Robert Todd Carroll
SkepDic.com
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episode 11: conspiracy
theories
The Bilderberg group Mark Oliver Friday June 4, 2004
Paranoia paradise - By Chris Horrie BBC News Online What makes a good
conspiracy theory? What is it about some stories that, however unlikely,
convince people that they are true?
Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern
America by Robert Alan Goldberg
William
"Bill" Cooper shot and killed
The
oil behind Bush and Son's campaigns By Ranjit Devraj
Taliban
Abuses Ignored for Oil Money, Drug War
Anthrax
attacks ‘work of neo-Nazis’
|
 |
 Illuminati, The New World Order & Paranoid Conspiracy
Theorists (PCTs)
What is at stake is more than one small country
[Kuwait], it is a big idea - a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together
in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security,
freedom, and the rule of law. Such is a world worthy of our struggle, and worthy of our
children's future. --President George Bush in his state of the union
address, January 16, 1991
The Illuminati was a secret society in Bavaria in the late 18th century. They had a
political agenda that included republicanism and abolition of monarchies, which they
tried to institute by means of subterfuge, secrecy, and conspiracy, including
the infiltration of other organizations. They fancied themselves to be
"enlightened" but they had little success and were destroyed within fifteen
years of their origin (Pipes 1997).
Paranoid conspiracy theorists (PCTs) believe the Illuminati cabal still exists, either
in its original form or as a paradigm for later cabals. Many PCTs believe "that large
Jewish banking families have been orchestrating various political revolutions and
machinations throughout Europe and America since the late eighteenth century, with the
ultimate aim of bringing about a satanic New World Order."* What George Bush was talking
about in his state of the union address in 1991 was no less than the establishment of a
single world government with the anti-Christ (whom some say is
Bill Clinton
(or is he a decoy?), but could be
Pat Robertson
or George W. Bush) at
its head.
In the paranoid mind, the Illuminati succeeded
in their goals, and have now infiltrated every government and every aspect of society.
They are responsible for every evil and every unjust act that ever occurs anywhere; the
fact that absolutely no evidence of their existence can be found only serves to make them
stronger and more frightening. They are the demon in the closet, and will probably never
disappear from the paranoid fantasy world of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
--New England Skeptical Society
Their are several "sects" of PCTs. Among the more popular are the militant Christian
fundamentalist branch and the UFO/alien branch. They each think the others
are
evil or nuts but their paranoia has the same focus: the end is near.
the Illuminati and the anti-Christ
The Illuminati are hastening the coming of the anti-Christ and the end of the world.
For those of us who still accept the Bible as
God's revealed will to man, it's a matter of great concern to see the increasing
propaganda for, and emergence of, a New World Order.... both Old and New Testaments warned
us that the culmination of history would be marked by the reunion of the nations of the
old Roman Empire in Europe; the restoration of the state of Israel (and the increasing
hostility of all nations toward her); the implementation of a one-world governmental
system; the imposition of a world-wide cashless monetary system; the development of a
synchretistic [sic] world religion, based upon man, and presided over by a false prophet;
the rise to power of a benign world dictator, who (once firmly in control) would eliminate
individual freedoms, demonstrate iron-willed ferocity and cruelty, and make himself the
object of worship; and world-wide apostacy [sic], coupled with active persecution and
execution of believing Jews and Christians.
---Jay
Whitley
Mr. Whitley is prepared for Armageddon, however. He sells Emergency
Dehydrated Food Kits.
the major players
Here is a typical set of the PCT's notions, extolled in a review of an author who
claims he has exposed the Illuminati:
Who really controls world events from behind-the-scene? Years
of extensive research and investigation have gone into this massively documented work [Bloodlines
of the Illuminati]. In almost 600 pages, Fritz Springmeier discloses mind-boggling
facts and never before revealed truths about the top Illuminati dynasties. Discover the
amazing role these bloodlines have played--and are now wielding--in human history, with
family names such as Astor, DuPont, Kennedy, Onassis, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Russell,
Van Duyn, and Krupp. You'll also learn of the secretive, Chinese Li family, which operates
with impunity in the U.S.A. and around the world. Along the way you'll find out why
President John F. Kennedy and actress Grace Kelly were killed; who created the United
Nations; who controls the two major U.S. political parties; how the Rothschilds invented
and control modern-day Israel; who secretly founded false religions such as the Jehovah
Witnesses; and much, much more. A literal encyclopedia of rare, unbelievable information!*
The "information" is certainly unbelievable, but it is not rare enough.
Another PCT "sect" holds that it is the aliens who rule the Illuminati who rule
the world, etc.
David Icke
David Icke, another pundit of the Illuminati, believes humans have been getting messages from alien
"Illuminati-reptilians" for thousands of years. The reptiles explain such things as the Gregorian
calendar.
The whole senario [sic] was planned centuries ago because the
reptilians, operating from the lower fourth dimension, and indeed whatever force controls
them, have a very different version of "time" than we have, hence they can see
and plan down the three-dimensional "time"-line in a way that those in
three-dimensional form cannot.*
Icke fancies himself "The most controversial author and speaker in the
world."* For him, the origin
of the Illuminati is extraterrestrial. He knows this because he is sure we
have been
contacted regularly
with messages from beyond by the alien lizards. He explains it all in
several books, especially
The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World.*
Jim Keith
Another expositor on these hidden agendas and worldwide conspiracies is
Jim
Keith, who died on September 7, 1999, during surgery
to repair a leg he injured at the Burning Man
Festival. Keith, a former executive Scientologist and author of nine conspiracy books
(including Saucers of the Illuminati) could see things the rest of us don't. Was
this because he was better at seeing or because his imagination ran wild? He watches a
Coke ad and sees fellatio and anal penetration.* You
can imagine what he sees or hears when he gives his attention to world history.
Ken Adachi
Ken Adachi
has a fine conspiracy page. He leaves no event unaccounted for as part of the plot to take
over the world and hasten the Apocalypse. The Illuminati, however, is only one aspect of
the occult cabal. He has transmogrified the New World Order into a cabal itself.
According to Mr. Adachi
An extremely powerful civilian dominated cabal, the New World
Order, includes Majesty [sic] Twelve [MJ-12],
The Illuminati, Order of the Quest,
The Bilderberg Group, The Trilateral Commission, The Executive Committee of
The Council on Foreign Relations,
The PI-40 Committee,
The Jason Group
[sic], The Club of
Rome, The Group, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Open Friendly Secret
Society [the
Vatican], The Rosicrucians, The Brotherhood of the
Dragon (or Snake),
The Russell Trust,
The Black Families (of Europe), Skull & Bones, the Scroll
& Key, The Knights of Malta,
the Illuminati arm of The Freemasons, and many, many other
secretive groups.
What is most amusing about Mr. Adachi's page is that even though the end is near, he
still asks us to please support his sponsor, an organization that can help with debt
consolidation or a home loan. What is not so amusing is his identification of the Freemasons as a subversive cabal. This idea is popular among
PCTs, especially with those on the religious right like Pat Robertson, who
are also prone to be anti-Semitic.
Myron Fagan
Mr. Adachi may have a fine conspiracy WWW page but he seems to have
borrowed everything from
Mr.
Fagan, who undertook to explain all of world history as a plot of the Illuminati to
establish the New World Order. Waterloo, Diamond Jim Brady, the French Revolution, any war
you care to name, homosexuals in the State Department, JFK, the United Nations, the ACLU,
Jewish bankers, the Communist conspiracy to control Hollywood and make films that would
hasten the arrival of the New World Order, etc. ad nauseam. Fagan's audiotape, "The
Illuminati," is available
online.
Fagan, born ca. 1888, was a playwright, director, producer, editor and
public relations director for Charles Evans Hughes, Republican candidate for president in 1916.
In 1930, Fagan came to Hollywood and worked as a writer and director. In 1945, he says he
saw some secret documents which led him to write Red Rainbow and Thieves
Paradise. The former portrays Roosevelt, Stalin and others at Malta plotting to
deliver the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Berlin to Stalin. The latter portrays the same
group plotting to create the United Nations as a Communist front for one world government.
Until his death, Fagan relentlessly uncovered plots for almost every historical event of
any note. Fagan is the archetype for the PCT.
Milton William "Bill" Cooper
Cooper
was a leader of the Arizona militia movement until his death in a shootout
with a sheriff's deputy. Cooper opened fire on the deputy when he tried to
issue a warrant for assaulting his neighbor. Cooper wrote
The Secret Government: a Covenant with Death
- The Origin, Identity, and Purpose of MJ-12, a paper given in Las Vegas at a
MUFON meeting in 1989 focusing
essentially on his belief of a cover-up of an alien crash at Roswell.
He also wrote Secret
Societies/ New World Order. He claimed that he got his information "directly
from, or as a result of my own research into the TOP SECRET/MAJIC material WHICH I SAW AND
READ between the years 1970 and 1973 as a member of the Intelligence Briefing Team of the
Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet." (PCTs seem to like to use CAPS for
EMPHASIS.) Cooper's veracity about his career in the Navy and his access to secret
documents has been questioned publicly on alt.alien.visitor, as
have other aspects
of his personality.
Cooper ran
williamcooper.com, a site
which promoted his many rants, including an
autobiographical
page that might be of interest to certain mental health professionals.
Cooper's "investigations" uncovered the usual conspiracies,
although he also included some of the new ones such as the conspiracy to use AIDS to thin
out the population of blacks, Hispanics and homosexuals, a notion he put
forth in a book called Behold a Pale Horse. What Cooper lacked in hard
evidence he oversupplied in detail and imagination.
Robert Gaylon Ross, Sr.
Ross is owner of Ross
International Enterprises (RIE) and is the author of nine books in progress. RIE is
"a private company chartered to do anything that is legal, ethical and moral,
anywhere in the world." Ross started RIE when he couldn't find a publisher for his
manuscript,
Who's Who of the Elite, an expose of the elite. Says Ross, after
you visit his site
you will have been exposed to the REAL TRUTH
about the conspiracy behind the Bilderbergs; Council on Foreign Relations; Trilateral
Commission; Skull & Bones Society;
Bohemian Grove and Bohemian Club; the CIA's
involvement in trauma based mind control, drug smuggling and money laundering; where are
the Wealthiest in the World; who really owns the Federal Reserve System; and the more
accurate theories found in "Logical Physics"
[by Cecil Ross].
Robert Gaylon Ross's unique twist is to relate the
"alternative physics"
of Cecil Ross
to the world of conspiracies.
Why?
To enter the world of the PCTs is to enter Bedlam. It would be pointless here to examine, much less attempt to refute, the delusions of
people who think they have been turned into assassins
by mind-control techniques so that they can carry out the will of inbred dynasties,
that aliens are controlling the world, that none of the laws of science are actual, that
the imagination and the thought of what is possible are better guides than the
"physically manifested world," etc. A rational person might think many of the
PCTs are joking. There are Internet sites that seem to be parody sites but it is difficult
to tell, since there seems to be no belief, however inane or absurd, that the PCTs can't
fit into their bizarre worldview. A rational person who never heard of Pat Robertson might
well read his New World Order (Word Books, 1994) and think it must be a joke. Could
anyone actually believe his rambling paranoia regarding Jewish bankers, Freemasons,
Muslims, homosexuals, foreigners, etc.? Apparently so. Still, one wonders why PCTs exist
and their numbers seem to be growing.
Of course, governments and some of the very rich have conspired to rule
the world in one form or another. There are enough real conspiracies to satisfy even the
greatest Pollyanna that one's government and the extremely rich and powerful don't play by
the same rules, if they play by any rules at all, as decent folk. Those of us who have
watched the U.S. government support one fascist dictator after another because he was
"anti-communist" are uncomfortable to find that there are people who are so far
to the right of the right-wing that they too want to expose the cover-ups. It is of no use
to point out to the PCTs that our government led coups of democratically elected
governments, assassinated leaders of nations and provided military and financial aid to
thugs and murderers around the world, in a misguided belief that they were saving the
world from communism, as well as opening up new markets for capitalist expansion. Many of
the leaders and top agents in our government are and were evil and incompetent, but, as
inept as they tend to be, even they would recognize the limits of their ambitions.
But, it is pointless to argue here because the PCTs are expert pseudohistorians: contradictory evidence is used to support
rather than refute their notions. Does the U.S. Government go after the world's richest
man, Bill Gates? Hah! It's a charade, aimed at getting us off the scent. Wasn't Hitler the
one who thought he could rule the world and didn't the Allies stop him? Hitler was a dupe,
used to advance the sinister plot to rule the world by the Illuminati.
some speculation
One can only speculate as to why PCTs exist. It is easy to explain their
proliferation: modern mass communications has made it possible for anyone to become his or
her own press and propaganda machine. But why PCTs in the first place? The only other
experience I've had with such thinking was when I had to get involved with some mentally
ill people. I am not joking here. A relative had a "psychotic break" and severe
paranoia. We (a group of relatives) were all targets of assassination by some unknown evil
people. They could be partially identified by their license plate numbers. If the number
started with a "5" then they were evil. No amount of logic or reasoning as to
the preposterousness of the notion that anyone would want to kill a person of absolutely
no political significance was of any use. No amount of reasoning as to how license plate numbers are
assigned was of any use. Phone calls could only be made from "secure" lines,
which involved either going to the fire department or talking your way up through a series
of supervisors until you got a "good one." Through my ill relative I met others
who were also afflicted with delusions and incredibly faulty judgment. They did not lose
their ability to reason--in fact, my relative seemed even more intelligent in some ways
when manic--but their assumptions were taken from sources inaccessible to the ordinary
mind. They put vast faith in their intuitions and thought their ideas were brilliant
insights when they were little more than the fancies of diseased brains. When I compare
reading the literature of the PCTs to entering Bedlam, I mean to be taken literally.
For example, many PCTs consider the Great Seal of the United States and
the motto Novus Ordo Seclorum (new order of the ages) to be Masonic and to mean New World Order. These
"facts" are considered evidence in the argument to prove the vast conspiracy of
the Illuminati. It is useless to argue against these "facts" with PCTs. They
consider us dupes who would note that the Latin is usually translated as
New Order of the Ages and that
the symbol of the eye in the pyramid relates to a poem in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.*
Even granting that the Great Seal of the United States and the symbols on our dollar
bill are Masonic (which they are not) and that novus ordo seculorum means New World
Order (which it does not), nothing significant follows, certainly not that there is a vast
conspiracy to take over the world.
Providence and eschatology
I think it is likely that many PCTs in the West are initiated into their
peculiar way of thinking by their religious training, in particular by their study of the
Bible. They have been taught or they assume that everything happens for a purpose and that
God ultimately has a reason for every event occurring just as it does. As it becomes more
and more difficult to see this world as designed for anything, the theories get more and
more preposterous to keep the teleological delusion alive. The war on evolution and
homosexuality--encouraging the abandonment of science and stimulating murderous
assaults--so obviously disproportionate by any rational standard, is difficult to explain
without seeing the militant fundamentalists as beyond the last stages of desperation. The
intense campaigns to expose possible alien abductions, UFOs, and mind-control is likewise
preposterously disproportionate to any rational standard. It is becoming nearly impossible
to account for the events on this planet with the assumption of a Divine Creator who has a
plan and a rationale for everything. The systems of thought that must be created in order
to maintain Divine Providence get more insane by the minute. (Explain Hitler, Slobodan
Milosovich, or Ishii Shiro.
Or, for that matter, explain Waco, Gulf War Syndrome, or any of a number of actual
conspiracies engaged in by businessmen such as Bill Gates or political leaders such as
Oliver North and his "neat" idea of a government within the government
answerable to nobody, or Richard Nixon and the Watergate conspirators, or our formerly
secret biological warfare programs.) There is, in fact, a New World Order emerging: the
world of Alternative History, Alternative Physics, Alternative Medicine and, ultimately,
Alternative Reality.
It is a very natural trait to try to make sense out of the world. The PCTs
are trying desperately to make sense out of a world they can no longer relate to. The
world is too complicated, too mean, too cold, too unsatisfying for them. In the real
world, they are considered nothing and despair of ever being anything but on the outside
looking in. They see science as telling them they are an accident and their lives are
without meaning. In their alternative world, they rule and are hopeful. Everything is in
its place or will be put in its place. There is order and meaning. Life is significant.
the end is near
The actual mechanism by which PCTs arrive at their weird notions is not
that difficult to ascertain. The mentally ill people I came to know couched their paranoid
fears in terms of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. They had no communal
reinforcement of their delusions, however. No talk show host or publisher invited them
to share their delusions with the world. They are under treatment, have been hospitalized,
arrested, etc. They know that those around them will not accept their delusions. This is
not true of religious or UFO groups. They reinforce each other and strengthen each other's
resolve. They encourage each other to accept possibility as equal to probability, material
experience as inferior to dreams, hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences, etc. They
have no watchdog equivalent to I. F. Stone,
and the mass media is too busy chasing tabloid rumors and celebrities to serve as a
watchdog of anything. And since the PCTs function almost completely outside of the normal
arenas where they would be challenged and forced to produce evidence in place of
speculation, they flourish relatively unscathed and await their next appearance on the
Art Bell or George Noory or Pat
Robertson show, seemingly oblivious to the absurdity of such behavior during the final
days of planet earth.
a concluding
remark
The Cheney/Bush administration has
acted remarkably like an administration whose goal is world dominance. It
poses as pious while invading countries to make war on them. It allows
torture* and spying* on its own citizens in the name of patriotism and
defense of liberty. It practices many human rights abuses that it condemns in its enemies. The
appointment of Paul
Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank seems too good to be true if one
is looking for support of this
Stop throwing the Constitution
in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper! --George W. Bush???,
November 2005*
hypothesis. It seems impossible that such
bright guys went to war because of bad intelligence. To some it must seem
as if the Cheney/Bush regime is trying to encourage terrorism rather than
stop it. The more fear they can arouse the longer they can continue their
aggression in the name of defense. Even so, there is little
evidence that they are part of a global conspiracy. Yet, it's not
surprising to see conspiracy websites like that of
Alex Jones, who thinks the U.S. has
become a police state. (If we were truly a police state Mr. Jones wouldn't
have his website or his films.) It also will not be surprising
to see a great increase in the number of people who believe in the Cheney/Bush
illuminati cabal.
See also alien abduction, Area 51, creationism, Freemason, mind control, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Roswell,
and UFO.
further reading
reader comments
Abanes, Richard. End-Time Visions: The Road to Armageddon (Four Walls Eight
Windows, 1998).
Boston, Rob. The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of
the Christian Coalition (Prometheus, 1996).
Camp, Gregory S. Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia (Baker
Book House, 1997).
Coughlin, Paul T. Secrets, Plots & Hidden Agendas: What You Don't Know About
Conspiracy Theories (Intervarsity Press, 1999).
Pipes, Daniel. Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From
(The Free Press, 1997).
Roberts
J. Mythology of the Secret Societies (MacMillan Publishing Company,
1972).
Ronson, Jon. 2002. Them: Adventures with Extremists. Simon &
Schuster.
Vankin, Jonathan and John Whalen. The Seventy Greatest Conspiracies of All Time:
History's Biggest Mysteries, Coverups, and Cabals (Citadel, 1998).
9/11:
A Date
That Will Live in Infamy
review by Richard Morrock
David Ray Griffin’s fanciful tale of Bush administration complicity in
the 9/11 terrorist attack is a perfect example of the kind of conspiratorial
thinking discussed by George Case in Skeptic Vol. 11 No. 4. There isn’t much
to be learned about the fateful events from Griffin’s silly book, but he
gives us some useful insight into the origins of paranoia.
Most writers on a subject do what is called research on the material,
which means reading books, conducting interviews, and tracking down
documents. This consumes far too much time and effort for conspiracy buffs
like Griffin. His approach consists of asking disturbing questions, ignoring
the actual evidence, speculating about the possible answers, assuming the
worst-case scenario, and then drawing up his indictment of the
administration based on his assumptions, even where they are in flagrant
contradiction to widely-known facts.
Starting with the dubious “who benefits argument?”, Griffin concludes
that since President George W. Bush profited in terms of political capital
from the 9/11 attacks, he had to be behind them. Given that premise, he
argues that the U.S. government masterminded the whole catastrophe from
beginning to end, with the al-Qaeda hijackers being either innocent
bystanders or U.S. secret agents. The planes that hit the World Trade Center
— Flights 11 and 175 — were actually piloted by remote control, with their
command center at No. 7 WTC, the 45-story office building across a narrow
side street from the North Tower. In addition, the impact of the planes did
not cause the buildings to collapse; that was the work of controlled
explosions set off inside the Towers. As for the Pentagon, it was a guided
missile or, no, maybe a military plane that hit the building, with Flight 77
disappearing inside the smoke and flames. And Flight 93, which crashed in
Shanksville, PA, was actually shot down by the U.S. military because the
passengers were on the brink of taking it over. The Bush administration
didn’t want the hijackers taken alive, Griffin insists, because they
presumably could have proven their innocence. How strange that 20th hijacker
Zacarias Moussaoui should have been kept alive after the 9/11 events, not to
mention the mastermind of the affair, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, captured in
Pakistan and now in U.S. custody.
One of the points Griffin raises is why the South Tower collapsed half an
hour before the North Tower, although it was struck 15 minutes later. From
this alleged discrepancy in the official story, Griffin concludes that the
government had planted explosives in the WTC the previous weekend, using a
power blackout as cover, and had dynamited the buildings. He never considers
the other explanation: the South Tower collapsed faster because the plane
impacted on a lower floor, and more floors were therefore set on fire. Any
glance at the photograph of the second impact will show this.
He fails to explain why the government would have waited nearly an hour
to explode its bombs in the South Tower, which would have allowed many
people to escape; the North Tower didn’t collapse for one and 3/4 hours, and
nearly all of the WTC workers who died were in the impacted floors or above.
Did Bush’s remote control have a low battery?
Griffin actually does claim that No. 7 WTC, which collapsed at 5:20 pm,
was blown up by explosives, and this is taken as proof that Washington was
behind it. But what would the motive be? Blowing up an already-evacuated
office building after thousands had died in the Twin Towers would seem like
a waste of dynamite, not to mention office space. Did Bush think that public
opinion had not been sufficiently inflamed by the 3,000 deaths? Do most
Americans even know that a third office building, far smaller than the
Towers, was also lost on that day? Griffin never explores that possibility
that No. 7 was demolished because it had been contaminated by the white dust
from the nearby North Tower. Explosives were used because, at 45 stories,
No. 7 was too tall for a wrecking crane.
Jet fuel is kerosene, argues Griffin. Kerosene could not have caused a
fire hot enough to melt steel, which happened at the Twin Towers. Perhaps
Griffin has never attended a barbecue, where kerosene is used to ignite
charcoal briquettes, and the charcoal fire then cooks the food. Something
similar happened at the Twin Towers, where the jet fuel ignited carpets,
furniture, books and papers, which then produced enough heat to bring down
the burning floors; their impact on the floors below produced the force that
led to the Towers’ collapse.
There is the question of what Bush knew on the morning of 9/11 and when
he knew it. Some have claimed that Bush was lying when he said he saw the
first impact on the Twin Towers, since there had been no live coverage of
that attack; the second impact, about 15 minutes later, was covered by
cameramen photographing the fire from the first. It would seem likely that
when Bush watched the second crash on TV, as he waited to enter the
2nd-grade classroom in Florida where he was planning to read My Pet Goat, he
mistakenly thought he was watching the first. Not until about 20 minutes
later was he informed that there were two crashes, indicating a terrorist
attack rather than an accident, and at that point he started to look
worried. About six or seven minutes later, he left the school.
Well, why wasn’t he, or his staff, concerned about his being targeted by
the terrorists? Doesn’t that prove, as Griffin indicates, that Bush was
aware he was in no danger, and therefore involved in the attack? Not
necessarily, given that both attacks were in New York, a thousand miles from
Florida, and the attack on the Pentagon hadn’t happened yet. Furthermore, it
is unlikely that the hijackers could have singled out the Sarasota
elementary school; all of their targets were highly visible landmarks which
could be identified from many miles away, whereas urban areas have numerous
indistinguishable schools.
Why wasn’t the Air Force ordered to shoot down Flight 77 as it streaked
through the sky on its way to hit the Pentagon? The official 9/11 Commission
story is that planes were sent north to intercept Flight 11, with the White
House and Pentagon unaware that it had already crashed in New York, and that
the threat was coming from another plane, heading in from the west. Griffin
believes that Vice President Dick Cheney, in charge of the situation in
Washington while Bush was flying to Nebraska in Air Force One, deliberately
avoided intercepting Flight 77 so that the Pentagon would be struck. One
wonders what Donald Rumsfeld, still in his office at the Pentagon, might
have had to say about that! Griffin asks why the Pentagon wasn’t evacuated,
but never considers the fact that the government had no idea which target in
the Washington area had been selected by the terrorists. Nor does he concern
himself with the political fallout if an enemy attack on United States soil
had been followed by our military leadership fleeing in panic from their
still-intact offices.
Then there is the matter of the disappearing wreckage at the Pentagon, of
which conspiracy buffs have made much. Photographs taken in the immediate
aftermath of the impact show no sign of airplane debris. That must mean that
it was a missile that hit the Pentagon, implicating our diabolical
government once again. Official accounts indicate that Flight 77 smashed
through several of the concentric rings that make up the Pentagon, so that
the wreckage all came to rest well inside the building.
Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania as the passengers
attempted to wrest it back from the hijackers, may actually represent the
one instance where Griffin does cast some light on the matter. The original
official story had it that the passengers made their way into the cockpit,
but that the plane crashed during the brief struggle. Later, it was
announced that the passengers never made it through the door, and the
government speculated that the pilot, Ziad Jarrah, downed the plane as the
desperate fight broke out in the passenger compartment. Of course, given the
fact that Jarrah planned to sacrifice his life for this mission, it doesn’t
seem likely that he would have aborted it while there was still some chance
of success. Griffin indicates that open cell phone lines recorded two
explosions during the fight, followed by the sound of rushing wind; he
reports an eyewitness saying that the plane disintegrated in the air, and
mentions that one engine was found a mile and a half from the rest of the
debris.
This is proof to Griffin that the Air Force downed Flight 93 with a
missile, making the government responsible for the deaths of the heroic
passengers who nearly foiled the fourth hijacking. He backs up this
improbable claim by mentioning that someone saw a white military plane in
the sky near the hijacked flight, overlooking the detail that military
planes on such a mission would travel in formations of two or more, and that
they are rarely white.
Griffin also mentions that the Flight 93 hijackers declared that they had
a bomb when they took over the plane, but that the passengers regarded this
as a bluff. He never considers the possibility that the hijackers were not
bluffing, and that they set off the bomb (more likely two) when they were
rushed by the passengers. This would account for the explosions, the sound
of the wind on the cell phones, the crash of the plane, the engine landing
more than a mile from the fuselage, and the peculiar path of the flight in
the last few minutes before it crashed. In the map in the 9/11 report,
Flight 93 makes a U-turn in northern Ohio after being hijacked, and then
heads southeast, in a straight line, aiming directly for Washington. While
over western Pennsylvania, it veers to the left and then makes a clockwise
semi-circle, as if Jarrah has suddenly found it impossible to steer. Was
this the result of a missile, a fight in the passenger compartment, or the
desperate hijackers setting off their bombs?
The 9/11 attacks made Americans feel helpless, even more so than our
defeat in Vietnam. Theories of administration complicity in 9/11, based on
total denial of even the most self-evident facts, serve as a defense against
these admittedly uncomfortable feelings, and allow us to feel omnipotent
once again. Our government is all-powerful and all-knowing; a bunch of
Middle Eastern fanatics couldn’t possibly take us by surprise, could they?
Better a government that’s totally evil than one which leaves us helpless in
the face of foreign terrorists.
------
First published in eSkeptic, a free, public newsletter
published (almost) weekly by the Skeptics
Society. Contents are Copyright © 2006 Michael Shermer, the Skeptics
Society, and the authors and artists. Permission is granted to print,
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Skeptics Society at skepticssociety@skeptic.com.
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