrachtet, nämlich das Gesetz der Impulserhaltung. Dieses Gesetz der Physik besagt, dass die hunderttausenden Tonnen Material im Weg die oberen Gebäudeabschnitte aufgrund ihrer Masse verlangsamen müssen, unabhängig von der Deformation, die den Fall ohnehin nur noch weiter verlangsamen kann. (Energie und Impuls müssen jeweils erhalten bleiben)

Veröffentlichte Arbeiten haben argumentiert, dass diese Nachlässigkeit NISTs (die Beinahe-Freifall-Geschwindigkeiten unerklärt zu lassen) ein schwerwiegender Fehler in ihrer Analyse ist. [13, 14] NIST ignoriert die Möglichkeit kontrollierter Sprengungen, die komplette Gebäudekollapse in Beinahe-Freifall-Geschwindigkeiten bewerkstelligen, indem sie das Material mittels Sprengsätzen aus dem Weg räumen. Also gibt es eine alternative Erklärung, die zu den Daten passt, ohne grundsätzliche Gesetze der Physik zu verletzen. Wir sollten uns darauf einigen können, dass, schauen wir uns die Beinahe-Freifall-Zerstörung an, diese charakteristisch für kontrollierte Sprengungen ist, und dass deshalb eine kontrollierte Sprengung ein Weg ist, den kompletten Kollaps in der annähernden Geschwindigkeit des freien Falls zu erreichen. Wir sind sehr daran interessiert, uns NISTs Kalkulationen, wie sie die Beinahe-Freifall-Kollapsraten ohne Sprengsätze erklären, anzuschauen.

Wir erwarten eine Erklärung von NIST, die der Impuls- und Energieerhaltung für die rapide und komplette Zerstörung aller drei WTC-Wolkenkratzer am 11.9. entspricht, oder eine Diskussion über alternative Hypothesen, die mit Impuls- und Energieerhaltung bei diesen Beinahe-Freifall-Ereignissen vereinbar sind.

6. Feuerbeständigkeitstests, kein Ausfall

NIST: „NIST vereinbarte mit Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. vertraglich, Tests durchzuführen, um Informationen zur Feuerbeständigkeit von Trägern wie denen in den WTC-Türmen zu erhalten… Alle vier Testbauten hielten der maximalen Konstruktionslast ungefähr zwei Stunden lang stand, ohne zu kollabieren… Das Untersuchungsteam war vorsichtig, was die direkte Verwendung dieser Ergebnisse für die Formulierung von Kollapshypothesen betraf. Zusätzlich zu den von den Testergebnissen aufgeworfenen Skalierungsfragen waren die Feuer in den Türmen am 11. September und das resultierende Ausgesetztsein der Böden wesentlich anders als die Bedingungen in den Testöfen. Nichtsdestotrotz machten die Ergebnisse [der empirischen Tests] deutlich, dass diese Art von Konstruktion in der Lage war, eine große Last über eine beträchtliche Zeitspanne hinweg, relativ zur Dauer der Feuer an jedem beliebigen Ort am 11. September, tragen zu können, ohne zu kollabieren [4].

Wir stimmen zu, dass NIST tatsächliche Feuertests durchgeführt hat, und dass alle vier „Träger wie die in den WTC-Türmen“ die Feuerbeständigkeitstests „ohne zu kollabieren“ überstanden haben. Wir stimmen auch zu, dass „die Feuer in den Türmen am 11. September“… „wesentlich anders als die Bedingungen in den Testöfen“ waren; die Testöfen waren heißer und brannten länger. Vielleicht möchte NIST ja eine Reihe andersartiger Tests durchführen, im Bemühen, irgendeine andere Hypothese für die Kollapsinitiierung zu entdecken. Nach heutigem Stand jedoch haben wir keine physikalischen Beweise aus echten Feuerbeständigkeitstests, welche die Idee eines totalen Kollapses aufgrund von Feuer stützen. Im Gegenteil deuten diese realen Tests an, dass die Gebäude nicht hätten komplett kollabieren sollen. Zusätzlich haben wir hunderte von Fällen von Feuer in großen Stahlgerüstgebäuden und ein kompletter Kollaps ist niemals aufgetreten.

"Aber Experten sagen, dass kein Gebäude wie WTC 7, ein modernes, stahlverstärktes Hochhaus, jemals wegen eines unkontrollierten Feuers kollabiert ist, und Ingenieure haben herauszufinden versucht, was genau geschah, und ob sie besorgt sein sollten um andere Gebäude gleicher Bauart im ganzen Land. Obwohl die Feuerschutzbeschichtung darauf ausgelegt war, gewöhnlichen Feuern mindestens zwei Stunden lang standhalten zu können, sagen Experten, dass Gebäude von der Größe des World Trade Centers 7, die mit solchen Beschichtungen behandelt werden, niemals in einem Feuer, gleich welcher Dauer, kollabiert sind. Drei weitere Gebäude des Komplexes, World Trade Center 4, 5 und 6, blieben stehen, obwohl sie Schäden aller Arten erlitten hatten, einschließlich Feuer" [15].

Brandschutzexperte Norman Glover stimmt zu:

"Beinahe alle großen Gebäude werden in ihrem Gebrauchsleben einmal der Schauplatz eines bedeutenden Feuers sein. Kein großes Hochhaus ist jemals durch Feuer kollabiert… Das WTC [selbst] war 1975 Schauplatz solch eines Feuers; das Gebäude überstand es jedoch mit geringem Schaden und wurde repariert und wieder in Betrieb gesetzt" [16].

Trotzdem kollabierten drei solcher Hochhäuser (WTC 1, 2, und 7) an einem einzigen Tag, dem 11.9.2001, komplett, und konnten nicht wieder in Betrieb gesetzt werden. Hier gibt es noch viel zu lernen.

7. Feuer von kurzer Dauer

NIST: „Die ursprünglichen Kerosin-Feuer selbst dauerten höchstens ein paar Minuten an“ [4]. „An jedem beliebigen Ort lag die Dauer von [Luft-, nicht Stahl-] Temperaturen nahe 1.000 °C bei etwa 15 bis 20 Minuten. Die restliche Zeit lagen die berechneten Temperaturen nahe 500 °C oder darunter“ [4].

Wir stimmen zu. Aber wie, wenn die Feuer so kurz und ungleichmäßig waren, konnten dann beide Türme ein urplötzliches Versagen des Baustahls in einem weiten Bereich in jedem Turm erleben, und wie konnten die Kollapse aller drei WTC-Hochhäuser so symmetrisch und vollständig sein? [13, 14, 17] Wir ersuchen eine Diskussion über diese Punkte.

8. Die WTC-Feuer haben den Stahl nicht geschmolzen

NIST: „In keinem Fall hat NIST berichtet, dass Stahl in den WTC-Türmen wegen der Feuer geschmolzen sei. Der Schmelzpunkt von Stahl liegt bei etwa 1.500 Grad Celsius (2.800 Grad Fahrenheit). Gewöhnliche Gebäudefeuer und Kohlenwasserstofffeuer (von Kerosin, z.B.) erzeugen Temperaturen von bis zu etwa 1.100 Grad Celsius (2.000 Grad Fahrenheit). NIST hat über maximale Oberschicht-Lufttemperaturen von etwa 1.000 Grad Celsius (1.800 Grad Fahrenheit) in den WTC-Türmen berichtet (zum Beispiel in NCSTAR 1, Bild 6-36)“ [3].

Wir stimmen zu. Auch mit Prof. Thomas Eagar stimmen wir in diesem Punkt überein:

"Das Feuer ist der missverstandenste Teil des WTC-Kollapses. Noch heute berichten die Medien (und viele Wissenschaftler glauben es), dass der Stahl schmolz. Es wird argumentiert, dass das Flugzeugbenzin sehr heiß brennt, besonders, wenn so viel Treibstoff im Spiel ist. Das ist nicht wahr… Die Temperatur des Feuers im WTC war nicht ungewöhnlich und es war ganz sicher nicht in der Lage, Stahl zu schmelzen“ [18].

Da sind wir uns bemerkenswert einig: Die WTC-Feuer waren nicht in der Lage, Stahl zu schmelzen. Natürlich könnte NIST dann aber Schwierigkeiten haben, das kurz vor dem Kollaps aus dem Südturm geflossene geschmolzene Material wie auch Hinweise auf sehr viel höhere Temperaturen als NISTs berichtete 1.100 °C zu erklären [13]. Wir bieten an, über Erklärungen für die beobachteten hohen Temperaturen zu diskutieren.

9. Zerstörung von WTC-Stahl-Beweismitteln

NIST: „NIST verfügt über 236 Baustahlelemente aus den Gebäuden des World Trade Centers (WTC). Diese Stücke repräsentieren nur einen kleinen Teil der begutachteten enormen Menge von Stahl in den verschiedenen Höfen, in die der Schutt, als das WTC-Gelände freigeräumt wurde, gebracht wurde. Es wird geschätzt, dass ungefähr 0,25 Prozent bis 0,5 Prozent der 200.000 Tonnen des für die Konstruktion der zwei Türme verwendeten Stahls sichergestellt wurden.“ „Der Mangel an WTC-7-Stahl schließt Tests am tatsächlichen Material dieses Gebäudes aus…“ [1].

Also wurde nur ein winziger Teil des Stahls der WTC-Türme analysiert, und nichts vom WTC-7-Stahl wurde von NIST analysiert. Was geschah mit dem Rest des Stahls vom Tatort?

"Mehr als drei Monate lang wurde, und wird immer noch, Baustahl der World Trade Center zerschnitten und als Schrott verkauft. Äußerst wichtige Beweise, die viele Fragen über die Designpraktiken von Hochhäusern und das Verhalten unter Brandbedingungen beantworten könnten, sind per Schiff nach China unterwegs, und werden vielleicht nie wieder in Amerika gesehen werden, ehe Sie Ihr neues Auto kaufen. Solch eine Vernichtung von Beweisen zeigt die erstaunliche Ignoranz von Regierungsoffiziellen für den Wert einer gründlichen, wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung des größten feuerinduzierten Kollapses der Weltgeschichte. Ich habe unseren nationalen Standard für Branduntersuchungen, NFPA 921, durchkämmt, aber nirgendwo dort lässt sich eine Ausnahme finden, welche die Zerstörung von Beweismitteln für Gebäude von über zehn Stockwerken Größe erlaubt [19]."

Und obwohl nur ein kleiner Teil des Stahls für Tests gerettet wurde, ist es klar, dass eine „enorme Menge“ des WTC-Stahls entweder für oder von NIST begutachtet wurde, und die ausgesuchten Proben wegen ihrer identifizierten Wichtigkeit für die NIST-Ermittlung ausgewählt wurden [20].

Wir stimmen zu, dass nur „ein kleiner Teil der enormen Menge des Stahls“ der Türme geschont und der Rest rasch wiederverwertet wurde. Die Vernichtung von etwa 99 % des Stahls, Beweismitteln eines Tatorts, war verdächtig und wahrscheinlich illegal, hoffentlich können wir uns darauf einigen.

10. Ungewöhnlich helle Flamme und glühende Flüssigkeit (WTC 2)

NIST: „Eine ungewöhnliche Flamme ist im Feuer zu erkennen. Auf dem oberen Foto {Bild 9-44} sticht, im Gegensatz zu den typischen gelben oder orangefarbenen Flammen herum, eine sehr helle Flamme, die eine Schwade weißen Rauchs erzeugt, hervor“ [4].

„NIST berichtete (NCSTAR 1-5A), dass kurz vor 9 Uhr 52 ein heller Punkt oben an einem Fenster im 80sten Stock des WTCs 2 erschien, vier Fenster versetzt von der Ostecke der Nordseite, gefolgt vom Fließen einer glühenden Flüssigkeit. Dieser Fluss dauerte ungefähr vier Sekunden an, bevor er abklang. Viele solcher Flüssigkeiten wurden in den sieben Minuten vor dem Kollaps dieses Turms nahe dieser Stelle beobachtet“ [3].

Wir stimmen zu und gratulieren NIST dafür, diese Beobachtungen einer „ungewöhnlichen Flamme… die eine Schwade weißen Rauchs erzeugt“ [4], „gefolgt vom Fließen einer glühenden Flüssigkeit“, die „orange glühte“ [3], miteinzubeziehen. Im Hinblick auf die „sehr helle Flamme… die eine Schwade weißen Rauchs erzeugt“, schließt NIST brennendes Aluminium praktisch aus, weil „Aluminium sich gewöhnlicherweise nicht bei normalen Feuertemperaturen entzündet…“ [3].

Und wieder stimmen wir zu.

Die Herkunft dieser sehr hellen Flamme und des mit ihr verbundenen Fließens einer orange glühenden Flüssigkeit bleiben offene Fragen im NIST-Bericht. NIST hat, indem es diese bedeutsamen Anhaltspunkte aus seinen Daten veröffentlicht hat [3, 4], eine sehr angemessene Ermittlungsrichtung eröffnet und einen wichtigen Ausgangspunkt gesetzt für weitere Diskussionen, die wir ersuchen.

11. Hochtemperaturangriff auf den Stahl, Sulfidation

FEMA (basierend auf der Arbeit eines Untersuchungsteams vom Worchester Polytechnic Institute): „Probe 1 (von WTC 7)… Hinweise eines starken Hochtemperaturkorrosionsangriffs auf den Stahl, einschließlich Oxidation und Sulfidation mit anschließendem interkristallinem Schmelzen, waren leicht erkennbar in der Mikrostruktur nahe der Oberfläche… Probe 2 (von WTC 1 oder WTC 2)… Die Verdünnung des Stahls trat auf durch Hochtemperaturkorrosion aufgrund einer Kombination von Oxidation und Sulfidation. …Die starke Korrosion und anschließende Erosion der Proben 1 und 2 sind ein sehr ungewöhnliches Ereignis. Für die Quelle des Schwefels ist keine klare Erklärung identifiziert worden… Eine detaillierte Studie der Mechanismen dieses Phänomens wird benötigt…“ [2].

Wir stimmen zu, dass die physikalischen Beweise für einen „starken Hochtemperaturkorrosionsangriff“ mit Schwefel zwingend sind. Hier haben wir Gründe für eine interessante Diskussion: Wie wurden „starke hohe Temperaturen“ in den WTC-Gebäuden erreicht? Was ist die Quelle des Schwefels, der den Stahl in diesen Gebäuden angegriffen hat? Die Antworten auf diese Fragen könnten uns die Erklärung für den „totalen Kollaps“ der Türme und des WTCs 7, die wir alle suchen, finden helfen.

Die WPI-Forscher haben ihre Ergebnisse veröffentlicht [2, 21] und „eine detaillierte Studie“ dieses Phänomens von „Hochtemperatur“-„Oxidation und Sulfidation“ erbeten. Jedoch wurden ihre Ergebnisse unglücklicherweise von NIST in deren darauffolgenden Berichten zur Zerstörung der Türme ignoriert [3, 4]. Ihr Versagen, auf diese dokumentierte Anomalie einzugehen, ist ein verblüffendes Phänomen an sich. Vielleicht wird NIST dieses Übersehen erklären und korrigieren, indem sie die Hochtemperatursulfidationsdaten in ihrem lange überfälligen Bericht zum Kollaps des WTCs 7 berücksichtigen. Die Existenz starker Hochtemperaturen bei der WTC-Zerstörung ist jetzt klar festgestellt [22]. Es scheint, dass NIST diesen Beweis versehentlich übersehen hat, und wir bieten an, diese Sache mit ihnen zu untersuchen, im Streben nach Verständnis und Sicherheit.

12. Computermodelle und Visualisierungen

NIST: „Für die Gesamtanalyse jedes Turms wurde der schwerste Fall (was Fall B für das WTC 1 und Fall D für das WTC 2 wurde) verwendet. Dann wurden für die Fälle B und D komplette Simulationsreihen durchgeführt. Soweit die Simulationen von den photographischen Beweisen oder Augenzeugenberichten [dass ein vollständiger Kollaps auftrat, z.B.] abwichen, passten die Ermittler die Eingaben an, aber ausschließlich im Rahmen der physikalischen Realität. Also, zum Beispiel… wurden die durch die herabsackenden Böden an den Außensäulen ziehenden Kräfte angepasst… [4] „Die hauptsächliche Rolle der Böden beim Kollaps der Türme war es, einwärts ziehende Kräfte zu erzeugen, die das Einwärtsbiegen der Außensäulen verursachten [4]. „Die Ergebnisse waren eine Simulation der Strukturschwächung jedes Turms vom Flugzeugeinschlag bis zu dem Zeitpunkt, an dem das Gebäude instabil wurde, d.h., bestimmt war zu kollabieren“ [4]

Wir stimmen zu, dass NIST von komplexen Computersimulationen Gebrauch machte, und ohne Zweifel „die Eingaben anpasste“, um die Zerstörung der Türme zu erklären, nachdem die physikalischen Feuerbeständigkeitstests ihre vorherbestimmte Kollapstheorie nicht gestützt hatten. Aber das Endergebnis solcher aufpolierten Computermodelle, die zur Verfügung gestellt wurden ohne Visualisierungen und ohne ausreichende Details, dass andere sie bestätigen könnten, ist kaum zwingend. Ein Artikel im Journal New Civil Engineer stellt fest:

"NCE hat erfahren, dass die Ermittler des World-Trade-Center-Unglücks [bei NIST] sich weigern, ihre Computervisualisierungen der Kollapse der Zwillingstürme zu veröffentlichen, trotz der Aufrufe dazu von führenden Bau- und Brandingenieuren. Visualisierungen von Kollapsmechanismen werden routinemäßig verwendet, um die Art des Finite-Elemente-Analyse-Modells, das von den [NIST-] Ermittlern verwendet wurde, zu bestätigen.

…Ein führender US-Bauingenieur sagte, dass NIST offensichtlich enorme Ressourcen für die Entwicklung der Einschlags- und Brandmodelle aufgewendet hatte. „Im Vergleich dazu ist das Gesamtstrukturmodell nicht so anspruchsvoll“, sagte er. „Die [von NIST] verwendete Software ist an neue Grenzen gestoßen, und es hat eine Menge Vereinfachungen, Extrapolationen und voreilige Schlüsse gegeben" [23].

Weitere detaillierte Kommentare zu den NIST-Computersimulationen liefert Eric Douglas [24].

Wir würden gerne die von NIST gemachten Computermodelle und Extrapolationen diskutieren und den Bedarf an Visualisierungen, um mit numerischen und graphischen Hilfsmitteln die Finite-Elemente-Analyse zu prüfen und bestätigen.

13. Eine Erklärung für den totalen Kollaps fehlt

NIST: „Dieser Brief ist die Antwort auf Ihre Anfrage vom 12. April 2007… wir sind außerstande, eine vollständige Erklärung des totalen Kollapses zu erbringen“ [25].

Dieses Eingeständnis von NIST nach dem Veröffentlichen von etwa 10.000 Seiten über den Kollaps ist von einer bewundernswerten Aufrichtigkeit, könnte jedoch eine Art Schock sein für interessierte Parteien wie den Kongress, der NIST beauftragt hatte, eine vollständige Erklärung zu finden.

Wir stimmen zu, dass NIST bisher keine vollständige Erklärung für den totalen Kollaps erbracht hat. Tatsächlich bemühen sie sich zu erklären, dass ihr Bericht nicht bis zum Kollaps reicht, sondern die Untersuchung nur bis zu dem Punkt führt, an dem jeder Turm „bestimmt war zu kollabieren“ [4]. Wir bieten unsere Hilfe an, diese schwer greifbare „vollständige Erklärung des totalen Kollapses“, der so vielen unschuldigen Menschen in den WTC-Türmen das Leben gekostet hat, zu finden, in der Hoffnung, dass es nicht noch einmal geschieht. Wir haben ein paar Ideen und können diese mit Versuchsdaten untermauern [13, 22]. Wir sind daran interessiert, dass physikalische Beweise und Analysen zu einem vollen Verständnis der Zerstörung der World Trade Center führen.

14. Suche nach Sprengstoff- oder Thermitrückständen

Aus einem NIST-FAQ: [Frage:] „Hat die NIST-Untersuchung nach Hinweisen darauf gesucht, dass die WTC-Türme durch eine kontrollierte Sprengung zu Fall gebracht worden sein könnten? Wurde der Stahl auf Sprengstoff- oder Thermitrückstände getestet? Die Kombination von Thermit und Schwefel (Thermat genannt)‚ schneidet durch Stahl wie ein heißes Messer durch Butter’.“ [Antwort:] „NIST hat den Stahl nicht auf Rückstände dieser Verbindungen getestet“ [3].

Wir stimmen zu; es gibt keinen Hinweis darauf, dass NIST nach Rückständen von Thermit oder Sprengstoffen gesucht hat. Dies ist ein weiteres bemerkenswertes Eingeständnis. Die Suche nach Rückständen pyrotechnischer Materialien, insbesondere Thermit, wird für Brand- und Explosionsuntersuchungen vom NFPA-921-Code vorgeschrieben:

"Vom anfänglichen Brennmaterial könnten ungewöhnliche Rückstände zurückbleiben. Diese Rückstände könnten von Thermit, Magnesium oder anderen pyrotechnischen Materialien stammen [26]."

Spuren von Thermit in den Resten (verfestigte Asche, Staub, etc.) würden uns eine ganze Menge über das Verbrechen und die Ursache von tausenden von Verletzungen und Toden sagen können. Dies ist die Standardprozedur bei Brand- und Explosionsermittlungen. Möchte NIST vielleicht erklären, warum sie nicht nach diesen Rückständen gesucht haben? Der Code schreibt vor, dass Ermittler eines Brandes darauf vorbereitet sein müssen, einen Ausschluss rechtfertigen zu können [26].

NIST ist kürzlich zu dieser wichtigen Angelegenheit von der investigativen Reporterin Jennifer Abel befragt worden:

Abel: „…was ist mit dem Brief, in dem NIST gesagt hat, dass es nicht nach Hinweisen auf Sprengstoff gesucht hat?“ Neuman [Sprecher von NIST, im WTC-Bericht aufgeführt]: „Stimmt, weil es darauf keine Hinweise gab.“ Abel: „Aber wie können Sie wissen, dass es keine Hinweise gibt, wenn Sie nicht erst einmal danach suchen?“ Neuman: „Wenn Sie nach etwas suchen, das nicht da ist, verschwenden Sie Ihre Zeit… und das Geld der Steuerzahler“ [27].

Dieses offensichtlich ausweichende Verhalten könnte man komisch finden, wenn NISTs Herangehensweise sich nicht auf die Leben so vieler unschuldiger Menschen auswirken würde. Wir glauben nicht, dass es „Zeitverschwendung“ ist, wie im NFPA-921-Code festgelegt, nach Thermit oder anderen Rückständen zu suchen. Auch hier könnten wir vielleicht aushelfen, weil wir in den WTC-Überresten mittels analytischer Methoden auf dem aktuellen Stand der Technik nach solchen Rückständen gesucht haben, besonders im gewaltigen giftigen Staub, der erzeugt wurde, als die Gebäude fielen und tausende Menschen töteten, und die Hinweise auf Thermitverwendung häufen sich. [13, 22]

SCHLUSSFOLGERUNGEN

Wir haben vierzehn Bereiche aufgezählt, in denen wir mit FEMA und NIST mit ihren Untersuchungen der tragischen und schockierenden Zerstörung der World Trade Center übereinstimmen. Wir stimmen darin überein, dass die Türme in der annähernden Geschwindigkeit des freien Falls gefallen sind und das ist ein wichtiger Ausgangspunkt. Wir stimmen darin überein, dass verschiedene populäre Mythen sich als falsch herausgestellt haben, wie zum Beispiel der Gedanke, dass Stahl in den Gebäuden aufgrund der Feuer schmolz, oder dass die Türme hohle Röhren waren, oder dass die Böden in der Art aufeinanderfallender Pfannkuchen die totalen Kollapse verursachten. Wir stimmen darin überein, dass der Kollaps des 47stöckigen WTCs 7 (welches nicht von einem Jet getroffen worden war), ausgehend von einem feuerinduzierten Mechanismus, schwer zu erklären ist, und dass NIST sich (bis jetzt) geweigert hat, nach Rückständen von Sprengstoff zu suchen [3, 22, 27]. Unser Untersuchungsteam würde gerne auf diesem Fundament aufbauen und mit dem NIST-Untersuchungsteam korrespondieren, besonders, seit sie offen zugegeben haben (in einer Antwort an einige von uns im September 2007):

„…wir sind außerstande, eine vollständige Erklärung des totalen Kollapses zu erbringen“ [25].

Wir bieten an, diese Angelegenheiten in einer zivilen Art als eine Sache von Höflichkeit im Fachdiskurs und bürgerlicher Pflicht zu diskutieren. Die Leben tausender Menschen könnten sehr wahrscheinlich davon abhängen.

DANKSAGUNGEN

Vielen Dank für die hilfreichen Diskussionen mit Jim Hoffman, Dr. Gregory Jenkins, Dr. Jeffrey Farrer, Prof. Kenneth Kuttler, Prof. David R. Griffin, Gregg Roberts, Brad Larsen, Gordon Ross, Prof. David Griscom, Prof. Graeme Mac-Queen und den Forschern von STJ911.org und AE911Truth.org.

QUELLENANGABEN

[1] S. W. Banovic, “Federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster: Steel inventory and identification, NIST NCSTAR1-3B”. Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute ofStandards and Technology, September 2005.
[2] Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),World Trade Center building performance study: Preliminary observations, and recommendations,
Report FEMA 403. Washington, D.C.: Federal Emergency Management Agency, May 2002.
[3] S. Sunder, W. Grosshandler, H. S. Lew, et al. “National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, answers to frequently asked questions”, Gaithersburg, MD:
National Institute of Standards and Technology, August 30, 2006. [Online]. Available: NIST, http://wtc.nist.gov. [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[4] S. Sunder, W. Grosshandler, H. S. Lew, et al. “Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, NIST NCSTAR . Gaithersburg”, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, September 2005.
[5] Z. P. Bazant and Y. Zhou, “Why did the World Trade Center collapse? Simple analysis”, J. Eng. Mech., vol. 128, pp. 2-6, January 2002.
[6] E. Nalder, “Twin towers engineered to withstand jet collision”, Seattle Times, February 27, 1993. [Online]. Available: http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/
cgibin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=1687698&date=19930227 [Accessed April 5,
2008].
[7] Public Broadcasting System, “Why the Towers fell”, Public Broadcasting System, 2002. [Online]. Available: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2907_wtc.html [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[8] J. B. Meigs, D. Dunbar, B. Reagan, et al. “Debunking the 9/11 myths, special report”, Popular Mechanics, vol. 182, pp. 70-81, March 2005.
[9] D. R. Griffin, Debunking 9/11 debunking: “An answer to Popular Mechanics and other defenders of the official conspiracy theory”, Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2007.
[10] S. Sundar, Opening remarks of Dr. S. Shyam Sunder (NIST), May 2006. [Online]. Available: NIST, http://wtc.nist.gov/media/Sunder_Progressive%20 Collapse_Remarks_050106.pdf [Accessed March 27, 2008].
[11] S. W. Banovic, T. Foecke, W.E. Luecke, et al. “The role of metallurgy in the NIST investigation of the World Trade Center towers collapse”,JOM, vol. 59,
no. 11, pp. 22-29, November 2007.
[12] D. A. Firmage. (April 10, 2006). “Refuting 9/11 conspiracy theory”, The College Times, p. A6.
[13] S. E. Jones, “Why indeed did the WTC buildings completely collapse?”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, vol. 3, pp. 1-47, September 2006. [Online]. Available:
www.journalof911studies.com [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[14] F. Legge and T. Szamboti, “9/11 and the twin towers: Sudden collapse initiation was impossible”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, vol. 18, pp. 1-3, December 2007. [Online]. Available: www.journalof911studies.com [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[15] J. Glanz, “A nation challenged; the site: Engineers have a culprit in the strange collapse of 7 World Trade Center: Diesel fuel”, New York Times, November 29, 2001, p. B9.
[16] N. J. Glover, “Collapse lessons”, Fire Engineering, October 2002, p. 97.
[17] D. L. Griscom, “Hand-waving the physics of 9/11”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, Letters, February 8, 2007. [Online]. Available: www.journalof911studies.com
[Accessed March 17, 2008].
[18] T. W. Eagar and C. Musso, “Why did the World Trade Center collapse? Science, engineering, and speculation”, JOM, vol. 53, no. 12, pp. 8-11, December 2001.
[19] W. Manning, “Selling out the investigation”, Fire Engineering, January 2002, p. 4.
[20] J. Gourley, R. McIlvaine, W. Doyle, S. E. Jones, K. Ryan and R. Gage, “Appeal filed with NIST pursuant to earlier request for correction”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, 17 pp. 1-16. [Online]. Available: www.journalof911studies.com [Accessed March 17,
2008].
[21] J. R. Barnett, R. R. Biederman and R. D. Sisson, Jr., “An initial microstructural analysis of A36 steel from WTC building 7”, JOM, vol. 53, no. 12, p. 18, December 2001.
[22] S. E. Jones, J. Farrer, G. S. Jenkins, et al. “Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, vol. 19, pp.1-11, January 2008. [Online]. Available: www.journalof911studies.com [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[23] D. Parker, “WTC investigators resist call for collapse visualisation”, New Civil Engineer, November 1, 2005. [Online]. Available: http://www.nce.co.uk/news/2005/11/wtc_investigators_resist_call_for_
collapse_visualisation.html [Accessed April 8, 2008].
[24] E. Douglas, “The NIST WTC investigation-- how real was the simulation? A review of NIST NCSTAR 1”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, vol. 6, pp. 1-28, December 2006. [Online]. Available: www.journalof911studies.com [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[25] C. S. Fletcher (NIST), “Response to request for correction”, Journal of 9/11 Studies, vol. 17, pp. 17-23, November 2007. [Online]. Available: www.journalof911studies.com [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[26] National Fire Protection Association, “Guide for fire and explosion investigations”, NFPA 921. [Online]. Available: http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/
AboutTheCodes.asp?DocNum=921 [Accessed March 17, 2008].
[27] J. Abel, “Theories of 9/11”, Hartford Advocate, Hartford, Connecticut, January 29, 2008. [Online]. Available: http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=5546 with reply: http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=5674
[Accessed March 17, 2008].

Das seltsame Fallverhalten des Südturms

2001-09-11T09:11:00.005+02:00

Wenn Sie dieses Bild betrachten,

werden Sie sich eventuell fragen, wohin der obere Gebäudeabschnitt des Südturms als nächstes fallen wird. Womöglich vermuten Sie, er würde seine Bewegung fortsetzen und zur Seite abkippen – und dafür gäbe es gute Gründe. Vielleicht sind Sie aber auch wundergläubig und erwarten, dass der Turm seine unheilsvolle Bewegung schon irgendwie von selbst in eine sicherere Bahn korrigieren wird.

Und tatsächlich hat dieser obere Block am 11.9.2001 um 9 Uhr 59 sehr schnell wieder in die Symmetrie zurückgefunden und den unteren Gebäudeteil inklusive der 47 massiven Kernsäulen aus Stahl [und zum Schluss sich selbst!] in etwa 14 Sekunden schnörkellos senkrecht zertrümmert, was einigen Menschen auch heute noch Rätsel aufgibt. Aber das führt jetzt zu weit.