David Ray Griffin — Prince Of Fools

Earlier this week, I spent much of the day reading his book The New Pearl Harbor revisited: 9/11, the cover-up, and the exposé. If you are not entirely familiar with Griffin, you can check out either his entry in that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, or one of his dedicated websites, of which there are at least two.

I think it is fair to say that Griffin can be called the Elder Statesman of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Although a number of misguided celebrities have been taken in by the Truthers and their ludicrous mantra “9/11 was an inside job”, a celebrity endorsement of an ideology is a bit like a celebrity endorsement of your favourite breakfast cereal. Let us be quite clear about the 9/11 Truth Movement, it is an ideology first and foremost.

Griffin’s field is philosophy/religion/theology, which although not relevant to most aspects of the 9/11 atrocities, should by no means exclude him from intelligent research and incisive comment on this manufactured debate. Unfortunately, neither is his research intelligent nor are his comments incisive. Without further ado, let us delve inside the aforementioned book.

On page x, he cites opinion polls such as one that reports that 36% of the public believe that Federal officials either participated in the attacks including the one on the Pentagon, or took no action to stop them.

The problem with opinion polls is that they sample opinions rather than facts. These opinions can be and often are, ill-informed. To take an extreme example, a 1982 Gallup poll revealed that in France, 17% of adults believed in the Devil, while in Greece, 67% did.

What are we to assume from this, that the Devil is real in Greece but not in France? Be serious.

That poll may have been taken 30 years ago, but the sad fact is the world is no better informed on certain matters now than it was then, and is in many ways, even less so.

On page xvi he tells us: “The use of 9/11 to promote the ‘war on terror’ and various other policies by the Bush administration...has continued. It is widely acknowledged that 9/11 has been constantly invoked to justify dubious, even illegal, policies. It is also widely acknowledged that the Bush administration has repeatedly lied to the American people and that these lies include the basis for the war in Iraq...”

Few people would take issue with this because we can see it happening, and many of us have been on the receiving end of it, or we know people who have. To take one mild example, the groping of passengers at airports – including women and young children – by TSA thugs, is something many Americans have experienced. It is though one thing to exploit a tragedy, and another entirely to mastermind it, as he claims.

On page xx, he gives a number of examples of false flags including “In 1933, after the Nazis took power, they started a fire in the Reichstag...blamed the Communist Party, then used the event as a pretext to imprison enemies, to annul civil liberties, and to consolidate power”.

This claim is taken at face value by many people nowadays, but someone who was in a position to know, thought differently. In Trail Sinister, the second volume of his autobiography, Sefton Delmer said he believed the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933 was the work of a single man, “the lunatic van der Lubbe”, and that both the Nazis and the Communists exploited this act of arson. Although a communist, he was not aligned with Moscow. Delmer’s opinion is certainly to be given a lot of weight. He was born in Berlin on May 24, 1904, the son of a Tasmanian academic, and one of his boasts includes dining with Hitler.

During the Second World War he was an anti-Nazi propagandist based in London; his work included forging official documents, so he knew a thing or two about black operations from the business end. He also knew the difference between cause and effect, unlike Griffin and the rest of the 9/11 Truth crowd.

Back to Griffin’s book: page 43, Building 7 “came down in under seven seconds and hence at virtually free-fall speed”. So?

“...no plane hit WTC-7, so NIST cannot offer even that explanation for this building’s rapid collapse”.

The collapse of this building was anything but rapid. True, the finale was swift and spectacular, but it was hit by debris, caught fire, the sprinkler system was damaged, and much more. Here is a short, simple video that explains what actually happened.

Griffin devotes much space to what he calls premature media reports of the collapse of Building 7, for example, on page 53: “News media provided further evidence suggestive of foreknowledge of WTC 7’s collapse by providing premature reports of this collapse”. Such reports started around 4.15pm; he even ropes the BBC into it.

What he seems to be forgetting is the context of these reports. From the time Mohamed Atta crashed Flight 11 into the North Tower, the attention of New Yorkers was focused on that building, and when the second plane hit the South Tower, it was clear that what most believed or hoped to have been a tragic accident, was anything but, as Bush aide Andy Card said: “America is under attack”.

Card’s first information about the day the world changed was that a small plane had hit one of the towers, a private aircraft. Clearly that information was wrong, but there was nothing sinister about this incorrect information. It is clear they didn’t know what was going on at that point, for all they knew there could have been more attacks – as indeed they were – but they didn’t know if, when or where they would come. There was even some suggestion that Airforce One would be targeted, with Bush on board.

Now, put the supposedly suspicious foreknowledge about the collapse of Building Seven into the same context. The people on the ground, especially the firefighters knew it was on fire and was burning out of control, but they had other priorities.

How does this grab you?

“Chief, that building looks like it’s gonna collapse”.

“How long have we got?”

“Hard to say, an hour, maybe two”.

“Okay, clear the area”.

***************************

“What did he say, Chief?”

“I can’t talk to you now; Building 7 is coming down. Move back, everyone”.

***************************

“Hello John, are you all right?"

“Yes, Susan, we’ve been told to evacuate the area; Building 7 is coming down”.

***************************

“Susan, I’ve got the BBC on line 4. What shall I tell them?”

“John has been ordered back because Building 7 is coming down. Hold on, I’ll see if I can get him again”.

***************************

“Did you get through to New York, Chris?”

“Yes, the third building has just come down”.

***************************

And so on. Has Griffin never heard the expression: “We’ve just received an unconfirmed report that...” Yet he runs for pages and pages on this non-mystery, roping in the Mayor’s Office, the BBC and the building’s owner, Larry Silverstein. Why did he have to be called Silverstein instead of Smith?

On page 57 he states baldly: “With regard to the Twin Towers and WTC 7: The conclusion that they were all destroyed by explosives is now beyond reasonable doubt”.

Let’s return to the Twin Towers. We have all seen the planes hit. Flight 11 crashed at over 450mph between the 93^rd and 99^th floors. The second plane hit the other tower between floors 77 and 85, and travelling considerably faster, around 590mph. Any heavy object hitting a building at that speed is going to cause enormous damage. The planes were not only heavy and travelling fast but were carrying large quantities of fuel, and they were big, over half the width of the buildings. Once the flames had weakened the floors they had struck, the floors above them collapsed. What happens when the top 18 floors of a building collapse onto the 92^nd floor? The top 19 collapse onto the 91st floor. The top 20 collapse onto the 90^th floor, and so on.

There is no need to postulate any sort of controlled demolition for the Twin Towers, indeed the suggestion is rather absurd. We have all seen what happened, and we can watch it in slow motion if desired. Both buildings collapsed from the top down, expelling air from the floors below as they did so, breaking windows and pulverising everything else. The mysterious collapse of these two buildings is no mystery at all.

It is understandable that some uninformed people believe Building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition, because it does look like that, superficially, but here is a real controlled demolition, albeit of a much smaller building. Notice anything different? How about the noise and the actual explosions? Here is another one. The point has been made before, but it must be made again, just because two things look the same, doesn’t mean they are.

In Chapter 3, he questions the authenticity of the phone calls made from Flight 93, and in Chapter 6 he questions if the planes were actually hijacked. Here is a short refutation of the faked phone calls nonsense, which also validates the claim that the planes were hijacked.

On pages 170-71, Griffin finds it absurd that the passport of one of the hijackers could have been found near the site of the World Trade Center.

How about this?