I would like to share a few personal reflections on The International Hearings into the Events of 9/11 held in Toronto, Canada. The hearings asked two important questions. Do the observed facts of 9/11 support the thesis that 19 Arab men directed by a man in a cave in Afghanistan pulled off the multiple catastrophic events that unfolded on that day? And if not, who did?
The Hearings have been extraordinarily effective in presenting carefully compiled scientific evidence that casts serious doubt on the veracity of the official story. The overwhelming burden of that evidence leads to the conclusion that the official story is based on false premises, and succeeds only by ignoring or distorting masses of contrary evidence.
Here we come to a crucial question: are we going to look at the science or are we going to be misdirected by media and political expediency? The laws of physics exist regardless of the political climate and are not subject to manipulation, by even the most sophisticated PR firms.
Whoever were the perpetrators of the terror acts of 9/11, they have been so successful in keeping attention focused on the official story, repeated endlessly, that the majority of the public accepts it without question. This includes even large segments of the public and public intellectuals who are strongly critical of US foreign and domestic policies in most other areas.
So my first reflection is the awareness of just how uphill is the battle faced by the advocates for 9/11 truth. In September of 2011, as the tenth anniversary approached, we witnessed the constant barrage of TV observances of 9/11. Even as the Toronto Hearings exposed 9/11 to scientific scrutiny and painstaking deconstruction, the public face of the “official” 9/11 narrative continued to roll along as a snowballing mass of myths hardening into dogma.
We have come to appreciate just how great is the psychological investment in these myths by the public, even by those who were and are otherwise highly critical of the Bush administration.
We can also pinpoint the methods used. One of several ways in which official media continue to shape the 9/11 story is to ridicule the 9/11 Truth Movement as “truthers” equating them with the right-wing “birthers” who maintain the absurd claim that President Obama was foreign-born.
Another even more potent weapon of the defenders of the official story is to label critics as “deniers” showing disrespect for the dead (with subtle linking to the anathema of Holocaust deniers). To the contrary, the 9/11 hearings were convened in a spirit of tremendous respect for the dead, by struggling to discover the real circumstances of their deaths.
And the 9-11 critics presenting at the Hearings are anything but fringe elements. They represent an array of respected and professionally credentialed expert witnesses: Example: the 1550 Architects and Engineers who have signed a statement calling for a new independent inquiry into 9/11. What led them to sign on? Simply put, they took a hard look at the data, and made unbiased evaluations of the evidence.
The organizers are to be commended for assembling such an impressive array of presenters, showing a healthy skepticism for received wisdom and a corresponding respect for basic science. Sadly, science has taken a beating in the last ten years; in the dubious conclusions reached by NIST researchers about WTC 1 and 2 building collapses and the many other anomalies and contradictions in the official story. However, the basic laws of physics form a bedrock of truth that even the most sophisticated political propaganda cannot ignore or sidestep.
There are many telling critiques of the official story, regarding such diverse topics as what actually struck the Pentagon, how did flight 93 crash into a Pennsylvania field, the failures of NORAD response, and why has the clear evidence of insider trading on relevant stocks in advance of 9/11 never been investigated.
Three Lines of Evidence
Three lines of evidence I found particularly persuasive are the following:
- The collapse of the three (not two) towers
- The molecular evidence in the dust of controlled demolition
- The strange anomalies in the lives, identities, and actions of the hijackers
The Towers
I found convincing the evidence that in the case of the twin towers, the kinetic energy produced and the speed of their collapse was far in excess of what one would expect from a collapse caused solely by fires. Steel girders were thrown laterally hundreds of feet. It seems inescapable that fires alone could not have brought down the buildings. Added to this is the historical fact that prior to 9/11, no hi-rise steel framed building had ever collapsed due to fires. Also, I was struck by the well over 100 individual ground level witnesses who described hearing and seeing explosions in the minutes before the towers’ collapse.
Building 7, which was not struck by an aircraft, nevertheless collapsed in free-fall at 5:20 PM on Sept. 11. There had been minimal damage to only a few floors of the building and the few fires that were burning had largely been put out. No remotely plausible explanation for WTC 7’s collapse has been presented in the official narrative. However, the videos of the collapse looked to many professional engineers like a classic controlled demolition.
The Dust
The Hearings heard some startling new revelations. I feel that at least one area of evidence has been so thoroughly explored that we have drilled down close to bedrock: the brilliant work on the analysis of the twin towers post-collapse dust. Certain microscopic particles were found in the debris that are only produced at temperatures far in excess of jet fuel fires or any other combustible material in the towers. However they are common chemical byproducts of an incendiary and explosive material called thermite. Thermite can be used in the controlled demolition of a building. That, to my mind is the Rosetta Stone of the 9/11 mystery.
The Hijackers and the flights
There are many anomalies in the actions and identities of the putative hijackers. I will mention briefly five:
- Key elements of the official narrative that identified the “hijackers” were claimed to come from in-flight cell phone calls. Yet sending and receiving cell-phone calls in aircraft at cruising altitudes was a physical impossibility with the technology current in 2001.
- No four-digit hijacking code was sent from any of the four flights, yet in the time that it would take alleged hijackers to break into the cockpit the code could easily be sent.
- Only two airport security camera footages were released as evidence of the hijacker’s identity and this shows men in the terminal, not actually boarding any flight, and one of these shows clear evidence of doctoring.
- All accounts of the hijackers from flight training schools attest that they were very inexperienced and unskilled in their flight lessons with single-engine aircraft, yet the official account has them skillfully piloting giant 757s and 767s with pinpoint accuracy. I found this point particularly important.
- No names of the hijackers appear on any official passenger lists and a number of the alleged hijackers were apparently alive on Sept 12 and after. A bank was reported to have ordered the accounts frozen of one hijacker on Sept 19.
This leads to a conclusion that flies in the face of a central theme of the official narrative, that certain 19 Arab men hijacked four aircraft on 9/11. In the absence of the alleged evidence from cell-phone calls, airport camera footage, flight schools, and passenger lists presented above, is there any hard data that any of the 19 men actually boarded any of the four flights?
These lines of evidence and the many others outlined at the Hearings should provide ample grounds for thoughtful people to reconsider the received wisdom on the events of 9/11.
Follow-Up
Of the many lines of inquiry to be followed up, I will mention two. First, regarding the WTC Towers, in view of the catastrophic collapse of Towers 1, 2, and 7, how have building codes changed since 9/11 to correct the alleged design defects that brought the towers down according to the official account? If there has been no substantial change in building codes is that not a tacit admission that the circumstances of the three towers’ collapse were not as presented in the official reports?
And in similar vein: The official story identifies dozens of government officials whose “mistakes” and “errors in judgment” caused the hijackings to succeed and who misplayed the events following. What became of these key government personnel in FAA, NORAD, FBI, FEMA, EPA, SEC and other agencies? How many were disciplined, demoted, or fired for their egregious incompetence? Alternately how many were commended and promoted after 9/11?
Conclusion
The task before the International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001 and the 9/11 Truth Movement is to overcome the inertia of the official story constantly reinforced by the mass media and hardening into dogma. At the hearings we four panelists were impressed by the seriousness of the witnesses, their willingness to submit their evidence to scientific scrutiny and evaluation, and their challenging the authors of the official story to refute the evidence presented.
Therefore we support the call for a full and independent public inquiry into 9/11with subpoena powers. The events on that day led to two wars still ongoing, plus sharp restrictions on civil liberties, wiretapping, torture, rendition, and suspension of habeas corpus. The proponents of the official story will have ample opportunity to answer and refute evidence presented. Only this way can the 3000 victims of 9/11 be truly laid to rest and their memory honored.
Finally as a Torontonian, I am proud of the courage that Ryerson University showed in providing a site for these Hearings and pleased that the Hearings and what they stand for will be forever associated with my city.
