By David Brooks
David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth. Olive Branch Press (Northhampton, MA; 2018) 308 pages
If any book would serve as a tombstone for the government-sponsored account of 9/11, this is it. Here lies the Authorized Conspiracy Theory; rest in pieces. A good fifty of them are laid out in this text for painstaking forensic examination. Like no other book before it, 9/11 Unmasked puts a wooden stake through the monstrous lie of 9/11. It represents the triumph of investigative research and critical thinking over tendentious conspiracy theorizing. Anyone who looks at this body of evidence will never believe the official story again – never, never, never.
Some may wonder why Prof. David Ray Griffin, who has already written voluminously on this subject, should feel compelled to give it another go. But this work functions as a capstone for all that has gone before. 9/11 Unmasked serves as the definitive user’s guide for deconstructing the official version of 9/11. It presents a resounding rebuttal to years of mendacious media reportage and fraudulent government reports. The text is concise and yet precise—300 reader-friendly pages backed up by nearly 900 endnotes. Sectioned into bite-sized chapters, it manages to be both a formidable work of scholarship and one which will appeal to the general public.
As if their own credentials were not enough, Griffin and co-author Elizabeth Woodworth convened a review panel of 23 experts in their respective disciplines to sift through the detritus of that day and arrive at a “best evidence” assessment regarding key components of the 9/11 narrative. Among the 51 subjects covered are the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC 7, the attack on the Pentagon, claims about military and political leaders, phone calls from the 9/11 flights, and the question of insider trading. On any given point, they juxtapose the official version of events with empirical and testimonial evidence.
Here is a one sample chapter of their analysis:
The Official Account
Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (The 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 5)
The Best Evidence
The FBI did not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist attacks for which Osama bin Laden was wanted. When asked why, Rex Tomb, when he was the head of investigative publicity for the FBI, stated that the FBI had “no hard evidence” connecting bin Laden to 9/11. There were also other statements indicating that evidence of bin Laden’s guilt had not been provided.
Also, although Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to provide evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, neither of them did.
Finally, The 9/11 Commission Report discussed the responsibility of bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks as if it had evidence for it. But the “evidence” consisted of statements by captured followers of bin Laden, especially KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), yet the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission—Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton—reported that they had been unable to question KSM or the other detainees. They were not even allowed to observe the interrogations of these men. And so, said Kean and Hamilton: “We …had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information. How could we tell if someone such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was …telling us the truth?”
In this passage alone there are seven endnotes substantiating each and every claim made herein. Had Griffin wanted to write at greater length, he could have expounded on how “detainee information” was allegedly obtained through “enhanced interrogation”—torture. But Griffin is intent on documentation. No theorizing; just cold, hard facts obtained from primary sources.
Such meticulous methodology can get tedious quickly, however. God is in the details, but how easy it is to get bogged down in details. Who really cares what time Vice President Dick Cheney arrived at the White House Command bunker or how much insider trading went on? But some in-depth sleuthing pays off. What a shock to learn that the only evidence for hijackers wielding box-cutters is one undocumented phone call supposedly made by the wife of Bush’s Solicitor-General. That’s all! There’s no other evidence box-cutters were used—or even that planes were hijacked. Keep that in mind the next time you’re patted down by airport security agents.
The 9/11 Commission Report works well enough as the outline for an action movie, but in the hands of David Ray Griffin and fellow 9/11 researchers, it does not survive critical scrutiny. How chilling to realize that maybe it was never intended to do so.
Hovering over Griffin’s magisterial analysis are these haunting words by a senior advisor to President Bush (Karl Rove), speaking to a New York Times journalist back in 2004:
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Rove seemed to have anticipated the new academic discipline known as 9/11 Studies—which has indeed gone largely ignored, not only by official government agencies, but by every university political science department in the land. Intellectual analysis doesn’t get more judicious than this, but sure enough, “history’s actors” are still at it, forever plotting war.
But you have to wonder how long these so-called actors can keep up their act. While it’s true that 9/11 Truth has yet to set us free, neither is it going away. With every 9/11 anniversary that passes, more people smell something rotten in the Deep State of America.
Indeed the more judiciously one studies 9/11, the less it seems to fall under the rubrics of political science but that of sheer criminology. A monumental crime was committed – the pre-meditated mass murder of thousands of people! – but as Griffin relates, there was less forensic work done afterwards than what you see on a TV crime show
In this respect 9/11 Unmasked does not live up to its title. By the end of the book we are no more enlightened than at the beginning as to the identity of the perpetrators. The masks stay on. While Griffin produces abundant evidence that various branches of the US government were complicit in a cover-up, the question remains: Who actually committed the crime?
After going to such lengths to prove that explosives were put in World Trade Center, isn’t it time to ask who put them there? But in all the pages expended on the demolition of the WTC, there is not one mention of “Lucky” Larry Silverstein – the man who obtained the office complex only weeks before 9/11 and collected billions on the insurance. Nor is there mention of his good friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called his pal every weekend without fail. Surely these individuals rate as “persons of interest,” as the police like to say.
But the cause of judicious analysis can only go so far. Having debunked the hallowed narrative of September 11th 51 ways to Sunday, Griffin ends his opus with this less-than-resounding note: “The most fateful example of fake news in the twenty-first century thus far has been the official account of 9/11. It is long past time to set the record straight.”
Is that all we can hope for? “To set the record straight”?! How about catching these criminals before they burn the rest of the planet down?!
But let’s see him do it. Let’s see David Ray Griffin set the record straight. Is there anyone more qualified for the job than the universally acknowledged Dean of 9/11 Studies? Let him reconvene the 9/11 Review Panel Investigation and determine what really happened, who did it, and why. What greater task can they have?
If there’s such a thing as an honest law enforcement agency in America, maybe someone will act on the findings of such a task-force. It’s never too late until it is.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
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