- What happened?
- It collapsed.
The top floors collapsed down.
- We was in an explosion.
We was in the lobby
and the third explosion
the whole lobby collapsed on us.
- What was it
like, what was it like?
- Horrible, horrible.
The whole building
just collapsed on us
inside the lobby.
- Was that
a secondary explosion?
- Yes it was
It was like three
explosions after that.
We came in after the fire,
we came when the fire
was going on already.
We was in the staging
area inside the building.
Waiting to go upstairs.
The whole lobby collapsed
on the lobby inside.
- When the first of the
towers actually started
falling down, I just
said this can't happen.
It can't happen.
And then the other
tower came down
and I said this violates
the laws of physics.
It can't happen.
Those aircraft and those
fires could not cause
those buildings to
come down in that way.
- I am the highest
ranking officer I believe
that has ever gone public
that whatever that story
was, the official story
was not true.
When you look at the
tower coming down,
what you see are at each floor,
successive puffs of smoke.
Puff, puff, puff, puff,
puff, all the way down.
What are the puffs
of smoke coming from?
Well, they claim they're
from the collapsing floors.
Uh uh, uh uh, no no no.
Those puffs of smoke are
controlled demolitions.
That's exactly what they are
because that's
exactly how they work.
- The most obvious
hypothesis for anyone looking
at the films and that
was a lot of people,
is that the buildings
came down because
there was very carefully
controlled demolition
with high explosives that
had been planted many
weeks if not months before.
- Nothing no
more is worse than this.
You're in the building
trying to help people
and it's exploding on
you inside the building
So I don't think it could
get any worse than this.
- Looking anew at 9/11
is a lot like watching
a great movie that at the
end you find out a detail
that transforms the whole
experience of the movie.
That the characters, the
scenes, all have a different
meaning that need
to be reprocessed.
Sometimes we go to
see the movie again
to understand what
was actually happening
that we didn't the first time.
Reprocessing 9/11 will
inevitably stir up new hurts.
We've already been
through the trauma,
but now realizing that
there's a different meaning
cuts in a different way,
and we have to be willing
to endure those pains,
those hurts, and those fears
that are required there.
And in some way we have
to relive 9/11 anew.
- I think we can all relate
to the initial shock and awe
of the planes approaching
the World Trade Center,
going into them, we were
terrified, we thought
the country was under attack,
and then we were given
an explanation
within 24 to 48 hours
that this was forces from
the Mid East, 19 Arabs,
and that flashbulb memory,
that traumatic event
has stayed with us ever since.
It's been called shock
and awe in another context
with Iraq, but there was a
shock and awe definitely in that
case and the media theory
says that the first story
is the one that sticks with you.
- September 11 the world
experienced a shock
and especially the
American people
and then we got disoriented
in a state of what is called
cognitive dissonance where
we had two different ideas
that did not go together.
For example, in America
we thought we were safe.
And yet now we were not.
Where were those
military airplanes
that are supposed to protect us?
We saw the airplanes
flying into the towers
and then the towers collapsing.
The explanation was somewhere
it was a structural failure.
Then later on we heard from
architects and engineer
that it was not possible.
It did not follow the
principle of physical laws.
- People continue to be
either oblivious to the fact
that this information exists
or completely resistant
to looking at this information.
So the question becomes why?
Why is it that people have
so much trouble hearing
this information?
Now as we know the horrors
of what happened on 9/11
were televised all
over the world,
and they were televised in
fact live so that millions
of people witnessed that,
and millions of Americans
witnessed what was happening,
we witnessed the deaths
of almost 3,000 of
our fellow Americans.
We know this had a very
severe and traumatic impact
on a large majority
of the population.
I myself cried for weeks
after September 11th.
So I think it's safe to say
that collectively as a nation,
because of what happened
on September 11th,
we experienced trauma.
Specifically, if we thought
the world was a safe place,
after we've experienced
or witnessed a trauma
we often think the world is
not a very safe place anymore.
And so it very much changes
our beliefs about the world,
it changes our ability
to trust other people
and to trust other entities.
- Many people have rightly
commented that 9/11
is a religious issue.
As a theologian I
agree with that.
I accept the definition of
religion given by Paul Tillich
many years ago saying
that religion deals with
matters of ultimate concern.
Now theologian John
Cobb has stated that
starting in the 15th
and 16th century
we had a major shift
in the understanding of
religious concern.
That prior to that time,
people were Christians or Jews
and or some other religion,
and that was their
primary identity, that was
their ultimate concern.
But it shifted in
the 15th century
to nationalism, and nationalism
in various countries
became the new religion.
This is certainly true
in the United States
where Americanism
trumps Christianity
for many Christians.
I gave a lecture a
few years ago called
9/11 and Nationalist Faith.
And in that I argued that
even though people who are
Christians or Jews and
then if they're Christians
some particular type
of Christianity like
the Presbyterian church
or Methodist church
or the Catholic church
that they actually tend to
subordinate that to their
concern for America,
for their devotion to America.
I was interviewed by
one of the well-known
talk show hosts on television
and they came to the home
and interviewed me and
it was going very well
from my point of view
but the talk show host
got very upset and
finally just blurted out,
"That's blasphemy!"
- It is wrong, blasphemous
and sinful for you to suggest,
imply, or help other people
come to the conclusion
that the US government killed
3,000 of its own citizens
because--
- And blasphemy is
a religious issue.
He was treating Bush and
Cheney as if they were
religious figures, as
if, frankly, they were
members of the Holy Trinity.
So that was another
great revelation to me
that for many people their
devotion to the country
or even the political
representative of the country
are more important and of
religious importance than
claims about what
really happened on 9/11.
So I think people need to think
seriously through their own
religious commitment, whether
they're Christians or Jews
or Muslims or Hindus
or Buddhists, think
about what it is
they are truly most
ultimately concerned about
and if that is God,
then they would say
truth is the most
important thing.
So I need to be open
to the possible truth
of the 9/11 truth movement,
even if that is very
threatening to me
and to my commitment
to my nation.
- A lens through which to
understand the resistance
that we all have against
hearing information
that contradicts our
worldview, our information
about the official story
of 9/11 is what social
psychologists call
cognitive dissonance.
For example, with 9/11
we have one cognition
which is the official
story of 9/11,
what our government
told us, what our media
repeated to us over and
over, that 19 Muslims
attacked us.
On the other hand we have
what scientists, researchers,
architects, engineers are
now beginning to tell us
which is that there
is evidence that shows
that the official
story cannot be true,
that 9/11 was most likely
a false flag operation.
So now we've lost our
sense of security.
We are starting to
feel vulnerable.
Now we're confused.
Now we have a choice, and
we all have this choice
and what some of us
will tend to do is
deny the evidence
that's coming our way
and stick to the original
story, the official story,
and to try to regain our
equilibrium in that way.
Another thing we can
do is decide to look
at the conflicting
evidence and be sincere and
be open-minded and look at
both sides of the issue and
then make up our own mind
about what reality is.
- One thing I would like people
to know is that you don't
need to be an engineer
or an architect to see
what happened to
those buildings.
I'm asked all the time
why should we not believe
the experts and what
they've told us?
And I always answer
with this simple story.
One day when I was driving
my truck down the road,
my truck quit suddenly.
And as I was waiting for
the tow truck to come,
I thought to myself
well don't just sit here
like a stool pigeon,
get out of your truck,
open the hood and look
underneath the hood
for anything that's
obviously broken.
And I did that and I
checked everything,
I checked the oil, I
checked the oil temperature,
I looked for fan belt broken,
anything, obvious things.
Nothing was wrong.
But when the mechanic
called me and told me
that I needed a new engine
because it had overheated
and because it had dropped
its oil and overheated,
I knew he was lying because
I had opened the hood
and looked for myself
and thought for myself.
And it turned out it
was just a cam sensor
and I was able to fix
it myself, I was able to
get the part on
Ebay and stick it on
and watch a YouTube on how
to fix it and stick it on
and drive away.
But the comparison is this.
Unless you're willing,
we all have to be willing
to look at the videos of
the buildings coming down.
You have to be willing to
look for the obvious evidence.
The symmetry is the smoking gun.
Those buildings could not have
fallen in perfectly level.
It's as if you take a level
with a bubble in the center
and watch those
buildings come down
and that bubble will stay
centered the whole way down.
And that cannot happen
with an airplane
hitting one side
of the building.
It cannot happen that when
you have asymmetric damage
you will get a perfectly
symmetrical collapse.
And all you need to do is look
at the videos and see that.
Then you have to be willing
to trust what you saw
and call out the lie.
- This is an orange.
If you were told it
was something else,
you wouldn't believe
it, would you?
This is called
visual identification
based on experience.
This building is about to be
destroyed in what is called
a controlled demolition.
Buildings do not do
this spontaneously.
Successful demolitions require
that all structural support
columns collapse at
virtually the same time.
If they don't, or if
something else goes wrong,
the result will look
something like this.
This is World Trade Center
7 just before it collapsed
on September the 11th, 2001.
It had not been
hit by an aircraft.
It had been damaged by falling
debris and minor fires,
but by 5:20pm, the fires
were still not a threat.
Although the building
was 47 stories high,
it doesn't fall sideways,
nor collapse unevenly.
For this to have happened,
all of the building's
vertical supports
must have given way
at almost exactly the same time.
Yet the Federal Emergency
Management Agency reported
that the collapse was
due primarily to fire.
But what does it
look like to you?
The National Institute of
Standards and Technology
still rules out a
controlled demolition.
- Some 3,000 members of the
families who were lost on 9/11
have been trying for
years to get justice
through our system for the
losses that they have suffered.
At virtually every step
of the judicial process
when the United States
government was called upon
to take a position it has
been a position adverse
to the interest of United
States citizens seeking justice.
This is a very important issue.
It may seem stale to
some but it as current as
the headlines that
we will read today.
It is an issue that goes to
the core of the United States'
contract with its people,
that it is highly improbable
that the 19 people
could have acted alone.
Yet the official position of
the United States government
has been that they did act
alone and that there is
no necessity for further
inquiry into the question
of whether there was
a support network.
President Lincoln had a
policy throughout the war
that every message that
came into the government,
specifically into
the State Department,
was a matter of public record.
On a daily basis his feeling
was that if the support
of the American people
were gonna be maintained
in a war which was
increasingly bloody,
many loss of lives
and loss of treasure,
that it took the confidence
of the American people
that their government
was conducting itself
in an appropriate manner at
that the key to that confidence
was disclosure.
I wish we applied the
Lincolnesque standard
to what happened in 9/11.
- World Trade Center 7
collapsed because of fires
fueled by office furnishings.
It did not collapse
from explosives
or from fuel oil fires.
Alternative theories
are really none of them
have been found to be
credible in terms of why
these buildings collapsed.
- Neither NIST or FEMA
followed standard protocol
for fire and explosion
investigations.
Or just fire investigations
for that matter.
National Fire Protection
Association Guide number 921
calls for saving the
evidence and being prepared
to justify why you wouldn't.
It also calls for testing for
accelerants and explosives
when high order
damage is involved.
NIST did not do this.
- In an office fire you
cannot generate enough heat
to melt steel, and yet we
have evidence of molten iron.
In the microspheres,
in the rubble pile,
and the metal pouring out
of the side of the tower.
- We have found no
evidence that would suggest
any kind of an explosive
material that caused
the buildings to collapse.
- I'm wondering
did you do any explosive
residue testing on any
item out of the building
just to lay these ideas to rest?
- Answer to that is
no, we did not do it.
- So the preconceived
notion of NIST is that
there's no evidence
for explosives and
so there's no point
in looking.
That is the most unscientific
thing that you can
possibly think of,
not to look because
you don't expect
to find evidence
and in fact the evidence
is overwhelming.
I claim they're not
doing science at all,
they're doing propaganda or
publicity or whatever they're
doing, but it's not science.
It's not playing by
the rules of science.
- If we lived in a parallel
universe that would be
a very different universe
but there's, in our view,
not a lot of evidence
that that universe
is actually connected
to this one.
Now there are actually about
2,000 allegations of this kind
which we saw a lot and we
didn't try to knock down
every, we took on a few
of the most important ones
in the Report but there are
so many incredible allegations
of this kind that we did
not, it would have taken us
hundreds of pages in the Report,
which is already a
pretty long report
to say and here's why that's
bogus, here's why that's bogus,
here's why that's bogus
and we could have gone on
like that for a long time.
But we don't actually
believe that there is
the kind of controlled
demolition scenario
that you have hypothesized.
We don't find any persuasive,
affirmative evidence
that that scenario
actually is true.
- 6.5 seconds
it dropped in 6.5 seconds.
How do you account for
that when it wasn't
hit by a plane?
- It is absolutely obvious to
me that we've been lied to,
that the government's
official story as put forward
by the Bush Administration
and their 9/11 commission
run by Zelikow, a White
House flack, and NIST,
the whole stuff is garbage
from one end to the other.
It is physically impossible.
- So the
question is, do you believe
what you can see
with your own eyes,
or do you believe
what you are told?
- People differ in their
ability to question authority.
Stanley Milgram did a famous
psychological experiment
about 50 years ago and in this
experiment 65% of subjects
administered the final,
massive, 450 volt shock
to a participant that they
believed had a heart condition,
who was screaming and
pounding on the wall.
- 375 volts.
- Now they've done a number
of replications of this study
and have found that
61 to 66% of people
were prepared to inflict
what they believed
was a fatal shock at the
bidding of an authority figure.
So roughly two thirds
of the public can show
blind obedience to authority.
- In the councils of government
we must guard against
the acquisition of
unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought,
by the military
industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
We must never let the
weight of this combination
endanger our liberties
or democratic processes.
We should take
nothing for granted.
Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry
can compel the proper meshing
of the huge industrial
and military machinery
of defense with our
peaceful methods and goals.
- For we are
opposed around the world
by a monolithic and ruthless
conspiracy that relies
primarily on covert
means for expanding
its sphere of influence.
On infiltration
instead of invasion.
On subversion
instead of elections.
On intimidation
instead of free choice.
On guerrillas by night
instead of armies by day.
It is a system which
has conscripted
vast human and material
resources into the building
of a tightly-knit,
highly-efficient machine
that combines
military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic,
scientific, and
political operations.
Its preparations are
concealed, not published.
Its mistakes are
buried, not headlined.
Its dissenters are
silenced, not praised.
- In Dallas
three shots were fired
at President Kennedy's
motorcade in downtown Dallas.
- I can't honestly say
that I've ever been
completely relieved
of the fact that
there might have been
international connections.
- You mean
you still feel that there
might have been?
- Well I have not
completely discounted it.
- We have before us the
opportunity to forge
for ourselves and for future
generations a new world order.
When we are successful,
and we will be, we have
a real chance at
this new world order.
- What is at stake is more
than one small country.
It is a big idea.
A new world order.
Now we can see a new
world coming into view.
A world in which there
is the very real prospect
of a new world order.
- What happened in 9/11 is
we didn't have a strategy,
we didn't have bipartisan
agreement, we didn't have
American understanding
of it, and we had instead
a policy coup in
this country, a coup.
A policy coup.
Some hard-nosed people
took over the direction
of American policy,
and they never bothered
to inform the rest of us.
I went downstairs, I
was leaving the Pentagon
and an officer from the
Joint Staff called me
into his office and said, "I
want you to know," he said,
"Sir, we're gonna attack Iraq."
And I said, "Why?"
He said, "We don't know."
I said, "Well did they
tie Saddam to 9/11?"
He said, "No, but I guess
they don't know what to do
"about terrorism, but
they can attack states,
"and they want to look strong
and so I guess they think
"if they take down a
state it will intimidate
"the terrorists.
"It's like that old
saying," he said.
"If the only tool
you have is a hammer,
"then every problem
has to be a nail."
And then I came back to the
Pentagon about six weeks later,
I saw the same officer, I said,
"Why haven't we attacked Iraq?
"We still gonna attack Iraq?"
He said, "Oh sir,
it's worse than that."
He said, he pulled up a
piece of paper off his desk
he said, "I just got
this memo from the
"Secretary of Defense's
office, it says we're gonna
"attack and destroy the
governments in seven countries
"in five years.
"We're gonna start with
Iraq and then we're gonna
"move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan, and Iran."
Now did anybody
ever tell you that?
Was there a national
dialogue on this?
Did senators and congressmen
stand up and denounce
this plan?
Was there a full-fledged
American debate on it?
Absolutely not, and
there still isn't.
Wolfowitz and Cheney
and Rumsfeld and
you could name a half
dozen other collaborators
from the Project for a
New American Century.
They wanted us to
destabilize the Middle East.
Turn it upside down.
Make it under our control.
- They told us why
they had to do it.
They said we need to
occupy Iraq permanently
in order to dominate
Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia,
and the southern
Russian republics
around the Caspian Sea.
We need to control
the entire Middle East
and all its oil.
This war in Iraq has nothing
to do with national security
or freedom or democracy
or human rights
or protecting our allies or
weapons of mass destruction
or defeating terrorism
or disarming Iraq,
it has to do with money,
it has to do with oil,
and it has to do with
raw imperial power.
- What I found to be very
helpful in understanding
our current situation are names.
Names can help us
get our mind around
certain concepts.
For example, the term
false flag operation.
A false flag operation
is usually a violent act
perpetrated by one's
own government or group
and scapegoating
another group of people
for the purpose of
convincing the population
to go to war abroad and to
restrict liberties at home.
When we do some research
into false flag operations
we find that they are
probably government's
most dependable way of
getting support for war.
- In naval
warfare, a false flag
refers to an attack where
a vessel flies a flag
other than their
true battle flag
before engaging their enemy.
It is a trick designed
to deceive the enemy
about the true nature
and origin of an attack.
In the democratic era,
where governments require
at least a plausible pretext
before sending their nation
to war, it has been adapted
as a psychological warfare
tactic to deceive a
government's own population
into believing that an enemy
nation has attacked them.
In 1931, Japan was
looking for a pretext
to invade Manchuria.
On September 18th of
that year, a lieutenant
in the Imperial Japanese
Army detonated a small amount
of TNT along a Japanese-owned
railway in the Manchurian
city of Mukden.
The act was blamed
on Chinese dissidents
and used to justify the
occupation of Manchuria
just six months later.
When the deception
was later exposed,
Japan was diplomatically
shunned and forced to withdraw
from the League of Nations.
In 1962, the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff authored
a document called Operation
Northwoods, calling for
the US government to stage
a series of fake attacks,
including the shooting down
of military or civilian
US aircraft, the
destruction of a US ship,
sniper attacks in Washington,
and other atrocities
to blame on the Cubans as
an excuse for launching
an invasion.
In August 1964, the USS
Maddox, a US destroyer
on patrol in the Gulf of
Tonkin, believed it had
come under attack from North
Vietnamese navy torpedo boats,
engaging in evasive
action and returning fire.
The incident led to the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,
authorizing President
Johnson to begin open warfare
in Vietnam.
It was later admitted that
no attack had occurred
and in 2005 it was revealed
that the NSA had manipulated
their information to make
it look like an attack
had taken place.
- Johnson said we
may have to escalate,
I'm not gonna do it without
congressional authority,
and he put forward a resolution
the language of which
gave complete authority
to the president
to take the nation to war.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
And events afterwards
showed that our judgment
that we had been attacked
that day was wrong.
It didn't happen.
- In 2001, attacks
in New York and Washington
we blamed on Al Qaeda as
a pretext for invading
Afghanistan.
These are but a few of the
hundreds of such incidents
that have been staged over
the centuries to blame
political enemies for attacks
that they did not commit.
The tactic remains
in common use today,
and will continue to be
employed as long as populations
still blindly believe whatever
their governments tell them
about the origins of
spectacular terror incidents.
- We're also very fortunate
to have the term "deep state".
This term was coined by
Professor Peter Dale Scott.
- The public state is the
one we're taught about
in school and it's true as
far as it goes but all over
the world, particularly since
World War Two but even before,
public states have
little escape hatches for
when they want to do
something illegal.
And in this country the most
visible but not the only
sign of it is the CIA,
which was actually charged
quite early on in 1948 to
start committing crimes
against governments in
other parts of the world.
So we do have a deep
state in America
and the thesis of my book
is it's secret, it's not
properly controlled, it gets
involved in larger and larger
enterprises which were
never envisaged, by the way,
when the CIA was first created.
Which become more and more
disastrous for everybody
including the United States
and the balance between
the public state and the
deep state has been shifting
more and more towards
the deep state
because there are checks and
balances on the public state
and nothing that works by
way of checks and balances
with the CIA, DIA, and the Drug
Enforcement Administration,
the various components
of the deep state.
- And we have more recently
been given another phrase,
state crimes against
democracy or SCADs, S-C-A-D-S.
The social scientist,
through the very prominent
and well-regarded journal The
American Behavior Scientist
devoted their entire February
2010 issue to this study
of state crimes
against democracy.
What these social scientists
are telling us is that
they are seeing patterns.
They are seeing patterns
for many state crimes
against democracy,
they have looked at
the John F. Kennedy
assassination, the
Martin Luther King
assassination, the Bobby
Kennedy assassination,
the Iran Contra conspiracy,
the Watergate conspiracy
and what they're seeing
is that there are patterns
and they're telling us that
as social scientists they
need to study these patterns.
How these events took place,
who benefited from them.
- I remember getting
a call from the
fire department commander
telling me that they were
not sure they were gonna be
able to contain the fire.
I said you know, we've had
such terrible loss of life.
Maybe the smartest
thing to do is pull it.
And they made that decision
to pull and then we watched
the building collapse.
- What were the
resulting policy changes?
They need to study
these criminal patterns
by the deep state
just as they would study
any other social issue.
- Numerous false flag events
have been used to justify
wars in the past, possibly
the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
can be connected to a false
flag event in this case.
That would fit into the
psychologist's explanation.
Somebody generated
a new Pearl Harbor
and that was used to
turn public opinion
into the support of war.
- A number of senior
congressional figures
are calling this
America's Pearl Harbor.
- This is
comparable to an attack
on Pearl Harbor.
- This is an act, when they
compare this to Pearl Harbor,
I don't think they're wrong.
- Senator Dodd earlier
today compared this
to the equivalent of the
bombing of Pearl Harbor.
- In my youth,
the Gulf of Tonkin
has been exposed as the
false flag non-incident
which was used to get congress
to vote to go into Vietnam.
If you look into the
history of other wars,
in almost every case you find
public opinion was manipulated
to get us into the war and
this may be no exception.
So rather than be afraid
of the possibility
that we were manipulated
into the perception
that we had been attacked,
perhaps we should summon
the courage to allow
experts to weigh in
and have a public process
to get out the truth.
So that's why I have joined
the 9/11 truth movement
to allow the light of day to
shine on a traumatic event
and hope that out of that
can come a national healing.
- When I was first
presented with the idea
that 9/11 was an
inside job, that 9/11
was a false flag
operation, I said well,
give me the evidence.
So he sent me some
evidence, some websites,
I looked at them, and didn't
find the evidence convincing.
So I went back to
the work I was doing.
Six months later somebody
else sent me information
so I looked at it and
this time it clicked.
I saw stories that were
in the mainstream press,
New York Times, nothing
in the left-wing press,
nothing unusual, only
mainstream press stories
and yet I saw there were
dozens, even hundreds
of such stories that
conflicted with some aspect
of the official
story about 9/11.
Now I've written about, there
are different types of people.
You have empirical people
who will simply say
look at the evidence
and if it's convincing
I will change my mind.
Other people are
paradigmatic people.
They have a paradigm.
They say this is the
way the world works,
and I'm convinced this is the
right way the world works.
9/11 doesn't fit
into that paradigm.
So I don't need to look at the
evidence, it's paradigmatic.
And then there's a third type
of person that we often call
wishful thinkers.
I call it wishful
and fearful thinking.
So they simply will not believe
something that they fear
to be the truth and I've
found that maybe to be
the most powerful factor of
people rejecting 9/11 truth
and not even entertaining
the evidence.
I had one woman, after I
presented what I thought
was a very convincing
lecture, she came up to me
and she said, "I simply refuse
to believe what you've said,
"because I do not want
to live in a country
"where the leaders
would do such a thing."
That is fearful thinking
with a vengeance.
And it's very common.
So and that fits into
this nationalism.
This is the fear that the
country that I thought we had,
this country that's better
than other countries,
you're telling me
that's not true.
That is frightening, I
simply refuse to believe it,
I will not listen to any more
evidence, whatever it is.
- Now I've noticed as I've
spoken with people about 9/11
that I get some very interesting
spontaneous reactions
from people.
I believe that every one of
us will be able to relate
to these reactions because
most of us bought the
official story about what
happened on 9/11 completely,
and then we were shocked
when we discovered evidence
to the contrary.
Fran.
I refuse to believe that
that many Americans could be
that satanically treasonous.
Someone would have talked.
Now this reaction's very
interesting because it contains
two assumptions.
Number one, that if 9/11
is a false flag operation
orchestrated by elements
within our government,
that it would have required
a large number of people
to have pulled it off.
The second assumption is
that somebody would have had
a conscience, and
would have talked.
But these are beliefs, they
are not scientific facts.
But these beliefs do
keep us from looking
at the empirical evidence.
Whenever we say I refuse
to believe, we can be sure
that the evidence that's
coming our way is not bearable,
and it's conflicting with
our worldview much too much.
Another reaction.
Fran, you can't expect
someone to let in information
that turns their
world upside down.
If this were true, up would
be down and down would be up.
My life would never be the same.
Another said, have
you lost friends
talking about this issue?
And by the way, that's a
very important statement.
I think that is at bottom
what most of us fear
is being ostracized and by
the way the answer to this is
no I have not lost any real
friends, but I have had
very good friendships
severely strained,
and that's the nature
of this subject.
When we introduce an idea
that is paradigm-shifting
to a person, this
is to be expected.
Here are some very honest
responses that I've heard.
I must admit that I seriously
resist anyone messing
with my worldview.
I wouldn't want to live in
a world where such a thing
could be true.
And finally, here's the
most honest response
I have ever received.
If what you're saying is
true, I don't want to know,
because I would become very
negative, my life would go
downhill, I'd take a
turn for the worse.
So as I thought about
all of these responses,
I realized that what is
common to every one of them
is the emotion of fear.
People are afraid
of being ostracized,
they're afraid of being
alienated, they're afraid
of being shunned,
they're afraid of
their lives being
inconvenienced,
they'd have to change
their lives, they're
afraid of being confused,
they're afraid of
psychological deterioration.
They're afraid of feeling
helpless and vulnerable.
And they're afraid that
they won't be able to handle
the feelings that are coming up.
So really fear is at the bottom
of each of these feelings
and when we feel
vulnerable and helpless,
it's a very terrible feeling.
None of us want to feel
helpless and vulnerable.
So we want to defend ourselves,
and the way we often do that
is with anger.
So then we become angry,
and when we become angry
then we become indignant,
we become offended.
We want to ridicule
the messenger.
We want to pathologize
the messenger,
and we want to
censor the messenger.
- On the day of 9/11
I saw the second plane
crash into the south
tower, I got to the TV
just in time to witness that.
And then later in the
day I was standing alone
in my kitchen and was
suddenly hit with what I think
of now as Jewish paralysis.
As a person of Jewish
heritage I suddenly got
the extremely frightening
sense that this was a very
coordinated attack by the Arab
world on the Jewish people
and there was no
particularly rational reason
for me to be thinking that, I
just remember that I felt that
very strongly on that day.
After 9/11 we seemed to
talk about nothing else
at our office and with
my friends and I remember
in a reevaluation counseling
session just crying,
crying my heart out as I
thought about the children who
were orphaned on that day
and thinking about the people
who were forced to
jump out of the towers
and the terror they must
have felt and I just couldn't
get my head around how people
could have been so mean,
so hostile to do that knowing
how it would affect people.
- What's critical here
is that acts of terrorism
and political terrorism
are also considered
traumatic events.
And there's something,
what's different about trauma
versus daily stress
or situational stress
are a few things.
First of all there is a
perceived or real threat
to bodily harm or life.
There's also a feeling of
being completely helpless
and overwhelmed by a force
beyond the individual's control.
There, another characteristic
is that resistance or escape
is not possible so these
are the characteristics
of traumatic stress.
Now what's very interesting
about that, about trauma,
is that actually witnessing
a traumatic event
can have the same psychological
impact as actually being
in the event.
- Well fear is kind of the
beginning of everything.
Goering, at Nuremberg, gave
an interview, off the record,
and somebody, bright
journalist said how on earth
did you pull it off, you
Nazis, to get the Germans
who were a civilized people
for several hundred years
to turn into the bloody
Huns and go to war?
Make, create
concentration camps?
And Goering said well, no
sensible man is ever going
to join your army and
risk getting killed
unless there's a strong
reason, and that's fear.
And we knew how to create it.
The Bolsheviks are coming, or
whichever enemy of the week
it was, the Poles are coming,
the Czechs are killing
the Sudeten Germans and
they'll try and kill you too.
Well just look what's been
done now in the name of freedom
and liberty.
The fear is constant, and
it's just, for instance,
every child of nine
outside the United States
knows that Saddam Hussein had
nothing to do with Al Qaeda
and nothing to do
with Osama bin Laden.
As a matter of fact the two
men despised each other.
Every day for months, one day
it'd be the vice president,
next day it'd be the president.
We gotta take care of
evil all over the world,
bring 'em back dead or alive.
Now if the people hear
that from what they assume
is their president,
elected president,
they're bound to believe
it, there's some residue
that stays in people's
heads, they can't keep lying
that much.
And so with terror they
have been able to come up
with the USA Patriot Act
which nobody seems to be able
to get their hands
on, I can't find it.
Which shreds our civil
liberties, and we're now at war
with just about everybody,
we're talking about possible
strikes against Iran,
North Korea, Syria.
We've gone barbarous,
we have gone back two,
three thousand years
in human history
to almost pre-Roman times and
the rationale among themselves
is we've gotta have that oil.
Well the money we spend
on war we could develop
an alternative to fossil fuels.
It's not that far
away in the future.
But we don't, we
prefer the wars.
- I think as a psychologist
to overcome our fear of
the traumatic event with
new information would be
the best, healthiest route
to our collective recovery
from the trauma of 9/11.
That, by the way, is a
psychotherapeutic insight
that to gradually uncover
the truth in your own life,
the sources of anxiety,
to make them conscious,
is the royal road to recovery.
Healing comes through facing
the truth, experiencing it,
allowing the feelings to come in
so that if there are
feelings of fear that perhaps
these events were caused by
something that we haven't
thought about yet, dark
elements within our society,
for example, we'll let that
come in and explore it.
Let the light shine
on whatever happened.
This will be the
most healing process.
The Germans did this
after their war.
The South Africans did
this after apartheid.
Reconciliation through the truth
is what is a deep path
to psychologic recovery
from the myths and lies around
which this historical event
has been cloaked in
the official view.
But some of us find it
comforting if we believe
an enemy attacked us.
Most people take that route.
That explanation was given
to us by the news media
within hours of the
so-called attacks.
That's extraordinary, to
identify the perpetrators
on the first day without
any forensic examination,
without any investigation
of the crime scene.
For example there was another
World Trade tower that went
down, World Trade Center 7,
and no one's explaining that.
So we waited and we got
the 9/11 Commission Report.
We thought that would bring
some harmony, some consonance,
but for us there was dissonance.
The official story
didn't make enough sense,
we had this discrepant
information.
We kept looking and
finally we found something
that did produce consonance
which was that there was
fairly a demolition in
all three buildings.
That's where the
Richard Gage explanation
appeals to a wide spectrum
of professionals in many
disciplines.
So dissonance is reduced
by finding a scientific
explanation and most people
find comfort in believing
that we were attacked.
A smaller minority of
us feel that it would be
more comforting to understand
this in terms of science.
- The thing that's most
important about science is
that it's a way of knowing,
it's a way of knowing
that anyone can participate,
of course they have to have
some background and they
all have to develop more,
but it's a way of
knowing about anything
and it's at the end of any
kind of science activity,
people will agree that they
have collected evidence
that illustrates a hypothesis
and if the evidence
is contradictory to the
hypothesis, one has to abandon
that hypothesis and
look for another one.
And one must, in testing
any hypothesis or trying to
establish it, consider all
of the relevant evidence
which may come from
all kinds of places.
Observations,
measurements, and so on.
And insofar as people
can be objective at all,
they will come to the
same sorts of conclusions.
So science is a fundamentally
useful and accurate
and universal way of
finding out about the world.
- NIS received 20 million dollars
of taxpayers' money to
determine why and how
World Trade Center 1 and
World Trade Center 2 collapsed
following the initial
impacts of the aircraft.
And to this day, they
have not done so.
This is why architects
and engineers has kept
pressing NIST, asking
them to publish their data
in regards to the potential
energy released during
the downwards movement
of the upper stories,
and the absortive capacity
of the intact structure
below the collapsed zone.
- Structural engineers
do this every day.
This is not rocket science.
You have the known weight
of this building mass.
You have what are
known columns below it
in order to resist it.
You let it go in your
models and you calculate
what the resistance is.
Why didn't they do it?
Could it be because
they knew darn well
that it would not
have collapsed at all?
- In fact, it
could be suggested that NIS never explained the
collapses by gravity alone
because it would be
impossible to do so
without violating at
least two of the most
fundamental laws of physics.
One is Newton's third law
of motion which states
that for every action
there is an equal
and opposite reaction.
This means that two opposing
forces will neutralize
each other.
In a head-on collision,
the two cars absorb
each other's kinetic
energy and transform it
into physical
deformation or damage.
After that, the
system comes to a rest
as there is no more
energy to be dissipated.
- The top section pushing
on the bottom section,
it's gonna meet equal
forces as it goes.
Both sections are gonna be
demolished at the same rate
so by the time you've crushed
up 15 stories below it,
the top 15 stories are
also gonna be crushed.
And so there's nothing left now
to crush the rest
of the building.
Something of this kind
is what we should have seen
when the top
sections of the tower
collapsed onto the lower one.
The upper and lower sections
should have mutually
destroyed each other until
all the energy is dissipated
and the system comes to a rest.
Alternatively, as shown
in this experiment
with two towers made of
snow, the top section
could have fallen
off to the side
after the initial collapse.
What could not have
happened is this.
- Little tiny chunk of the
building can't possibly
fall and crush the entire
structure below it.
- This is such a
simple, fundamental concept
that architects and engineers
were astonished in seeing it
totally ignored by NIST.
- This is high school physics.
And our whole society
is being led to believe
that these fundamental laws
of physics, hard science,
don't apply anymore.
- But even if we
assume that the top section
of the tower had enough
potential energy to destroy
the rest of the structure
below, it could not have done so
at the speed it did, which
was near freefall speed.
That would have violated
an even more important
principle in physics,
known as the law of
momentum conservation.
This law states that
the total energy within
an isolated system must
always remain the same.
As we have seen, the
energy can be transformed
within the system, from motion
to physical deformation,
but for the deformation
to begin, the
velocity must decrease
in order for one kind of
energy to be transformed
into the other.
No new energy can be
added to the system.
One particular
example of momentum
conservation is freefall.
Freefall happens when the only
force applied on an object
is gravity.
This means that all the
potential energy contained
by the object is converted
into vertical motion.
As soon as the falling
object hits an obstacle
and breakage occurs,
the speed must decrease
because some of its energy
needs now to be converted
into physical breakage.
It takes energy to
break things apart,
and that energy must come
from within the system.
Thus the falling rock
cannot keep falling
at freefall speed and break
apart at the same time
because it doesn't have
enough energy to do both.
Let's go now to the Twin Towers,
and ask a simple question.
Assuming that the top
section on the left
contains enough potential
energy to destroy
the rest of the tower, and
assuming we dropped both
upper sections at the
same time, which one would
hit the ground first?
It would be the
second, of course.
As it finds no
obstacles in its path,
the section on the right
would quickly accelerate
to freefall speed and
maintain it all the way
to the ground.
The section on the left
instead needs to use
some of its energy to
destroy the structure below,
so it could never
achieve freefall speed.
In the case of the
Twin Towers, however,
both upper sections fell
with an acceleration
close to freefall
speed, as if their path
had been practically
free from obstacles.
It took each tower
between 10 and 12 seconds
to collapse to the ground,
while an absolute freefall time
would have been 9.2 seconds.
In other words, both upper
sections of the towers
found enough energy
to destroy 80,000 tons
of healthy structure
below while accelerating
to near freefall speed.
This is, as we have said,
absolutely impossible
by gravity alone.
The law of momentum
conservation won't allow it.
- A building cannot do
freefall with huge structural
steel structural system
in place to support it.
- The Twin Towers could
not have come straight down
through the resistance of
80,000 tons of structural steel
at the speed of
practically freefall.
That just would not happen.
- If in fact it actually
hit and made an impact,
was effectively crushing
anything, pushing hard
on this core structure
below it, the core structure
is gonna push back
equally hard and that's
what's gonna cause the top
section of the building
to slow down.
- As energy is drained
away from the system
to deform those members,
it would slow down
the descending mass and
cause a descent at less-than
freefall speed.
- There is only
one way for those buildings
to have collapsed at
the speed they did.
- The buildings fall at a
speed which can only occur
if the structure has been
removed, the vertical structure.
- The same
Shyam Sunder from NIS has acknowledged that
freefall can only be achieved
with the absence of
a structure below.
- Freefall time would
be an object that has no
structural components below it.
- But what
could have removed
the supporting structure below,
since the falling section
didn't have any extra
energy to do so?
- The fact that it's
coming down at freefall
says all of the energy is
being used to just make it
go straight down, which
means it's coming down
through itself and not breaking
up the building as it goes.
Something else has to
be clearing the way.
- There is
only one known way to allow
that kind of acceleration
while removing the supporting
structure.
- A building cannot do freefall
without it being blown up.
That's the only way it
could come down at freefall.
- The only way that a
building can accelerate
as it collapses is by
having preengineered,
precisely timed, and
precisely placed explosives.
In other words,
controlled demolition.
- In March of 2004 I
went with my brother
on a protest march commemorating
the first anniversary
of our invasion of Iraq
and at that time my brother
told me that there were
people who had suspicions
that the United States
government or people within
the government had
been responsible for
the 9/11 attacks.
And when my brother told
me this, I immediately felt
such a sense of
revulsion and distaste,
it was as if he had
exposed himself to me.
And I felt that it was
completely beyond the bounds
of decency and good taste
for him to have said
something like that and
so I changed the subject,
I did not ask any questions
about it, I just didn't want
to hear about it.
In May of 2006 my husband
asked me to read a book review
of two of Professor David Ray
Griffin's books about 9/11.
And by this time I had
seen Michael Moore's movie
Fahrenheit 9/11 and I
had, I guess I had been
softened up to taking
in new information.
So I read this book review
and thought oh my gosh,
there is a lot here
that I haven't known
and I need to find
out more about.
So about a week later after
I had read that book review
I went online and I read a
lengthy article by Dr. Griffin.
I think it was called Why
the Official Account of 9/11
Cannot Be True.
And it was very well documented,
very highly footnoted,
lengthy article, very precise
and specific and very well
backed up and I got to
the end of the article
and I sat there, I was
in my office at the time,
I sat there and I felt
my stomach churning.
I thought maybe I
was going to be sick.
And I leaped out of my
chair and ran out the door
and took a long walk
around the block,
around several blocks,
and just broke down.
I understand now that what
was happening was my worldview
about my government being
in some way my protector,
almost like a parent,
had been dashed
and it was like being cast
out into the wilderness
I think is the closest way
to describe that feeling
and I sobbed and I sobbed,
felt like the ground
had completely disappeared
beneath my feet and
I knew at some point
during the walk that I knew
that I was going to
have to become active
in educating other
people about this,
that there was, that for me to
retain any sense of integrity
I was going to have
to take some action.
I couldn't just let
something like this go.
- We are experiencing a
public reaction to our quest
for the truth.
What we experience, almost
universally, is marginalization.
We're told you don't
represent the mainstream,
you're a bit kooky, we're
going to scapegoat you,
we're going to dismiss you.
- Psychological terms can
be used to hurt people
as well as to help people.
And we can marginalize people.
We can call them, we can
say that they're nuts
if they believe something
that the majority of us
do not believe.
This has been happening
with people who have been
learning about 9/11 and
are trying to do something
about it.
We get called things like
conspiracy theorists.
It can be a very difficult
thing to be called.
People call your
sanity into question.
They call your common
sense into question.
They call your
judgment into question.
You may be much better versed
on a subject than they are
but if their views are in line
with the majority opinion,
they feel that they have
grounds to judge you
and to marginalize you and
as a society it's not just
person to person that
we marginalize people,
our media will
marginalize people,
the government will
marginalize people for having
unpopular views and so this
is something that people
who are looking at 9/11
are very much up against.
- Another thing that happens
is that we human beings
tend to have a need for
closure, and simply not knowing
is uncomfortable, we're taught
that we're supposed to know
and we don't wanna appear
stupid and we wanna have
an opinion for everything
and so when there's this
social, societal pressure
to not only have an opinion,
but to reach closure
about something
and then once we have
come to our opinion,
whatever that is, it can be
very difficult to challenge it.
And there's something
that goes on with people,
it's this phenomenon of
scapegoating, and scapegoating
goes back to the ritual
back in the Old Testament
when the rabbis would recite
the sins of the people
over the heads of goats
and then send them out
to the desert where
presumably they would be
attacked or killed or whatever
but it was a ritualistic
way of transferring the guilt
or the blame of the people
onto these goats who were then
called of course scapegoats.
And when something bad happens,
especially something that's
just terrible or preposterous
or very, very evil,
there's an immediate need
to find out who did it,
find fault, adjudicate the
fault, adjudicate the blame,
and then punish
the transgressor.
And so what happened
right after 9/11 is that
this was our country and even
though most of us, of course,
are not New Yorkers,
we took it personally.
This is something
that happened to us,
it wasn't just something that
happened to the 3,000 people
who died, this was something
that happened to me
and to my country and
people identify with that.
And so there's this sense
of fear and oh my God,
it could have happened
here and I remember people
in San Francisco and
even Kansas were afraid
that they might be bombed.
In the next couple
weeks there was the idea
that America is under attack
and we've got to do something,
and one of these things
that we need to do
is we need to identify
the enemy and punish them
or fight against them
or do something about it
and so there was
this scapegoating of
Osama bin Laden first
and Arabs and "terrorists"
later and then we got into
this whole thing on
the war on terrorism
and so once this connection
with an identified scapegoat
has been made and he becomes
a channel for our fear
and anger and even
fury and hostility,
then that becomes difficult
to dislodge and people become
comfortable in knowing that
we have found the enemy,
we have found the problem
and we are doing something
about it.
- We start to ask question
and we hear worse rumor,
the government, our own
government, may be involved.
And we start to be
disoriented, we don't know what
to think about it.
It's like having hot and
cold at the same time.
Something cannot be hot
and cold at the same time.
It cannot be Al Qaeda did it,
the American government did it,
the airplane made the
building collapse,
there were explosive.
It makes us very, very
uncomfortable and we go back
to every time we hear
some more news like that
we go back in the
state of shock.
It's easier to just go in
front of the television,
have barbecues, have
friends over, have parties,
and forget about
this whole mess.
However, doing that
doesn't help really because
our body, our minds know
something is going on
and when we deny it,
we push something down
and it starts to
gnaw on our bones,
on our organs, pretty
soon we will experience
aches and pains.
It is believed that 96%
of the aches and pains
and physical trauma
we experience within
catastrophic illnesses
stem from a trauma
that has not been dealt with.
So it is very important
to deal with a trauma
in the best possible way.
One of the ways to deal
with a trauma is to find
the answers.
- A lot of people have been
wondering why there's been
this massive level of
denial of people around,
the incidents surrounding 9/11.
And I think there are
several reasons for this.
One is that we tend to
be creatures of habit
and beliefs are habits
just like eating, drinking,
or sleeping, and we tend
to believe and then become
attached to and even identify
with our personal beliefs
and then we'll defend them if
they're challenged in any way.
There's a wonderful quotation
from the American humorist
Will Durant where
he once said that
it's not what we know
that gets us in trouble,
it's what we think we
know that ain't so.
One of our most cherished
beliefs is the belief
in American goodness.
We've been taught since the
time we were little kids
that America is the
leader of the free world,
that this is the land of the
free and the home of the brave.
You know, we wave the
flag, I remember growing up
watching Superman, at
the end of every episode,
they would talk about the
fight for truth, justice,
and the American way.
This is something that all
of us, is very close to
in our hearts.
- Fights a
neverending battle for truth,
justice, and the American way.
- So when any information
comes up that might challenge
this belief in American
goodness, a lot of people
experience this phenomenon
of cognitive dissonance
and simply cannot deal with
it, intend to either deny it
or push it away and for some
people they just do not even
wanna go there just because
it's too uncomfortable.
- We face a lot of difficulty
looking at 9/11 objectively.
We've all been raised
to believe that we're in
the greatest country
that ever existed.
That this couldn't happen here.
Our founders, founding
fathers did not make the same
mistakes, they were perhaps
excellent psychologists.
They knew human nature, they
knew that man was capable of
great harm, great evil.
They also knew man
had great good.
They knew that they
could create a system
based upon values.
Liberty, democracy,
freedom, freedom from
cruel and unusual punishment.
They never made the mistake
of trusting individuals
or individual systems.
They knew, with a healthy
skepticism, that people were,
and power would always seek
to undermine democracy.
- 9/11 truth challenges
some of our most
fundamental beliefs
about our government
and about our country.
We are indoctrinated from
an early age to believe
that America is good at
that we are exceptional.
We are the shining
beacon in the darkness,
a voice for freedom and justice.
This patriotic indoctrination
is carried out by schools,
the military, churches, the
media, and other institutions.
It's repeatedly hammered
home throughout our lives.
Over and over and over again.
No wonder Americans go into
denial at the suggestion
that our government
committed a crime
against its own people.
Many people respond to these
truths in a very deep way.
Some have a visceral
reaction like they've been
punched in the stomach.
To begin to accept the
possibility that the government
was involved is like
opening Pandora's box.
If you open the lid and
peek in a little bit,
it's gonna challenge some
of your fundamental beliefs
about the world.
- Some people might think
that if you believe in
9/11 truth or question the
official story that it means
you can't love your
country or that we would
feel bad about our country.
Our country does have
phenomenal ideals.
Those ideals transcend any
government or individuals.
Those ideals the founders
set up so for us to practice
and to fight for.
Our system was never designed
to provide a free ride
for us to loaf and not
continue to safeguard liberty
and freedom.
But the ideals of our
country are great and
they are still possible for us.
And we should continue
to fight for those.
9/11 is central to
marshaling the public will
to move in a direction
that it doesn't want to go.
To become a different
kind of country.
Not the country
that we grew up in,
but a foreign country
that, with foreign values
of torture, illegal
wars, threats, threats
to our emotions,
threats to our sense of safety.
This is terrorism.
It's terrorism by
our government.
These things should
not be tolerated
unless we want to tolerate
being led in a direction
on false information
then we need to be
closer to the truth.
- I thought that it was
a matter of real concern
that planted stories
intended to serve
a national purpose
abroad came home and were
circulated here
and believed here
because this would mean that
the CIA could manipulate
the news in the United
States by channeling it
through some foreign country.
And we're looking at
that very carefully.
- Do you have any
people being paid by the CIA
who are contributing
to a major circulation
American journal?
- We do have people who submit
pieces to American journals.
- Do you have
any people paid by the CIA
who are working for
television networks?
- This I think gets into
the kind of, getting into
the details, Mr. Chairman,
that I'd like to get into
in executive session.
- At CBS we have been
contacted by the CIA,
as a matter of fact by
the time I became the head
of the whole news and public
affairs operation in 1954
relationships had
been established and
I was told about them
and asked if I'd
carry on with them.
- Do you have any
people being paid by the CIA
who are contributing to
the national news services?
AP and UPI.
- Well again I think we're
getting into the kind of detail,
Mr. Chairman, that
I'd prefer to handle
in executive session.
- The media seems to
function as the prime
enabler of the 9/11 events.
That you can almost see
the media as a kind of
a national mind or a global
mind, that it's hard to
think outside of what
we see on television
and in newspapers.
And if they're presenting
repeatedly one version,
they are very convincing
and so the media is part
of the problem and if
we knew the media better
we would have known this
before 9/11 so when the media
told us who it was and didn't
question, we would have
questioned the media.
But that's another
part of our system
that we have not faced
is that our media really
does not serve the people
the way that we think it does.
It does serve government,
it serves business interest,
and it is blocked
out like a mind guard
against the 9/11 truth,
the truth of what happened.
So if we're waiting
for people in the media
to come forward, it's probably
not going to be happening.
The Catholic church has
had a terrible crisis
with priests that abused
young children sexually,
and it was hard for
anyone to believe
that this could happen.
It was hard for the
priests, I'm sure, who knew.
So when we ask, well wouldn't
somebody have come forward?
I don't know that there
were any, or many, priests
that came forward and
confronted the Catholic church
on the sexual abuse.
These were good men.
Many good men had to have
known and stayed silent
and allowed this to go on,
allowed it to be covered up.
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair,
it's hard to get a man
to understand something that
his livelihood depends on
him not understanding.
Likewise, it's hard to get a
man to disbelieve something
that his livelihood
depends on him believing.
And so we have multiple
portrayals in this situation
with people with
power with knowledge.
Some of whom like
to kid themselves,
some of them protect
themselves from the knowledge,
most of them are scared.
And so we need to know that
the people that are approached
about 9/11 truth are scared too.
They may get angry, but
this is very disturbing.
One of the great flaws that
the Greeks told us about
and warned us was
excessive pride.
The thinking that we're
above such things,
that it could happen
in other countries
but it couldn't happen here,
that's a lack of humility,
and that's excessive pride.
And so not being able
to see our dark side
or our weaknesses is the
most dangerous thing.
When we can see them,
we can deal with them,
we can interpret, and
that's a strength.
The woman that doesn't
know that her husband
has had affairs before or
doesn't know that he's abusive
is worse off for not having
known, for being in denial.
Knowing the truth is empowering,
and we can cope with that.
We've coped with the
Great Depression,
we've coped with World
War Two, we've coped with
a great number of things
and it would get our country
back on track in the
values that we believe in,
and there wouldn't be anything
stopping us from being
the kind of country
that we believe we are.
- The observation that pride
is one of the basic human
flaws is absolutely correct.
This is especially true
for Americans because
we for a long time looked
at other nations and say oh,
they're in such bad shape
but luckily we don't
have those problems, we
don't have leaders who would
do those things that were
done in the Soviet Union
or done in Germany or done in
Japan and on down the list.
So this is a type of pride.
A feature of American history
that makes us particularly
liable to this pride is
this notion that's called
exceptionalism, that America
is the exceptional nation.
And that began from the
beginning as this country
was formed the people would
say well, there was so much
evil in the European
countries, so much cheating,
so much lying, so much using
the people for the ruler's
purposes, but not in America.
We have leaders that are
free from those sins.
So I think this has made 9/11
particularly difficult for
Americans.
We find that the Europeans
in the 9/11 movement
don't have such a problem.
We found that the Japanese
don't have a problem.
They do not believe
that the United States
is the exceptional
nation in this sense,
that we are somehow, our
leaders are above the sins
that affect other leaders.
Now most people are very
convinced that we're going
the wrong direction.
The polls show that.
We have a terrible debt, we
didn't move out of it the way
that we should have because
the people who were in charge
did not have that as
the primary priority,
that is to help the
ordinary people.
We also see that the
constitution has been gutted.
We're doing many things
that prior to 9/11 were
inconceivable, that we
would just accuse someone
of a crime and put them
in prison indefinitely
without a trial and this
happens, this has happened
to many people including
many Americans.
We have this, what's called
extraordinary rendition
where people have been taken
out of the United States
or some other country and
taken to a third country
where they will be tortured.
We know there has been an
enormous amount of torture.
No one has been brought
to trial for that.
So we are now as many
commentators are saying
we are now living in
a post-legal society.
We're living in an unlawful
society where is it lawful,
that question no longer counts.
What happened with the
killing of bin Laden?
Most commentators
say it was murder.
No one will be
punished for that,
in fact the president's
poll ratings will go up,
have gone up.
So there are many things
that people would say
in the last 10 years, this
country has gone way downhill,
not only economically and
militarily, but legally,
spiritually, our
own self-respect is
being undermined,
is being destroyed, by the
things that the government
is doing and nobody
is held accountable.
We have these two wars,
both of them illegal,
both of them based on
lies, both of them killing,
we don't have exact
figures but they're in
the millions of people.
Countries that had no
attack planned for us.
Everyone agrees now.
Afghanistan was not
planning to attack America,
Iraq was not going to attack
America, and yet we have killed
millions of the people.
How can we have any
self-respect if this continues?
So that's the approach I
would take, try to help people
make the connection between
the ruin of our nation
with 9/11.
- The point is that the
story we are telling
is painful because once
you have seen 7 going down
you get a sensation that
there's something wrong here
and your immediate reaction
is maybe I shouldn't
look into this because
this may lead me to places
where I do not want to go.
Fact is that we do not
want to be lied to.
And we do not want to
lie ourselves, both.
So as you realize that the
people who we have selected
have lied to us to an extent
that is so beyond imagination
to ordinary people is
very painful, actually.
But as a consequence since
now we have something
that we are not
supposed to talk about
it is downright destructive
to our Western civilization.
You can blow up any good
company by either start to
discussing politics,
religion, or 9/11.
Yeah, then it's not fun
anymore because usually people
divide on this subject
and there's something here
we cannot talk about.
That means the language
is deteriorating
and this is what you've seen
observed with Western culture
in the last 12 years, we're
ending up like Eastern Europe
was 20 years ago, gray
and gray and gray,
absolutely nothing's
happening because if you have
the secret police sitting
next to you in the bus
there are some thing
you do not talk about.
Which means that everybody
knows that everybody knows
that everybody knows
that everybody knows
that we should not talk
about this, and particularly
in the mainstream media.
As a consequence, it's true,
marriages are breaking up,
families are breaking up,
parents are not talking
with their children,
children are not talking with
their parents because of this.
So you end up with a society
which is soaked with fear
and lies, we accept the lies.
Downright lies for going
into the war in Afghanistan
and Denmark has been involved
in a total of seven wars
in 2001
So we have society of lies
and fear and all power
is based on fear, and all
wars are based on deception,
and wars is the most
profitable business of all.
- Until we completely
destroy the government's
official myth and get some
real truth told out there,
all the evils that have
happened since 9/11
are going to continue.
The corporate wars of
aggression, the taking away
of our constitutional rights,
the destruction of this country.
- If we're a part of a
collective, part of a nation,
then we will also have
a dysfunctional nation
if we don't know the truth.
We can't have a
functional nation
if we're operating on lies.
- I've come across a
song by a performer named
Weird Al Yankovic which sort
of sums up what I was feeling,
what I've heard other
people talk about when they
had to deal with the 9/11
information, and the lyrics go
"everything you know is wrong,
black is white, up is down,
"and short is long, and
everything you thought
"was so important
doesn't matter".
That was what it was like,
it was like a very sudden
shift in my priorities and
what I thought I needed
to be doing with my life
and just how I regarded
the entire world and how I
regarded the people in it.
If we can think of our
worldview as being sort of
our mental and emotional home,
on the day that I learned
that 9/11 was probably
an inside job was the day
I lost that home and
was sort of cast out
into the wilderness, an
extremely uncomfortable feeling.
And when I've tried to talk
with people in the past
few years about 9/11 I see
that sort of discomfort
come up with them many times,
to the point where they will,
I think all of us will
do just about anything
to defend our homes,
to defend our families,
and so I see that with people
and I saw that with myself
when my brother tried to
talk with me about it.
Don't mess with me,
don't mess with my home,
don't mess with my comfort
with how things are.
So that was very difficult.
- When 9/11 happened,
a lot of things
were taken away.
Lives were lost, fears
were instilled, hatreds
were stirred up.
Those are some of the most
intimate parts of one's psyche,
what makes one human.
More was taken away from
us than those lives,
as tragic as they were.
Our right to form
objective opinions,
our right to have our
own feelings about
objective reality
was taken away.
We were psychologically abused
on September 11th and since.
The psychological
abuse has continued.
We need to stop the
psychological abuse
and the manipulation
of the American people.
If we don't then we are
participating in it.
None of us were trained
to look at the possibility
that the government
could do this.
There was no class in
graduate school about
government operations as such.
We were never taught to
entertain the possibility,
even though we now know these
things have been going on
for a very long time.
9/11 and facing the truth
about it is important
to the soul of America.
And the values that have
come from the official story
corrupt us emotionally,
mentally, and spiritually.
We don't deserve
to be corrupted.
- Later on as I
researched and integrated
more of the information I
also had to come to terms
with the very uncomfortable
feeling of being a dupe,
of being a sucker, of believing
what the government told me
without checking it
out for myself first.
I consider myself to be a
well-educated, mature adult
and to realize that I had
just absorbed the government's
story lock stock and barrel
without really questioning it
was very humbling,
it was not fun,
it really made me question
my own intelligence
and my own integrity for
having jumped so quickly
on the bandwagon in a way that
was very harmful and racist
towards people in
the Middle East.
So I spent actually a
very lonely summer with
every night
insomnia, nightmares.
Knowing that I wanted to
become active in exposing
this information and
feeling like if I did so
the government or people
within the government might
hunt me down and kill me.
Just general sense of paranoia
about having this information
and doing something with it.
And so it was a very long,
very difficult summer for me,
but during that summer I also
spent a huge amount of time
reading everything I could
get my hands on about 9/11
and becoming more and more
sure that the official account
was a complete lie and that
something needed to be done
about it.
- In this case the people
that we rely on to gather
the evidence aren't.
It's sort of like calling
the police and the police
won't investigate and then
you find out oh, one of the
police officers did it
and is covering it up.
- We know we've been
lied to about 9/11.
We don't know for
sure who did it.
We don't know exactly
how they did everything,
and that's why we need a new
investigation to find out.
Regardless of what anyone
thinks about how it happened
or who caused it,
there's no question that
the Bush Administration
took advantage of that
to deceive the Congress and
the American people into
unnecessary and illegal
wars of aggression
and to cramming down our
throats the Patriot Act
and the Military
Commissions Act.
And these evils are going on
now even under a different
administration and so it's
obvious that whichever party
is in power, the American
people absolutely need the truth
of 9/11.
- If we don't want greater
deceptions, if we don't want
more war based on these
deceptions, then we need to know
the truth and the way to find
the truth is an investigation
and in holding those
responsible legally accountable.
- We need an impartial,
scientific, and
legal investigation
as required by law
of any crime scene.
And we should not be treating
9/11 as a excuse to go to war
but rather as a criminal
act for which we have yet
to do the forensic analysis,
the scientific analysis,
all the disciplines
working together.
I know that's what we do
in our police department
in my home town, that's
what we expect in our
state government, law
enforcement, we expect
the international level,
international law.
I think that by putting
science together with the law
we will have a psychological
healing around the
impossible cognition that has
been produced on that day.
- Never forget that
this country is based on
only one thing,
due process of law.
And that just has stayed
with me ever since.
And the other day when they
got rid of habeas corpus,
which took some doing but
it was done after 700 years
we lost it and I kept
thinking of my grandfather
and I could hear his voice in
my head, due process of law.
Without that we are nothing.
- The cycle we're
going through right now
is the same cycle as
victim of domestic violence
are going through.
We feel helpless, we feel
hopeless, we need answers,
we need to get out of this
control zone that we are in.
And I think it's of utmost
importance to have a thorough
investigation by neutral
professional to give a serious
answer both from the scientific
and the legal point of view.
- I think at first glance
the truth about 9/11
can be retraumatizing and
people are afraid to look at it.
But if handled with empathy
and with compassion,
I think the truth about
9/11 allows us to connect
with people, it empowers us
as survivors of this in going
through and taking actions
about it, it can help us
overcome our own
feelings of helplessness
and loss of control
about what is going on
with our government.
It really can help set us free.
People have lived through
trauma and traumatic events
throughout history, and they
will continue to do that.
I think the resiliency
of the human spirit
in overcoming tragedy
cannot be overestimated.
- I want to give
people a sense of hope.
Eventually I was able to
realize that 9/11 presents
an opportunity for us to find
our sense of integrity again,
to find our sense of courage,
our sense of optimism.
That now that we know a little
bit more about how things
actually work, how wars are
actually created by governments,
how governments get
people to go to war,
we have an opportunity now,
a wonderful opportunity
which fills me with great
joy to do something about it,
to find a way to stop
this from occurring again.
- There will always be
people who cannot accept
the truths of 9/11.
Even if the perpetrators
publicly confessed,
but for most people the
truth can be accessed.
The 9/11 truth movement
is changing our country,
one person at a time.
- One of the leaders of
the 9/11 truth movement
has said something that I sort
of hold close to my heart,
it kinda keeps me going
when things get rough.
There is no greater joy
than coming together
with people of conscience,
and standing up together
for what's right.
- Psychology professionals
are concerned about
silence in America.
The silence about what happened
about September 11th, 2001.
Secrets make us
sick, they tell us.
Secrets make us
psychologically unhealthy.
Whether held in silence
within us as individuals,
or held in silence
by an entire nation.
These psychologists
say that we're ignoring
the elephant in the room.
What they mean is in
our national living room
we are ignoring the abundance
of hard facts that prove
we have not been told the
truth about what happened
on September 11th.
Actually, professionals
from many different fields
decry our media for parroting
their government sources.
Rather than asking
hard questions, rather
than investigating
official claims and
honestly reporting their
independent findings.
Because of this parroting
by the media, we the people
have readily accepted
the story we've been told
about what happened
on that horrific day.
That horrific day.
A day that drastically
changed our world.
We'd have learned that if
we label those who question
our government's account of
that tragedy as conspiracy
theorists, we can quickly
silence honest discussion
of what really happened on 9/11.
Yet if we listened
closely to their questions
instead of silencing
or ignoring them,
we'd notice that a number
of serious researchers
are bringing hard scientific
evidence to our attention.
If we study this evidence,
we can easily see the truth
has been demolished
in our country.
That's why this
film has been titled
Demolition of Truth.
To be healthy as a nation,
we must be willing to open
our eyes and our hearts.
We must find the courage not
only to ask the difficult
questions, but to listen to
what may be challenging answers.
Since 9/11, thousands of
soldiers and millions of
innocent civilians
have been killed.
The war on terror keeps
escalating with no end in sight.
Because of 9/11, precious
civil liberties have been lost.
In the US and around the globe.
We Americans can be subject
to searches and seizures
without a warrant.
We can be detained or
imprisoned indefinitely
without charge, without
evidence, without a lawyer,
without a trial.
The psychology professionals
in this film tell us
that looking at the
truth of 9/11 isn't easy.
9/11 was traumatic and
looking anew at 9/11,
looking anew at 9/11 is
tough and even scary.
But we are resilient.
If we acknowledge our
fear and then decide
not to let that fear control
us, we can break the silence
and find healing in the truth.
Not only for ourselves, but
for our country and the world.