It has been about 6 months now since I wrote my first post here about the 9/11 Truth movement. Following this initial article, I posted another one trying to encourage my readers to go and dig for the facts by themselves. Hoping to encourage independent research, I have now posted some 9/11 links on this blog, and an RSS feed from 911Truth.org. So far, the reactions to the new "truther" orientation of the blog have been rather restrained. My sense is that some of you knew about all this all along, and some are politely refraining for expressing their disapproval for what they probably see as a useless exercise in "conspiracy theories". Fair enough. Having myself spent eight years being a "9/11 agnostic" I certainly can relate to the incredulity of those who believe that while the US government has plenty of ugly deeds on its conscience, the idea that 9/11 was some kind of "inside job" is really "too much".
Today, I would like to spell out here what exactly brought me around and made me into a committed "truther". The second thing I would like to do, is to give some "shortcuts" to those who are "on the fence" or confused about this entire topic.
Let's begin by the one thing which really opened my eyes. For this, I need to first identify the reasons for my previous 9/11 agnosticism.Basically - I believed that the US government could not have pulled off such a major operation as the covert installation of hundreds of tons of explosives inside WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 without this somehow becoming public. Likewise, I did not believe that having used at least three planes (2 in NY and the one which crashed in Shanksville) the putative "conspirators" would have chosen a rather convoluted "no plane" to strike the Pentagon. Finally , I did believe very strongly that the USA "had it coming" for decades already and that an organization like al-Qaeda had clearly warned the USA that it would retaliate for the perceived occupation of Saudi Arabia by "infidels" and for the US support Israel. So I applied Occam's Razor and decided that there is no need to seek some really complex and convoluted solution when the simple and straightforward explanation made sense and seemed to be supported by all the facts.
This reasoning looked all fine and dandy to me until I came to a truly momentous realization: the "official theory" did not explain one major fact: there is absolutely no way that the planes could have brought down the three buildings in New York. Not only that, but the way the buildings fell simply cannot be explained by a gravitational collapse induced by fire.
Let me stress something crucial here: one need not have an explanation for HOW something happened if this something is observed and irrefutably established. Or, put in another way - the fact that somebody cannot explain a phenomenon is not a logical basis to dismiss or deny the phenomenon itself.
Let's take for example the following fact: the US government - through NIST - officially recognized the fact that the WTC7 building fell at a free-fall speed for 2,5 seconds (for a detailed discussion of this please check out the video which I posted here). Do those 2,5 seconds really matter? Hell yes!! What this means is that the US government admits that for 2,5 seconds WTC7 fell without any kind of resistance to slow it down and this, therefore, means that there was nothing under the collapsing section. So this begs an obvious question: since we now know that there was nothing under the collapsing section and since we also know that there was a steel frame building there seconds before the collapse - what happened in between those two events? There is only one possible answer to this question: the steel-framed section of the building which would have normally slowed down the collapsing section of the building was removed a) extremely rapidly b) symmetrically. There is only one technology which can do that: explosives.
The above is simply not a matter of opinion. This is a fact. Likewise, it is a fact that fires could not have removed a section of WTC7 the way it was observed. At this point, we are faced with two basic and mutually exclusive options:
a) to deny the reality of indisputably established facts
b) to accept the compelling logic of Conan Dolye's Sherlock Holmes who said: “When you have eliminated the impossible (in this case - fires causing the observed collapse - VS), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Furthermore, we also know that WTC1 and WTC2 could not have collapsed as a result of the combined effects of the impact of the planes and the subsequent fires (anyone doubting that should watch 9/11 Blueprint for Truth - a presentation by Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization which now counts over 1000 members).
Unlike the case of WTC7 for which we do have a de-facto government admission that only explosives could have cause the observed collapse, the case of WTC1 and WTC2 not yet elicited any kind of oblique admission by the US government. What Uncle Sam did was even more basic: its latest report officially analyzes the events leading up to the collapse, but does not look at anything which happened once the collapse was initiated. In other words - the government does not even have an explanation, theory or even hypothesis of what could have triggered the type of collapse which was actually observed by millions, if not billions, of people.
So let's now put it the simple and direct way: the ONLY explanation for the collapse of WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 is a controlled demolition by pre-planted explosives. This is not "one of the" theories - it is the ONLY theory (a theory is an explanation which makes it possible to explain that which is observed). I need to repeat this again: the US government has already admitted that WTC7 did collapse at free fall speed for 2,5 seconds and the US government has simply no explanation at all for the any of the building collapses which happened on 9/11.
Since all the WTC center building were highly secure (especially WTC7 which had all the following organizations as tenants: DoD, CIA, FBI, IRS, USSS and many others) is unthinkable that any entity not affiliated with the US government could have covertly introduced hundreds of tons of high-explosives in these buildings, and most definitely not "al-Qaeda". Again, we need to turn to the compelling logic of Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible (in this case - a non-US government entity bringing in tons of explosives into WTC1/WTC2/WTC7 without being caught - VS), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
That's it.
That is all it takes to establish beyond reasonable doubt that 9/11 was an "inside job".
There is no need to explain all the seemingly unexplainable events which happened on that day, nor is there any need to explain HOW what we know happened was actually organized and executed. When a crime is committed, the forensic experts can establish that, say a murder was committed with a knife before the police investigators establish who did it, why or how. Put it differently, the fact that the police cannot establish motive, means and opportunity or charge a suspect beyond reasonable doubt does not mean that no murder happened.
This is why the all the numerous members of the 9/11 Truth movement all agree on one key demand: a new, independent and free, investigation into the events of 9/11 (conversely, those who oppose such an investigation are accessories to a clear case of obstruction of justice!).
What about the Pentagon?!
Here I need to caution any newcomers to the 9/11 Truth movement: the fact is that the 9/11 Truth movement is deeply divided on this issue. Many "truthers" are absolutely convinced that no plane ever hit the Pentagon, while many others are equally sure that only a plane could have caused the damage which was observed. The debate on this topic is so heated that both sides sometimes resort to exactly the same tactics as the other: dismissing eyewitnesses are "notorious unreliable" and accusing each other of being government plants, disinformation agents.
Let me candidly share my own view on this with you: I have seen many pictures of the damage on the Pentagon and I cannot imagine that an aircraft would simply vanish the way this one seemed to have vaporized itself. Not only that, but I think that a plane hitting a building at full speed would cause much more structural damage then what is actually seen on the photos. However, and this is a big however, I am not an expert on air crashes. Not only that, but the idea that whoever would have used 3 planes in NY would suddenly decide not to use one at the Pentagon makes no sense to me whatsoever. Nor do the "alternative" theories such as a cruise missile strike or a "bombing flyover" of the Pentagon by a mysteriously disappearing aircraft. On this issue I personally still remain a total 'agnostic' and I am quite willing to be convinced either way.
I am aware of the fact that some 9/11 truthers are constantly warning the rest of us that there is a real risk that the US government is deliberately muddying up the waters around the Pentagon attack to commit as many truthers as possible to a "no-plane" theory only to better ridicule us all by eventually releasing an indisputable video showing a plane hitting the Pentagon (and we know that they have many such unreleased videos). I think that this warning should be taken very seriously by all.
But let's come back here to Occam's Razor. Here is how Wikipedia sums it up: "When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question". In practical terms for the 9/11 Truth movement this translates into a fundamental principle: we do not need to refer to whatever happened at the Pentagon to prove that 9/11 was in inside job.
The official narrative (it does not even deserve to be called a "theory") so full of holes that even a fully empowered independent investigation would have a very hard time making sense of it all. There are literally dozens of issues which should be investigated: the damage to the Pentagon, of course, but also the real fate of United 93 (was it shot down?), the impossible phone calls made from the aircraft, the lack of debris in Shanksville, the close connections of the supposed hijackers to the CIA and FBI, the role of "high-fiving" Israelis and the so-called "Israeli students" spy network, the financing of the alleged hijackers by the Pakistani ISI (whose head was in DC on 9/11), etc. These are all valid topics worthy of careful analysis, but they are not needed to establish that 9/11 was in inside job.
The big news of 2009 was the publication by a group of prestigious scientists in the Open Chemical Physics Journal of a of a peer-reviewed article entitled "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" which established that the dust from the WTC buildings which was collected in NY is full of not only of residue of explosives, but even from unexploded materials (see also Jim Hoffman's paper"Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust"). Not only had a "smoking gun" been found, a "loaded gun" had been found too. This was, of course, terrific news for the 9/11 Truth movement, a monumental achievement for the scientists involved in the research and publication of this seminal paper. But establishing that explosives have now been found is not needed to make the case that 9/11 was in inside job.
Why is this so important? Because any discussion about HOW 9/11 was done can turn into a refutation of WHAT was done that day. For example, the explosives expert Ron Craig has regularly attacked Richard Cage with the following fallacy: since he - Ron Craig - would not have been able to bring down the WTC buildings with regular explosives without a number of phenomena which were not observed on 9/11 and since he - Ron Craig - knows of no other explosives which could have brought these buildings down the way they were seen to collapse, it follow therefore that explosives could not have been used and the cause of the collapse itself and all the phenomena seen and heard that day could only have been a gravity induced collapse. Ron Craig is basically saying this: "since I cannot explain it - it did not happen".
So here is what is so crucial: the 9/11 Truth movement should never accept to be placed in the position of having to explain what kind of explosives were used, how they were placed, how they were detonated, how they were brought into the buildings, or how they were manufactured. Our position should be crystal clear: we know that the buildings were brought down with explosives, we think that we have some solid evidence about at least some of explosives which were used, we even have a very good idea of how they might have been brought in, but none of that is central to our thesis: that 9/11 was in inside job. What the 9/11 Truth movement needs to reply to the Ron Craigs out there is: we have proven that the buildings were brought down with explosives and since you claim to be an explosives expert we don't you find out how exactly this was done instead of denying the facts?!
The main point is this: the way those who are sill 9/11 "agnostics" must focus their internal debate about what happened on 9/11 is exactly the same as those who have joined the ranks of the "truthers" must focus the debate when talking to sceptics: First, only stick to those few but crucial facts which are sufficient to prove that the WTC buildings were brought down by explosives as demonstrating this is enough to prove the fundamental thesis of the entire 9/11 Truth movement that 9/11 was an 'inside job". Second - refer all other outstanding issues to a future independent 9/11 investigation. This way, we can transform each challenging question thrown at us into yet another reason for a new investigation.
This pretty much sums up the conclusions to which I have come. I am open to other opinions and to criticisms, and I am not in any way claiming that what I wrote above is THE truth about 9/11. It is simply an outline of where I am at this moment in time. My goal in posting all this is to "compare notes" with others in a similar situation and to encourage the doubting agnostics to take a second, hard, look at the facts. Lastly, my hope is that some newcomers (such as myself) might steer clear of some of the logical traps and pitfalls which are placed ahead of them by the proponents of the official narrative.
Today, I would like to spell out here what exactly brought me around and made me into a committed "truther". The second thing I would like to do, is to give some "shortcuts" to those who are "on the fence" or confused about this entire topic.
Let's begin by the one thing which really opened my eyes. For this, I need to first identify the reasons for my previous 9/11 agnosticism.Basically - I believed that the US government could not have pulled off such a major operation as the covert installation of hundreds of tons of explosives inside WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 without this somehow becoming public. Likewise, I did not believe that having used at least three planes (2 in NY and the one which crashed in Shanksville) the putative "conspirators" would have chosen a rather convoluted "no plane" to strike the Pentagon. Finally , I did believe very strongly that the USA "had it coming" for decades already and that an organization like al-Qaeda had clearly warned the USA that it would retaliate for the perceived occupation of Saudi Arabia by "infidels" and for the US support Israel. So I applied Occam's Razor and decided that there is no need to seek some really complex and convoluted solution when the simple and straightforward explanation made sense and seemed to be supported by all the facts.
This reasoning looked all fine and dandy to me until I came to a truly momentous realization: the "official theory" did not explain one major fact: there is absolutely no way that the planes could have brought down the three buildings in New York. Not only that, but the way the buildings fell simply cannot be explained by a gravitational collapse induced by fire.
Let me stress something crucial here: one need not have an explanation for HOW something happened if this something is observed and irrefutably established. Or, put in another way - the fact that somebody cannot explain a phenomenon is not a logical basis to dismiss or deny the phenomenon itself.
Let's take for example the following fact: the US government - through NIST - officially recognized the fact that the WTC7 building fell at a free-fall speed for 2,5 seconds (for a detailed discussion of this please check out the video which I posted here). Do those 2,5 seconds really matter? Hell yes!! What this means is that the US government admits that for 2,5 seconds WTC7 fell without any kind of resistance to slow it down and this, therefore, means that there was nothing under the collapsing section. So this begs an obvious question: since we now know that there was nothing under the collapsing section and since we also know that there was a steel frame building there seconds before the collapse - what happened in between those two events? There is only one possible answer to this question: the steel-framed section of the building which would have normally slowed down the collapsing section of the building was removed a) extremely rapidly b) symmetrically. There is only one technology which can do that: explosives.
The above is simply not a matter of opinion. This is a fact. Likewise, it is a fact that fires could not have removed a section of WTC7 the way it was observed. At this point, we are faced with two basic and mutually exclusive options:
a) to deny the reality of indisputably established facts
b) to accept the compelling logic of Conan Dolye's Sherlock Holmes who said: “When you have eliminated the impossible (in this case - fires causing the observed collapse - VS), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Furthermore, we also know that WTC1 and WTC2 could not have collapsed as a result of the combined effects of the impact of the planes and the subsequent fires (anyone doubting that should watch 9/11 Blueprint for Truth - a presentation by Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization which now counts over 1000 members).
Unlike the case of WTC7 for which we do have a de-facto government admission that only explosives could have cause the observed collapse, the case of WTC1 and WTC2 not yet elicited any kind of oblique admission by the US government. What Uncle Sam did was even more basic: its latest report officially analyzes the events leading up to the collapse, but does not look at anything which happened once the collapse was initiated. In other words - the government does not even have an explanation, theory or even hypothesis of what could have triggered the type of collapse which was actually observed by millions, if not billions, of people.
So let's now put it the simple and direct way: the ONLY explanation for the collapse of WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 is a controlled demolition by pre-planted explosives. This is not "one of the" theories - it is the ONLY theory (a theory is an explanation which makes it possible to explain that which is observed). I need to repeat this again: the US government has already admitted that WTC7 did collapse at free fall speed for 2,5 seconds and the US government has simply no explanation at all for the any of the building collapses which happened on 9/11.
Since all the WTC center building were highly secure (especially WTC7 which had all the following organizations as tenants: DoD, CIA, FBI, IRS, USSS and many others) is unthinkable that any entity not affiliated with the US government could have covertly introduced hundreds of tons of high-explosives in these buildings, and most definitely not "al-Qaeda". Again, we need to turn to the compelling logic of Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible (in this case - a non-US government entity bringing in tons of explosives into WTC1/WTC2/WTC7 without being caught - VS), whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
That's it.
That is all it takes to establish beyond reasonable doubt that 9/11 was an "inside job".
There is no need to explain all the seemingly unexplainable events which happened on that day, nor is there any need to explain HOW what we know happened was actually organized and executed. When a crime is committed, the forensic experts can establish that, say a murder was committed with a knife before the police investigators establish who did it, why or how. Put it differently, the fact that the police cannot establish motive, means and opportunity or charge a suspect beyond reasonable doubt does not mean that no murder happened.
This is why the all the numerous members of the 9/11 Truth movement all agree on one key demand: a new, independent and free, investigation into the events of 9/11 (conversely, those who oppose such an investigation are accessories to a clear case of obstruction of justice!).
What about the Pentagon?!
Here I need to caution any newcomers to the 9/11 Truth movement: the fact is that the 9/11 Truth movement is deeply divided on this issue. Many "truthers" are absolutely convinced that no plane ever hit the Pentagon, while many others are equally sure that only a plane could have caused the damage which was observed. The debate on this topic is so heated that both sides sometimes resort to exactly the same tactics as the other: dismissing eyewitnesses are "notorious unreliable" and accusing each other of being government plants, disinformation agents.
Let me candidly share my own view on this with you: I have seen many pictures of the damage on the Pentagon and I cannot imagine that an aircraft would simply vanish the way this one seemed to have vaporized itself. Not only that, but I think that a plane hitting a building at full speed would cause much more structural damage then what is actually seen on the photos. However, and this is a big however, I am not an expert on air crashes. Not only that, but the idea that whoever would have used 3 planes in NY would suddenly decide not to use one at the Pentagon makes no sense to me whatsoever. Nor do the "alternative" theories such as a cruise missile strike or a "bombing flyover" of the Pentagon by a mysteriously disappearing aircraft. On this issue I personally still remain a total 'agnostic' and I am quite willing to be convinced either way.
I am aware of the fact that some 9/11 truthers are constantly warning the rest of us that there is a real risk that the US government is deliberately muddying up the waters around the Pentagon attack to commit as many truthers as possible to a "no-plane" theory only to better ridicule us all by eventually releasing an indisputable video showing a plane hitting the Pentagon (and we know that they have many such unreleased videos). I think that this warning should be taken very seriously by all.
But let's come back here to Occam's Razor. Here is how Wikipedia sums it up: "When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question". In practical terms for the 9/11 Truth movement this translates into a fundamental principle: we do not need to refer to whatever happened at the Pentagon to prove that 9/11 was in inside job.
The official narrative (it does not even deserve to be called a "theory") so full of holes that even a fully empowered independent investigation would have a very hard time making sense of it all. There are literally dozens of issues which should be investigated: the damage to the Pentagon, of course, but also the real fate of United 93 (was it shot down?), the impossible phone calls made from the aircraft, the lack of debris in Shanksville, the close connections of the supposed hijackers to the CIA and FBI, the role of "high-fiving" Israelis and the so-called "Israeli students" spy network, the financing of the alleged hijackers by the Pakistani ISI (whose head was in DC on 9/11), etc. These are all valid topics worthy of careful analysis, but they are not needed to establish that 9/11 was in inside job.
The big news of 2009 was the publication by a group of prestigious scientists in the Open Chemical Physics Journal of a of a peer-reviewed article entitled "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe" which established that the dust from the WTC buildings which was collected in NY is full of not only of residue of explosives, but even from unexploded materials (see also Jim Hoffman's paper"Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust"). Not only had a "smoking gun" been found, a "loaded gun" had been found too. This was, of course, terrific news for the 9/11 Truth movement, a monumental achievement for the scientists involved in the research and publication of this seminal paper. But establishing that explosives have now been found is not needed to make the case that 9/11 was in inside job.
Why is this so important? Because any discussion about HOW 9/11 was done can turn into a refutation of WHAT was done that day. For example, the explosives expert Ron Craig has regularly attacked Richard Cage with the following fallacy: since he - Ron Craig - would not have been able to bring down the WTC buildings with regular explosives without a number of phenomena which were not observed on 9/11 and since he - Ron Craig - knows of no other explosives which could have brought these buildings down the way they were seen to collapse, it follow therefore that explosives could not have been used and the cause of the collapse itself and all the phenomena seen and heard that day could only have been a gravity induced collapse. Ron Craig is basically saying this: "since I cannot explain it - it did not happen".
So here is what is so crucial: the 9/11 Truth movement should never accept to be placed in the position of having to explain what kind of explosives were used, how they were placed, how they were detonated, how they were brought into the buildings, or how they were manufactured. Our position should be crystal clear: we know that the buildings were brought down with explosives, we think that we have some solid evidence about at least some of explosives which were used, we even have a very good idea of how they might have been brought in, but none of that is central to our thesis: that 9/11 was in inside job. What the 9/11 Truth movement needs to reply to the Ron Craigs out there is: we have proven that the buildings were brought down with explosives and since you claim to be an explosives expert we don't you find out how exactly this was done instead of denying the facts?!
The main point is this: the way those who are sill 9/11 "agnostics" must focus their internal debate about what happened on 9/11 is exactly the same as those who have joined the ranks of the "truthers" must focus the debate when talking to sceptics: First, only stick to those few but crucial facts which are sufficient to prove that the WTC buildings were brought down by explosives as demonstrating this is enough to prove the fundamental thesis of the entire 9/11 Truth movement that 9/11 was an 'inside job". Second - refer all other outstanding issues to a future independent 9/11 investigation. This way, we can transform each challenging question thrown at us into yet another reason for a new investigation.
This pretty much sums up the conclusions to which I have come. I am open to other opinions and to criticisms, and I am not in any way claiming that what I wrote above is THE truth about 9/11. It is simply an outline of where I am at this moment in time. My goal in posting all this is to "compare notes" with others in a similar situation and to encourage the doubting agnostics to take a second, hard, look at the facts. Lastly, my hope is that some newcomers (such as myself) might steer clear of some of the logical traps and pitfalls which are placed ahead of them by the proponents of the official narrative.
