VIEWPOINT
"Exploring The Powerful Issues & Emotions of The Middle East" 
  Reaching out to 51,228 Viewpoint readers around the globe
-----------------------------------------------------------

Editor's Note:

Many people do not know who David Ray Griffin is. He is 
a scholar who did not think the official story was quite 
right about 9-11. So he began an intensive study that 
led him on an amazing journey. 

We at Viewpoint have decided to print this two-part 
analysis that takes us to the very heart of world politics. 
We have included all of his footnotes. If you have never 
dived into these waters before, this just might be the 
most important 15 minutes of your life. 

-----------------------------------------------------------
A Stylish Way to Show Your Support

Now available is the authentic, high-quality Palestinian 
headdress known as the kuffiyeh or hatta. But you don't 
have to wear in the traditional way if you don't want to. 
Wear it as a scarf, drape it over a chair or simply display 
it as a sign of solidarity with Palestinians who have been 
struggling for freedom for fifty-five years. Each one is 
made by Palestinians in the refugee camps of Jordan. These 
are difficult to import, so order while we still have 
stock. Only $9.99 for this top quality, 100 percent cotton, 
black and white kuffiyeh. To see it or to order visit: 
Authentic Kuffiyeh
-----------------------------------------------------------

                Video Clip Of The Week

           Explosions Brought The Towers Down

Eyewitness accounts are plentiful in this clip, with all
of them saying that they heard a series of explosions,
and then the collapse.

View: Explosions Brought The Towers Down 
   
-----------------------------------------------------------
                            
The American Empire

In his 2002 book American Empire, Andrew Bacevich pointed 
out that it had long been a “cherished American tradition 
[that] the United States is not and cannot be an empire.” 
The words “American empire” were “fighting words,” so that 
uttering them was an almost sure sign that the speaker was 
a left-wing critic of America’s foreign policy.[1]  

As Bacevich also pointed out, however, this had all 
recently changed, so that even right-wing commentators 
were freely acknowledging the existence of the American 
empire. As columnist Charles Krauthammer put it in 2002: 
“People are coming out of the closet on the word 
‘empire.’”[2] 

Given this consensus about the reality of the American 
empire, the only remaining issue concerned its nature. 
This empire was generally portrayed, especially by 
neoconservatives, as benign. Robert Kagan spoke of “The 
Benevolent Empire.”[3] Dinesh D’Souza, after writing 
that “America has become an empire,” added that happily 
it is “the most magnanimous imperial power ever.”[4] 

Commentators from the left, however, presented a radically 
different view. A 2003 book by Noam Chomsky was subtitled 
America’s Quest for Global Dominance.[5] Richard Falk wrote 
of the Bush administration’s “global domination project,” 
which posed the threat of “global fascism.”[6] Chalmers 
Johnson, once a conservative who believed American foreign 
policy aimed at promoting freedom and democracy, described 
the United States as “a military juggernaut intent on world 
domination.”[7] 

Bacevich, although still a conservative, had come to accept 
the left’s assessment of this empire. He ridiculed the 
claim “that the promotion of peace, democracy, and human 
rights and the punishment of evil-doers--not the pursuit 
of self-interest--[has] defined the essence of American 
diplomacy.”[8] Pointing out that the aim of the US military 
has been “to achieve something approaching omnipotence,” 
Bacevich mocked the idea that such power in America’s hands 
“is by definition benign.”[9] 

The historical evidence clearly supports this non-benign 
view of the American empire. Part of this evidence is the 
fact that U.S. political and military leaders have arranged 
“false-flag operations” as pretexts for war. We did this 
to begin the wars with Mexico and the Philippines and to 
begin the full-out attack on Vietnam.[10] 

Also important is Operation Northwoods, a plan submitted by 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President Kennedy containing 
“pretexts which would provide justification for U.S. 
military intervention in Cuba.” Some of the ideas, such 
as the proposal to “blow up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay 
and blame Cuba,”[11] would have required killing Americans. 

This history shows that U.S. military and political leaders 
have not been averse to using the same tricks as military 
and political leaders in other countries with imperial 
ambitions, such as Japan, which in 1931 manufactured the 
Mukden incident as a pretext for taking control of 
Manchuria,[12] and Nazi leaders, who in 1933 set the 
Reichstag Fire as a pretext for rounding up leftists and 
annulling civil rights,[13] then in 1939 had German troops 
dressed as Poles stage attacks on German posts at the 
Polish border, allowing Hitler to present his attack on 
Poland the next day as a “defensive necessity.”[14] In each 
case, evidence was planted to implicate the people these 
governments wanted to attack. 

9/11: A False-Flag Operation?

Given this background information, I might have immediately 
concluded that the 9/11 attacks were false-flag attacks 
orchestrated by the Bush administration to enlarge the U.S. 
empire under the cover of the “war on terror.” But when I 
first heard this allegation, about a year after 9/11, I 
replied that I did not think even the Bush administration 
would do such a heinous thing. I checked out some proffered 
websites but found the evidence unconvincing. (I tell this 
story because of the widespread allegation that those who 
call 9/11 an inside job do so because of antagonism to Bush 
and Cheney and/or their policies.) 

A few months later, however, another colleague suggested 
that I look at a website containing the massive 9/11 time-
line created by Paul Thompson.[15] I found that it 
contained an enormous number of reports, all from main-
stream sources, that contradicted the official account. 
This discovery started a process that led me to publish 
The New Pearl Harbor,[16] which summarized much of the 
evidence that had been discovered by previous researchers
---evidence, I concluded, that provided a “strong prima 
facie case for official complicity.”[17] I will summarize 
some of this evidence in terms of six questions. 

I. How Could Hijacked Airliners Have Struck the WTC and 
the Pentagon?

If standard operating procedures of the FAA and the U.S. 
military had been carried out on 9/11, AA Flight 11 and 
UA Flight 175 would have been intercepted before they 
reached Manhattan, and Flight 77 would have been 
intercepted long before it could have reached the Pentagon. 
Such interceptions are routine, being carried out about 
100 times a year. A month after 9/11, the Calgary Herald 
reported that in the year 2000, NORAD had scrambled 
fighters 129 times. Just a few days after 9/11, Major 
Mike Snyder, a NORAD spokesperson, told the Boston Globe 
that “[NORAD’s] fighters routinely intercept aircraft.”[18]
Why did such interceptions not occur on 9/11? We have never 
been given a plausible explanation. Indeed, we have received
three mutually inconsistent stories.

In the first few days, military officials said that no 
fighter jets were sent up by NORAD until after the strike 
on the Pentagon at 9:38, even though signs that Flight 11 
was in trouble had been observed at 8:15. That would mean 
that although interceptions usually occur within 15 
minutes, in this case over 80 minutes had elapsed before 
any fighters were even airborne. This story suggested that 
a “stand-down” order had been issued. 

Within a few days, a second story was put out, according to 
which NORAD had ordered fighters aloft but they did not 
arrive in time, because FAA notification had unaccountably 
come very late. Critics showed, however, that even if the 
FAA notifications had come as late as NORAD’s timeline 
indicated, there was sufficient time for interceptions.[19] 
This second story did not, therefore, remove the suspicion 
that a stand-down order had been given. 

The 9/11 Commission Report, issued in 2004, gave a third 
account, according to which, contrary to NORAD’s timeline 
of September 18, 2001, the FAA did not notify NORAD about 
Flights 175, 77, and 93 until after they had crashed. As I 
showed in books published in 2005 and 2006, however, this 
new story contains many problems.[20] 

In August 2006, Michael Bronner, who was an associate 
producer for the film United 93, published an essay, 
“9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,” which popularized the 9/11 
Commission’s new story and emphasized tapes supplied by 
NORAD, purportedly from 9/11, on which it is based. This 
new story was further publicized by the simultaneous 
publication of Without Precedent by Thomas Kean and Lee 
Hamilton, the chair and vice chair, respectively, of the 
9/11 Commission. This book and Bronner’s essay caused a 
minor sensation with their suggestion that the account 
given by the military between 2001 and 2004, which only 
partly absolved the military from responsibility for 
failing to prevent the attacks, had been a lie. The new 
story puts all the blame on the FAA, except for a little 
confusion on the military’s part, thereby lessening the 
grounds for suspicion that the military had been given a 
stand-down order. This new story has been widely accepted. 

However, in my most recent book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking,
[21] I show even more fully than I had before that this 
new story is incredible. Besides contradicting many well-
documented reports, it is inherently implausible, because 
it claims that military leaders lied in a way that made 
them look worse than does the truth (as described by the 
9/11 Commission). This new story does not, accordingly, 
remove grounds for suspicion that a stand-down order had 
been issued. 

II. Why Did the Twin Towers and Building 7 of the WTC 
Collapse? 

The Bush-Cheney administration has also failed to provide 
a credible explanation for the destruction of the World 
Trade Center buildings. According to the official 
explanation, the Twin Towers (WTC 1 and 2) collapsed 
because of the impact of the airplanes and the heat of 
the ensuing fires. But this explanation faces several 
formidable problems. 

First, WTC 7 also collapsed, and in roughly the same way. 
This similarity implies that all three buildings collapsed 
from the same causes. However, unlike the Twin Towers, 
WTC 7 was not hit by an airplane. 

Second, the fires in these buildings were not as big, hot, 
or long-lasting as fires in steel-frame high-rises that 
have not induced collapses. In 1991, a fire in Philadelphia 
burned for 18 hours; in 2004, a fire in Caracas burned for 
17 hours. But neither fire produced even a partial collapse.
[22] The World Trade Center’s north and south towers burned 
only 102 and 56 minutes, respectively, before they 
collapsed. WTC 7, moreover, had fires on only a few floors, 
according to several witnesses[23] and all the photographic 
evidence.[24] 

Third, total collapses of steel-frame high-rise buildings 
have never been brought about by fire and externally caused 
structural damage. All such collapses have been caused by 
explosives in the procedure known as “controlled 
demolition.” 

Fourth, the collapses of these three buildings all 
manifested many standard features of the kind of controlled 
demolition known as “implosion,” such as: sudden onset 
(whereas steel, if weakened by fire, would gradually begin 
to sag); straight-down collapse (as opposed to falling 
over); collapse at virtually free-fall speed (indicating 
that the lower floors, with all their steel and concrete, 
were offering no resistance); total collapse (indicating 
that the massive steel columns in the core of each building 
had been broken into many pieces---which is what explosives 
do in controlled demolitions); the production of molten 
metal; and the occurrence of multiple explosions. Although 
none of these six features can be explained by the official 
theory, let us focus on only the last two. 

-----------------------------------------------------------
ROBOTIC LED BOOK LIGHT

Store Price: $7.99
DEAL PRICE: $2.49 or two for $3.98

This is so cool... You can light up your book papers, lap-
top and more anywhere you go... on the plane, in a meeting 
or in bed. Plus the LED light better for your eyes, reduces 
eye strain.

DETAILS:
* Super bright LED light 
* Light opens with touch of a button 
* Adjustable light angle 
* Portable Take with you anywhere

Get one of these for just $2.49. BONUS: Save even more when 
you buy two or more, get them for just $1.99 each. This 
makes a wonderful gift... and College Kids especially love 
it. Robotic Book Light
-----------------------------------------------------------

To begin with the molten metal: Many people have been led 
to believe, by misleading TV documentaries, that the Twin 
Towers collapsed because their steel melted. But steel 
does not begin to melt until it reaches 2800°F, whereas 
open fires based on hydrocarbons such as kerosene---which 
is what jet fuel is---cannot get much above 1700°F (even 
with an ideal mixture of fuel and oxygen, which seldom 
occurs in building fires). Nevertheless, molten metal was 
produced, according to many witnesses. For example, Peter 
Tully, president of Tully Construction, which was involved 
in the clean-up operation, said that he saw pools of 
“literally molten steel” at the site.[25] 

That would be no surprise only if the buildings’ steel 
columns had been sliced by the use of high-temperature 
explosives, such as thermite, thermate, or RDX, which 
are regularly used to cut steel. That this is what 
happened is supported by reports that sometimes when steel 
beams were lifted from the rubble, they were dripping 
molten metal.[26] 

With regard to explosions, literally dozens of people---
including journalists, police officers, WTC employees, 
emergency medical workers, and firefighters---reported 
hearing explosions in the Twin Towers, with some of them 
explicitly saying that the collapses appeared to be 
instances of controlled demolition.[27] One fire captain 
said: "I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the 
building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one 
after another, boom, boom, boom."[28] One paramedic said: 
“[I]t was [like a] professional demolition where they set 
the charges on certain floors and then you hear 'Pop, pop, 
pop, pop, pop.’” One firefighter said: “It seemed like on 
television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed 
like it was going all the way around like a belt, all 
these explosions.”[29] 

Steven Jones, a physicist who long taught at Brigham Young 
University, has pointed out that to believe the official 
account is to believe that some very basic laws of physics 
were violated.[30] 

Given all the features that indicate controlled demolition, 
it is not surprising that when a controlled demolition 
expert in Holland was shown videos of the collapse of WTC 
7,[31] without being told what the building was (he had 
previously thought that only the Twin Towers had collapsed 
on 9/11), he said: “They have simply blown away 
columns. . . . A team of experts did this. . . . This is 
controlled demolition.”[32] It is also not surprising that 
two emeritus professors of structural analysis and 
construction at Zurich’s prestigious ETH Institute of 
Technology say that WTC 7 was “with the highest probability 
brought down by explosives.”[33] 

All evidence suggesting controlled demolition is ignored 
in The 9/11 Commission Report, which simply assumed the 
truth of the official story. Indeed, after FEMA, the first 
agency given the task of explaining the collapse of the 
WTC, said that its best explanation for the collapse of 
WTC 7 had “only a low probability of occurrence,”[34] the 
9/11 Commission avoided the problem by simply not finding 
room to mention this collapse in its 571-page report.[35] 

This behavior is no surprise given the fact that the 
Commission was run by its executive director, Philip 
Zelikow, who was virtually a member of the Bush-Cheney 
administration: He had worked with Condoleezza Rice on 
the National Security Council in the administration of 
the first President Bush; when the Republicans were out 
of office during the Clinton administration, Zelikow and 
Rice co-authored a book; Rice then, as National Security 
Advisor for the second President Bush, asked Zelikow to 
help make the transition to the new National Security 
Council, after which he was appointed to the President’s 
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board;[36] Rice later brought 
in Zelikow to be the primary author of the 2002 National 
Security Strategy of the United States of America, which 
used 9/11 to justify a new doctrine of preemptive warfare, 
according to which the United States can attack other 
nations even if they pose no imminent threat.[37] The 
idea that the 9/11 Commission was independent and impartial 
is, therefore, ludicrous. 

If the first two reports on the WTC collapses (FEMA’s and 
the 9/11 Commission’s) were carried out by investigative 
bodies that were closely tied to the Bush-Cheney White 
House, the same is true of the supposedly definitive report 
produced by the National Institute for Standards and 
Technology (NIST).[38] It is an agency of the U.S. Commerce 
Department, headed by Bush’s secretary of commerce. It 
could hardly publish a report that contradicted the 
official story. In any case, NIST’s explanation of the 
collapses of the Twin Towers---at this writing it still 
has not published a report on WTC 7---itself collapses 
when scrutinized from a scientific point of view.[39] As 
I show in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, for example, the NIST 
scientists, who knew molten metal could not have been 
produced by the fires, handled the problem by casting doubt 
on its existence, in spite of the abundant evidence for 
it.[40] 

III. Could the Official Account of the Pentagon Possibly Be 
True? 

According to the official account, the Pentagon was struck 
by AA Flight 77 under the control of al-Qaeda hijacker Hani
Hanjour. This account is challenged by many facts.

First, Flight 77 allegedly, after making a U-turn in the 
mid-west, flew back to Washington undetected for 40 minutes,
even though it was then known that hijacked airliners were 
being used as weapons and even though the U.S. military has 
the best radar systems in the world. 

Second, in order to get into position to hit Wedge 1 of the 
Pentagon, the aircraft had to execute an amazing downward 
spiral and come in at ground level, which according to some 
pilots would have been impossible for a Boeing 757, even 
under the control of an expert. Hanjour, moreover, was 
known as “a terrible pilot,” who could barely fly a single-
engine airplane.[41] Russ Wittenberg, who flew large 
commercial airliners for 35 years after serving in Vietnam 
as a fighter pilot, has said that it would have been 
impossible for Flight 77 to have “descended 7,000 feet in 
two minutes, all the while performing a steep 270 degree 
banked turn before crashing into the Pentagon’s first floor 
wall without touching the lawn.” It would, he added, have 
been “totally impossible for an amateur who couldn’t even 
fly a Cessna to maneuver the jetliner in such a highly 
professional manner.”[42] Ralph Omholt, a captain-qualified 
757 pilot, agrees: “The idea that an unskilled pilot could 
have flown this trajectory,” says Omholt, “is simply too 
ridiculous to consider.”[43] 

Third, terrorists brilliant enough to outfox the U.S. 
military’s defense system would not have struck Wedge 1, 
for many reasons: It had been reinforced, so the damage 
was less severe than a strike anywhere else would have 
been; it was still being renovated, so relatively few 
people were there; the secretary of defense and all the 
top brass, whom terrorists would presumably have wanted 
to kill, were on the opposite side of the building; and 
hitting Wedge 1 required a difficult maneuver, whereas 
crashing into the roof—-of, say, the area with the 
offices of Rumsfeld and the top brass---would have been 
much easier and deadlier. 

Fourth, there is considerable evidence that the aircraft 
that struck the Pentagon was not even a Boeing 757. Unlike 
the strikes on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon strike did 
not create a detectable seismic signal.[44] Also, according 
to photographs and eyewitnesses, the kind of damage and 
debris that would have been produced by the impact of a 
Boeing 757 was not produced by the strike on the Pentagon. 

With regard to the debris, the eyewitnesses include Karen 
Kwiatkowski, who was then an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel 
employed at the Pentagon. She writes of “a strange lack of 
visible debris on the Pentagon lawn, where I stood only 
moments after the impact. . . . I saw nothing of any 
significance at the point of impact---no airplane metal or 
cargo debris.”[45] Another eyewitness was CNN’s Jamie 
McIntyre, who said during a live report from the Pentagon 
on 9/11: “The only pieces left that you can see are small 
enough that you pick up in your hand.”[46] 

The lack of the expected debris inside the Pentagon has 
been reported by April Gallop, who, along with her two-
month-old son, was seriously injured. She says:  

I was located at the E ring. . . . [W]e had to escape the 
building before the floors . . . collapsed on us. And I 
don't recall at any time seeing any plane debris. . . . 
If I wasn't informed [at the hospital that it was a plane] 
I would have never believed it. I walked through that 
place to try to get out before everything collapsed on 
us . . . . [S]urely we should have seen something.[47] 

With regard to damage, Omholt, discussing the photographic 
evidence,[48] writes: “There is no hole big enough to 
swallow a 757. . . . There is no viable evidence of burning 
jet fuel. . . . The expected ‘crash’ damage doesn’t 
exist. . . . Even the Pentagon lawn was undamaged! The 
geometry of the day certifies the ‘official’ account as a 
blatant lie.”[49] Significant testimony is also provided 
by Army Reservist Isabelle Slifer, whose fourth-floor 
office was directly above the strike zone between the 
first and second floors. Even though a 757 has a very 
large tail fin, her office was not damaged by the 
impact.[50] 

Fifth, the Pentagon is surely the best defended building 
on the planet. It is within an ultra-restricted zone. It 
is only a few miles from Andrews Air Force Base, which, 
assigned to protect this zone, has at least three squadrons 
with fighter jets on alert at all times. (The claim by The 
9/11 Commission Report that no fighters were on alert the 
morning of 9/11 is wholly implausible and contradicted by 
the military’s own website.[51]) Also, the Pentagon is 
reportedly protected by batteries of surface-to-air 
missiles,[52] so if any aircraft without a U.S. military 
transponder---a military transponder radiates a “friendly” 
signal---had entered the Pentagon’s airspace, it would have 
been automatically shot down---unless officials in the 
Pentagon had deactivated its anti-aircraft defenses. 
Accordingly, whether the Pentagon was struck by a military 
or a nonmilitary aircraft, the strike had to be an inside 
job. 

A sixth reason to be dubious of the official story is 
that, as at the World Trade Center, evidence was quickly 
destroyed. Shortly after the strike, officials picked up 
debris in front of the impact site and carried it off.[53] 
Shortly thereafter the entire lawn was covered with dirt 
and gravel, so that any remaining forensic evidence was 
literally covered up.[54]

FBI agents, moreover, quickly confiscated videos from 
security cameras on nearby buildings.[55] The Justice 
Department, after long refusing to release any of them, 
finally in May 2006 released one purporting to showing a 
Boeing 757 striking the Pentagon. But it did not. Even 
Bill O’Reilly of Fox News had to say: “I can’t see a 
plane there.”[56] If there were any videos giving clear 
support to the official story, would we not have seen 
them as often as we have seen the strikes on the 
World Trade Center?

These six problems, besides conflicting with the official 
account, collectively indicate that the strike on the 
Pentagon was orchestrated by forces within our own 
government. 

In the light of these first three challenges to the 
official account, we can reflect on President Bush’s 
advice not to tolerate “outrageous conspiracy theories 
about the attacks of 11 September.”[57] This is excellent 
advice. But it deflects attention from the fact that the 
truly outrageous conspiracy theory is the official theory, 
according to which a band of Arab Muslims conspired to 
defeat not only the most sophisticated defense system in 
history but also, in the attacks in both New York and 
Washington, some basic laws of physics. The problems in 
the official account, moreover, do not end there. 

To be continued – Part 2 tomorrow 

------------------------------------------------------------
David Ray Griffin is professor of philosophy emeritus of 
religion and theology at Claremont School of Theology. He 
has published 32 books, including The American Empire and 
the Commonwealth of God and 9/11 and American Empire: 
Intellectuals Speak Out. 
------------------------------------------------------------

[1]Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and 
Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge: Harvard 
University Press, 2002), 30, 218-19.

[2]Quoted in Emily Eakin, “All Roads Lead To D.C.,” New 
York Times, Week In Review, March 31, 2002.

[3]Robert Kagan, “The Benevolent Empire,” Foreign Policy, 
Summer 1998: 24-35.

[4] Dinesh D’Souza, “In Praise of an American Empire,” 
Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 2002.

[5] Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for 
Global Dominance (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003).

[6]Richard Falk, “Will the Empire Be Fascist?” Global 
Dialogues, 2003; “Resisting the Global Domination Project: 
An Interview with Prof. Richard Falk,” Frontline, 20/8 
(April 12-25, 2003).

[7]Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, 
Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: 
Metropolitan Books, 2004), 33, 4.

[8]Bacevich, American Empire, 7, 46.

[9]Ibid., 133, 52.

[10] On Mexico, see Richard Van Alstyne, The Rising 
American Empire (1960; New York, Norton, 1974), 143. 
On the Philippines, see Stuart Creighton Miller, 
Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the 
Philippines, 1899-1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 
1982), 11, 57-66, 237, 245-47. On Vietnam, see Marilyn B. 
Young, The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 
1991), 116-21, and George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How 
American Became Involved in Vietnam (Garden City: Anchor 
Press/Doubleday, 1987), 220-23. 

[11] See James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the 
Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (2001: New York: 
Anchor Books, 2002), 82-91. 

[12] See Walter LaFeber, The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Religions 
throughout History (New York: Norton, 1997), 164-66. 

[13] See William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third 
Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 191-93, whose 
position has been substantiated in Alexander Bahar and 
Wilfried Kugel, Der Reichstagbrand: Wie Geschichte Gemacht 
Wird (Berlin, Edition Q, 2001); reviewed in Wilhelm Klein, 
“The Reichstag Fire, 68 Years On,” World Socialist Website, 
July 5, 2001. 

[14] See “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol. II: 
Criminality of Groups and Organizations”; Ian Kershaw, 
Hitler: 1936-45: Nemesis (New York: Norton, 2001), 221; 
and “Gleiwitz Incident,” Wikipedia. 

[15] Thompson’s timeline was originally published at 
www.cooperativeresearch.org. Much of it has now been 
published as The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by 
Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the 
Road to 9/11--and America’s Response (New York: ReganBooks, 
2004). The online version continues to be up-dated and is 
the most complete source of information about 9/11 based 
on mainstream sources. 

[16] David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing 
Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 
(Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch, 2004). 

[17] Ibid., xxiii.

[18] Calgary Herald, Oct. 13, 2001; Glen Johnson, “Otis 
Fighter Jets Scrambled Too Late to Halt the Attacks,” 
Boston Globe, Sept. 15, 2001. 

[19] David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: 
Omissions and Distortions (Northampton: Olive Branch, 
2005), 139-48. 

[20] Ibid., 155-226. For a briefer account, see “Flights 
of Fancy: The 9/11 Commission’s Incredible Tales about 
Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93” in David Ray Griffin, 
Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to 
Reflection and Action (Louisville: Westminster John 
Knox Press, 2006). 

[21] David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer 
to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official 
Conspiracy Theory (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch, 2007). 

[22] “High-Rise Office Building Fire One Meridian Plaza 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” FEMA; “Fire Practically 
Destroys Venezuela’s Tallest Building”. 

[23] New York Magazine reporter Mark Jacobson, referring to 
the building a few minutes before it collapsed, said: “It 
wasn’t a 47-story building that was engulfed in flames. The 
whole building wasn’t on fire. . . . There was a lot of 
fire coming out of a few floors” (Jacobson can be seen 
making this statement in Michael Berger’s film, “Improbable 
Collapse: The Demolition of Our Republic”). ”Chief Thomas 
McCarthy of the FDNY said that while the firefighters “were 
waiting for 7 World Trade to come down,” there was “fire on 
three separate floors”  (9/11 Oral History of Thomas 
McCarthy, 10-11). Emergency medical technician Decosta 
Wright said: “I think the fourth floor was on fire. . . . 
[W]e were like, are you guys going to put that fire out?” 
(9/11 Oral History of Decosta Wright, 11). These quotations 
are from the 9/11 oral histories recorded by the New York 
Fire Department at the end of 2001 but released to the 
public (after a court battle) in August 2005, then made 
available on a New York Times website. 

[24] A photograph taken by Terry Schmidt can be seen on 
page 63 of Eric Hufschmid’s Painful Questions: An Analysis 
of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint 
Software, 2002). According to Schmidt, this photo was taken 
between 3:09 and 3:16 PM, hence only a little over 2 hours 
before Building 7 collapsed. It shows that on the north 
side of the building, fires were visible only on floors 
7 and 12. Therefore, if there were more fires on the south 
side, as some witnesses have claimed, they were not big 
enough to be seen from the north side. 

[25] Quoted in Christopher Bollyn, “New Seismic Data 
Refutes Official Explanation,” American Free Press, Updated 
April 12, 2004. For several more examples, see the 
subsection labeled “Molten Steel” in my chapter, “The 
Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official 
Account Cannot Be True,” in Christian Faith and the Truth 
Behind 9/11, or the discussion of molten metal in Chap. 3 
of Debunking 9/11 Debunking. 

[26] For example, Joe “Toolie” O'Toole, a Bronx firefighter 
who worked for many months on the rescue and clean-up 
efforts, said with regard to a beam that had been lifted 
by a crane from deep within the catacombs at Ground Zero: 
“It was dripping from the molten steel” (Jennifer Lin, 
“Recovery Worker Reflects on Months Spent at Ground Zero,” 
Knight Ridder, May 29, 2002). 

[27] See my “Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the 
Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories” in Christian Faith 
and the Truth Behind 9/11. See also Graeme MacQueen, 
“118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions 
in the Twin Towers,” Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 2/August 
2006: 49-123. 

[28] Captain Dennis Tardio as quoted in Dennis Smith, 
Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts 
at the World Trade Center (New York: Penguin, 2002), 18. 

[29] 9/11 Oral History of Daniel Rivera, 9, and 9/11 Oral 
History of Richard Banaciski, 3-4. 

[30] Steven E. Jones, “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings 
Collapse?” In David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 
9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out 
(Northampton: Olive Branch, 2006), 33-62. The online 
version, to which Jones refers for photographs, is now in 
the Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 3/September 2006. 

[31] For videos of all the WTC collapses, see “9/11/01 WTC 
Videos” and “9/11 Videos: The Controlled Collapse of WTC 7”.

[32] This interview can be seen at “Demo Expert Confirms 
WTC-7 Was ‘Controlled Demolition”. 

[33] See Daniele Ganser, “Der erbitterte Streit um den 11. 
September,” Tages-Anzeiger, September 9, 2006. The statement
quoted in the text is from Jörg Schneider. Hugo Bachmann is 
quoted as saying: "In my opinion WTC 7 was with the utmost
probability brought down by controlled demolition done by 
experts."

[34]See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance 
Study, Ch. 5, Sect. 6.2, “Probable Collapse Sequence,” 
which I discussed in The New Pearl Harbor, 22.

[35] This is only one of the most egregious of the 115 lies 
of omission and distortion that I discuss in The 9/11 
Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which are 
summarized in “The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie,” 
Global Outlook, April 2006: 100-106; originally posted at 
911Truth.org, May 22, 2005. 

[36] See The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and 
Distortions, 7-12, 282-85.

[37] I discuss the full significance of Zelikow’s dual role 
in “Imperial Motives for a New Pearl Harbor,” chap. 6 of 
Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11.

[38] NIST, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade 
Center Towers (PDF document). 

[39] See Steven Jones, “Why Indeed Did the World Trade 
Center Collapse?”; Judy Wood, “A Refutation of the Official 
Collapse Theory,” Scholars for 9/11 Truth; Jim Hoffman, 
“Building a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-
Up of the Crime of the Century,” 911 Research, Version 1.0, 
Dec. 8, 2005; and Kevin Ryan, “What is 9/11 Truth? The 
First Steps,” Journal of 9/11 Studies August 2006/Volume 2: 
1-6, and “Propping Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC 
by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories,” in Griffin and 
Scott, eds., 9/11 and American Empire, 63-71. I discuss 
these and other critiques in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, 
chap. 3, “The Disintegration of the World Trade Center: 
Has NIST Debunked the Theory of Controlled Demolition?” 

[40] John Gross, one of the 13 scientists listed at the 
beginning of NIST’s Final Report, has been recorded making 
this denial during a public presentation. See “NIST 
Engineer, John Gross, Denies the Existance [sic] of Molten 
Steel”. 

[41] See New York Times, May 4, 2002, CBS News, May 10, 
2002. The fact that Hanjour was known as a “terrible pilot” 
was even acknowledged by The 9/11 Commission Report (New 
York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 225-26, 242, but it failed to 
explain how, then, he could have performed the alleged 
feats. 

[42] Greg Szymanski, “Former Vietnam Combat and Commercial 
Pilot Firm Believer 9/11 Was Inside Government Job,” Lewis 
News, Sunday, January 8, 2006. 

[43] Ralph Omholt, e-mail letter, October 27, 2006.

[44] Won-Young Kim and Gerald R. Baum, “Seismic 
Observations during September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attack” 
(PDF document). 

[45] Karen Kwiatkowski, “Assessing the Official 9/11 
Conspiracy Theory,” in Griffin and Scott, eds., 9/11 and 
American Empire. See also “The Missing Wings”, in which 
A. K. Dewdney and G. W. Longspaugh argue that the absence 
of wing debris alone is sufficient to disprove the claim 
that the aircraft was a huge airliner.

[46] Click here for text and video.

[47] “Interview with April Gallop,” George Washington’s 
Blog, July 13, 2006. Also, Ed Plaugher, the county fire 
chief, and Lee Evey, the head of the renovation project, 
reported seeing no big pieces from an airplane (DoD news 
briefings, September 12 and 15, 2001). 

[48] For photographic evidence, see Eric Hufschmid, Painful 
Questions, chap. 9, and Dave McGowan, “September 11, 2001 
Revisited: The Series: Act II,” Center for an Informed 
America.

[49] Ralph Omholt, “9-11 and the Impossible: The Pentagon”.

[50] Nikki Lowe, “Pentagon Survivor Donates $500 in Lieu of 
a Retirement Party: Isabelle Slifer Shares Her Story,” 
Pentagon Memorial Fund Site.

[51] The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, 
159-64. See my further discussion in Debunking 9/11 
Debunking, chap. 4, “Debunking 9/11 Myths: A Failed Attempt 
by Popular Mechanics.” 

[52] Thierry Meyssan, who has referred to these anti-
missile batteries (Pentagate [London: Carnot, 2002], 112, 
116), has written: “The presence of these anti-missile 
batteries was testified to me by French officers to whom 
they were shown during an official visit to the Pentagon. 
This was later confirmed to me by a Saudi officer” (e-mail 
communication). See also John Judge, “Pentagon and P-56 
Preparations and Defenses and the Stand-Down on 9/11,“ 
Ratville Times, Jan. 11, 2006. 

[53] Photographic evidence of this removal can be seen in 
Eric Hufschmid’s video, “Painful Deceptions” (available at 
www.EricHufschmid.Net). 

[54] A photograph showing this literal cover-up can be 
seen in Omholt, “9-11 and the Impossible: The Pentagon.” 

[55] See Bill McKelway “Three Months On, Tension Lingers 
Near the Pentagon,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dec. 11, 2001, 
and Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “Inside the Ring,” 
Washington Times, Sept. 21, 2001. 

[56] See Ted Twietmeyer, “Judicial Watch Caught Pulling a 
180 on Pentagon Footage,” Rense.com, May 21, 2006, and 
“Pentagon Videos a Fiasco, Scholars Conclude,” Scholars 
for 9/11 Truth, May 22, 2006. 

[57] President George W. Bush, Address to the General 
Assembly of the United Nations, November 10, 2001 
(http://www.september11news.com/PresidentBushUN.htm). 

------------------------------------------------------------

Check out Political Videos on the Net at evtv1.com 
Political Videos

------------------------------------------------------------

All VIEWPOINT subscribers, we have a special. You can now
SAVE $10.00 on the book:

               PALESTINE & THE MIDDLE EAST   
           A Chronicle of Passion and Politics

Written by the editor of Viewpoint it's ONLY $4.98.
Visit: A Chronicle of Passion and Politics

For Viewpoint archives, visit: Viewpoint Archives

------------------------------------------------------------
Questions...Comments...? Contact: Contact Viewpoint
-----------------------------------------------------------

Here's the link to the Viewpoint Forum: Viewpoint Forum

------------------------------------------------------------
End of VIEWPOINT
Copyright 2007 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved.

E-Mail this issue

The ViewPoint Forum LOVE <Title> Iraq View this Forum | Post a topic to this forum