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