A Review of Griffin's "9/11 Ten Years Later"

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.

David Ray Griffin on 9/11: Ten Years, Ten Books

In this, his tenth book on 9/11 and its consequences, David Ray Griffin continues to report the facts and marshal the evidence that the mainstream media continue to ignore. Having previously demolished the official 9/11 story, Griffin now explains how the government got away with its crime against democracy. - Paul Craig Roberts, formerly assistant secretary of the treasury and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has most recently written How the Economy Was Lost.

Anyone who has actually studied Griffin's writings on 9/11 knows that the evidence against the truth of the official account is overwhelming. It is not surprising that the mainstream response has been to ridicule and ignore rather than to engage in reasoned discussion. What is disappointing is that leading liberals and responsible journalists have joined in by affirming ideas that contradict basic science and condescendingly rejecting solid research without examining it. In this book, Griffin describes the behavior of these journalists and attempts, in a remarkably charitable spirit, to understand it. - John B. Cobb, Jr., author of The Earthist Challenge to Economism and (with Herman Daly) For the Common Good.

Publisher's Description: 9/11 Ten Years Later is David Ray Griffin's tenth book about 9/11. Asking in the first chapter whether 9/11 justified the war in Afghanistan, he explains why it did not.

In the following three chapters, devoted to the destruction of the World Trade Center, Griffin asks why otherwise rational journalists have endorsed miracles (understood as events that contradict laws of science). 

Also, introducing the book's theme, Griffin points out that 9/11 has been categorized by some social scientists as a state crime against democracy.

Turning next to debates within the 9/11 Truth Movement, Griffin reinforces his claim that the reported phone calls from the airliners were faked, and argues that the intensely debated issue about the Pentagon - whether it was struck by a Boeing 757 - is quite unimportant.

Finally, Griffin suggests that the basic faith of Americans is not Christianity but "nationalist faith" - which most fundamentally prevents Americans from examining evidence that 9/11 was orchestrated by U.S. leaders - and argues that the success thus far of the 9/11 state crime against democracy need not be permanent.

Why yet another book on 9/11? Because, as David Ray Griffin points out clearly and persuasively, 9/11 continues to be not only the greatest crime in American history, but also the most strenuously covered up, and certainly the crime with the greatest political consequences. He shows how over a decade the events of 9/11 and the reports on them have been used to attack the American democratic system. Above all, he documents the success of this attack -- by the refusal of the media, the academy, and religious institutions to openly discuss these matters, and by the numbers of critics who at one extreme have made fools of themselves in echoing the Orwellian official version, and at the other extreme have been either fired or silenced after their dissent from it. - Peter Dale Scott, a poet, a former Canadian diplomat, and a professor at the University of California (Berkeley), whose most recent prose book is American War Machine.

Our civilization cannot survive if we do not confront the unanswered questions about 9/11. David Ray Griffin does that with the same clarity and meticulous documentation that characterized his preceding books. Frightening as the enormity of the truth about 9/11 may be, we should also bear in mind that it is a window of opportunity for addressing a whole range of problems threatening the lives of our children and grandchildren. I am sure those who follow will recognize David Ray Griffin's body of work as one of the most important contributions of the last decade. - Niels Harrit, Associate Professor Emeritus, Nano-science Center, Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen

David Ray Griffin is professor of philosophy of religion and theology, emeritus, at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, where he remains a co-director of the Center for Process Studies. 

His previous 9/11 books include Cognitive Infiltration (2010), The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7 (2009), 9/11 Contradictions (2008), and The New Pearl Harbor Revisited (2008), which was a Publishers Weekly's "Pick of the Week." 

In 2009, the New Statesman named Griffin one of "The 50 People Who Matter Today."

9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed is not yet available on Amazon for $13.46. Those who cannot wait until it is may buy it from Interlink Books for $20 starting September 1, 2011.