Perceptions and Reality About Crimes and Their Perpetrators – 9-11 and Other Mass-Murders

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By Author Posted in Car Insurance

The utter hatred and contempt held by the Taliban, and an extremely large segment of the Afghan people for the U.S. military, its invasion of their rugged mountainous country (very soon over 50,000 soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen will be there), and the American people who supported it, is certainly no less than that which was shown by them for the seven-year Soviet military presence during the 1980s. The Taliban, comprising a large element of the mujahideen, or Islamic holy warriors, were the endurant rag-tag fighters who, with very little U.S. aid, caused the vast Soviet military machine to ultimately realize that continued occupation of Afghanistan was a no-win objective.

The fact no country has ever successfully occupied and controlled Afghanistan is a hardly mentioned historical tribute to the ferocity of the Afghan people. Further facts that routinely go unstated are that the Islamic mixture of people living in, and travasing, the Afghani-Pakistani border area, moving back-and-forth freely inside both nations, is religiously homogeneous, and that strict Muslim law is accepted and practiced by these mostly Shiite Muslims.

While formerly residing in the Seattle area, I, one day, listened to a female NPR reporter on a Seattle radio station summarize a meeting that she had attended in Islamabad in 2002 just after the U.S. Afghan invasion had commenced, comprised of noted Pakistani lawyers, doctors, scientists, and clerics representing the best minds in Pakistan. She had asked them directly if they believed that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for what happened in New York and at the Pentagon on 9/11. The consensus among the group of Pakistani scholars was that bin Laden couldn’t have been responsible. This revealing news broadcast (I haven’t heard it mentioned by NPR since then), along with what I had previously seen televised on September 11, 2001, broadcast live from the World Trade Center, that is, the collapse of the WTC Towers and WTC 7, which had all the earmarks of controlled demolitions, led me to delve into a personal quest to determine if it was actually Islamic terrorism that brought down those buildings, or if the U.S Government had, somehow, been involved. Sound logic led me to understand that if the U.S. Government was responsible for what happened on 9/11, Islamic terrorism was not the culprit, and the invasions of Afghanistan, and especially of Iraq, had been totally unnecessary.

After reading and rereading the “9/11 Commission Report” and, later, the collected works of Dr. David Ray Griffin, whose first book, “The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11,” appeared in 2004, I realized that the “9/11 Commission Report” was a much much less than definitive truthful treatment of what had actually occurred on that horrible day. To say it more bluntly, the 9/11 Commission was an expensively perpetrated farce, and its Report a not-so-well prepared bundle of lies.

In all instances of hideous crimes that tragically affect many people, the startled public expects assessment and assignment of blame for them by law enforcement within a reasonable timeframe, especially when thousands of human beings are slain. Like the response of the American public to Pearl Harbor, in 1941, many of the American people demanded to know how, and why, a surprise attack by the Japanese could have happened. Yet, unless you are an eye witness to a tragic crime causing thousands of deaths, the passing of time after its commission causes the average person, who was not there to witness the crime, to forget the intensity of her initial reaction to the crime as reported by the media. In fact, the way the media reports what it considers the facts is the ultimate basis for public perception. For some obscure reason, the average person of the combined American public, who gets her news from CNN or other television network news, has a tendency to recall and consider a horrible crime involving the deaths of many people much less poignantly three-or-more years after the crime was committed than at the time of its commission, especially if the media exculpates the “real” culprits and places blame on unapprehended scapegoats. This is especially true if that average person can be persuaded that the initial assignment of blame is true, even if it is not. Unfortunately, the many slain victims of the crime are, for reasons of preception from media influence, less likely to create in the overall public eye the horror of mass murder and an intense furor for finding the perpetrator, as that of the tragic death of one lone person. Historically, this continues to be correct. Perhaps this is why most Americans did not respond indignantly to the persecution and death of millions of European Jews from Nazism in the 1930s, during which time Adolf Hitler appeard as “Time’s” popular man of the year. Millions, even thousands, of victims are less personal to the individual person than is one well publicized victim.

In a situation, such as was New York City on 9/11, where over 3,000 people were, either, killed or seriously injured, and the murder crime scene was tainted, and the evidence destroyed by the federal government, there is no way a serious investigation of the crime scene can be pursued with any hope of a positive outcome, that is, unless serious investigators realize that the crime scene has been tainted. The millions of people who saw the jet airliners crash into the WTC buildings on television, and heard the media proclaim that the U.S. Government had defintely determined that the fires created by the crashes were the cause of the collapsing towers, believed the news reports that Islamic terrorism was at the root of the 9/11 attacks. It was, in the beginning, much easier to believe and much more plausible, than the possibility that the U.S. Government had covertly engineered and orchastrated the attacks in order to create a state of fear among U.S. citizens about Islamic fundamentalism, so that justifications could be provided for invading Afghanistan, and later Iraq. Now, however, even though the 9/11 Truth Movement is ongoing and Dr. Griffin’s books have been purchased, and hopefully read, by close to a 1.5 million Americans, there is still no purposeful media coverage of the 98% probability that the U.S. Government, comprising the George W. Bush administration, Former President George H. Bush, members of Bush family, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and certain powerful U.S. senators, representatives, and high-level U.S. State Department officials were duplicitious and directly involved in what happened on 9/11.

When I wrote an essay column in 2005 for the Seattle Times Co. publication “Times of Snohomish County,” about the first GI death in Iraq from Washington State, I mentioned that history would hopefully one day show that George W. Bush was culpable of mass murderer, on 9/11 and for the U.S. military and civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, even though historian John Toland has single-handedly shown that Franklin D. Roosevelt, and U.S. Army and Naval Intelligence, knew that the Japanese Fleet was steaming toward Pearl Harbor and had more than enough time to warn Pearl of the impending attack, I haven’t read in any high school history textbook, since 1950, that Roosevelt was a war criminal and responsible for the deaths of thousands of American Gis. You see, the iconic image of Franklin Roosevelt, the savior of The Great Depression, the war advesary and defeator of Adolf Hitler, has become more important to popular history than the fact that Roosevelt lied to the American people after secretly promising Winston Churchill, in 1939, that he would bring the United States into the war against Germany, all the while publicly assuring the American people that the U.S. would remain neutral. Furthermore, history is what the powerful pundit historians write it to be, even if it is less than truthful. Case in point, the lies told by President Ronald Reagon, in November 1986, at a press conference about the Iran-Contra Scandal, in which weapons had been sold by the United States to Iran, a presumed enemy, in a quid pro quo agreement for the Iranians to relese hostages held by extremist Muslims in Lebanon, with the proceeds of the sales going to Central American contras to buy arms. Reagon was asked directly about the scandal in 1986 and told a number of lies to the media: 1) that the weapons sold to Iran had only consisted of a few “token” anti-tank missiles. The fact was that 2,000 missiles had been sold. 2) Reagon also stated that the U.S. didn’t condone shipments by third parties, which was a lie. 3) Reagon went on to state that the weapons had not been traded for hostages, and that 4) the purpose of the operation was to promote a dialogue with Iranian moderates. These were well contemplated lies, and as journalist Bill Moyers later revealed in his PBS documentary about Iran-Contra, “The Secret Government,” the real purposes of the illegal covert operation was to obtain the freedom of the hostages, get publicity and recognition for that, and to assist the contras. Moreover, in October 1986, a transport plane that had flown-in arms to the contras was shot down by Nicaraguan anti-aircraft fire and the pilot captured. Immediately after the incident, the lies from Elliot Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State, and George Shultz, Secretary of State, had compounded into a tangled web of deception. Shultz had lied saying that the downed aircraft had no connection with the U.S. Government, when shortly thereafter salient evidence was adduced to show that the pilot of the plane was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. The media made a point of depicting Reagon as an old man with a bad memory, and successfully shaped majority public perception of Reagon as not having known about what Oliver North and other Iran-contra henchmen so contemptuously did to violate the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Actually, the actor/President should have received an Academy Award for the best dramatic performance of his career. As Dr. Howard Zinn so aptly stated in “A People’s History of the United States,” “The whole Iran-contra affair became a perfect example of the double line of defense of the American Establishment. The first defense is to deny the truth. If exposed, the second defense is to investigate, but not too much; the press will publicize, but will not get to the heart of the matter.”

Hence, when a standing presidential administration (the Executive Branch) is responsible for engineering and orchastrating horrible crimes, which may hardly be termed sensational scandals, you can count on every autonomous U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agency, including the Pentagon and its countless resources, being involved. The most heinous aspect of these crimes is that there has to be “some” complicity with the Legislative Branch (Congress) for the crime, and conspiracy behind it, to be almost unprovable, for no subsequent investigation to be authorized. The basic reason why the 9/11 Truth Movement, comprised of many 9/11 victims’ families, scientists, lawyers, and police officers, has not been successful since it began pushing for a subsequent and independent 9/11 investigation is that there has been very little Congressional support for it. Why is that? I think that a few powerful senators and respresentatives, who have created dynasties over the decades in the American equivalents of the British House of Lords and House of Commons, would have a lot to lose, including their precious titles and, perhaps, their freedom, if a thorough forensic crime investigation would ensue apolitically under the exclusive direction of seasoned state and local homicide detectives. I recall when the Soviet Union realized how horrible a leader Stalin was, and how many Russian people he had exterminated during his period of power. Down toppled his statutes and a correct revision of school textbooks was ordered during a period of Russian history called de-Stalinization. Perhaps, if history was correctly written and publicized in the American republic, the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagon would be dramatically altered by many indignant Americans. Perhaps, if the 9/11 Truth Movement is successful in establishing the real truth about 9/11, George W. Bush, and his henchmen, will be tried and convicted of mass murder, and treated in much the same fashion as the Italian masses treated the awful dictator and mass-murderer Benito Mussolini. The Obama administration, the successor of awful State secrets from the Bush administration as it discreetly passed them along with, probably, a warning to the new occupants of the White House, will probably do nothing to encourage a proper 9/11 criminal investigation of 9/11. Men and women of good will can only hope that truth and justice will ultimately prevail.

Copyright © 2010 Learning Articles

Academic research into state crimes against democracy From American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6 February 2010 In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11 Protecting democracy requires that the general public be educated on how people can be manipulated by government and media into forfeiting their civil liberties and duties. This article reviews research on cognitive constructs that can prevent people from processing information that challenges preexisting assumptions about government, dissent, and public discourse in democratic societies. Terror management theory and system justification theory are used to explain how preexisting beliefs can interfere with people’s examination of evidence for state crimes against democracy (SCADs), specifically in relation to the events of September 11, 2001, and the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Reform strategies are proposed to motivate citizens toward increased social responsibility in a post-9/11 culture of propagandized fear, imperialism, and war. Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government This article explores the conceptual, methodological, and practical implications of research on state crimes against democracy ... delineates a general category of criminality and calls for crimes that fit this category to be examined comparatively ... forms of political corruption that frequently involve political, military, and/or economic elites at the very highest levels of the social and political order. Negative Information Action: Danger for Democracy This article explores evidence of, and provides insight into, secrecy-related information actions that are sometimes used to circumvent established government policy and law. These information actions may also be used to cover up such circumventions after the fact. To better understand secrecy as a negative information action and its impact on democracy, secrecy-related information actions are described according to methods, information technologies, and knowledge support. Negative information actions are willful and deliberate acts designed to keep government information from those in government and the public entitled to it. Negative information actions subvert the rule of law and the constitutional checks and balances. Negative information actions used by government officials to violate policies and laws during the IranContra Affair are identified, analyzed, and categorized by type. The relative impact of negative information actions on enlightened citizen understanding is demonstrated using a Negative Information Action Model by assigning a location according to type on a continuum of enlightened citizen understanding. Findings are compared with democratic theory and conspiracy doctrine. From Administration & Society, Vol. 41, No. 5 November 2009 Preventing State Crimes Against Democracy This article analyzes U.S. vulnerabilities to state crimes against democracy ... actions or inactions by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty ... crimes involving top officials in high office are difficult to detect and successfully prosecute because they are usually complex and compartmentalized; investigations are often compromised by conflicts of interests; and powerful norms discourage speculation about corruption in high office.

State Crimes Against Democracy by Prof. Peter Phillips and Prof. Mickey Huff New research in the journal American Behavioral Scientist (Sage publications, February 2010) addresses the concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCAD). Professor Lance deHaven-Smith from Florida State University writes that SCADs involve highlevel government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism (fabrication of evidence of a communist infiltration), Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (President Johnson and Robert McNamara falsely claimed North Vietnam attacked a US ship), burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on WMDs to justify the Iraq War.1 Other suspected SCADs include the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooting of George Wallace, the October Surprise near the end of the Carter presidency, military grade anthrax mailed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11, 2001. The proven SCADs have a long trail of congressional hearings, public records, and academic research establishing the truth of the activities. The suspected SCADs listed above have substantial evidence of covert actions with countervailing deniability that tend to leave the facts in dispute.2 The term “conspiracy theory” is often used to denigrate and discredit inquiry into the veracity of suspected SCADs. Labeling SCAD research as “conspiracy theory” is an effective method of preventing ongoing investigations from being reported in the corporate media and keep them outside of broader public scrutiny. Psychologist Laurie Manwell, University of Guelph, addresses the psychological advantage that SCAD actors hold in the public sphere. Manwell, writing in American Behavioral Scientist (Sage 2010) states, “research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs . . . pre-existing beliefs can interfere with SCADs inquiry, especially in regards to September 11, 2001.”3 Professor Steven Hoffman, visiting scholar at the University of Buffalo, recently acknowledged this phenomenon in a study “There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification.” Hoffman concluded, “Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information.”4 Sometimes even new academic research goes largely unreported when the work contradicts prevailing understandings of recent historical events. A specific case of unreported academic research is the peer reviewed journal article from Open Chemical Physics Journal (Volume 2, 2009), entitled “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust for the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe.” In the abstract the authors write, “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.” Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of buildings.5 National Medal of Science recipient (1999) Professor Lynn Margulis from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is one of many academics who supports further open investigative research in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Margulis recently wrote in Rock Creek Free Press, “all three buildings were destroyed by carefully planned, orchestrated and executed controlled demolition.”6 Richard Gage, AIA, architect and founder of the non-profit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth), announced a decisive milestone February 19, 2010 at a press conference in San Francisco, CA. More than 1,000 architects and engineers worldwide now support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center complex on September 11, 2001.7 Credible scientific evidence brings into question the possibility that some aspects of the events of 9/11 involved State Crimes Against Democracy. Psychologically this is a very hard concept for Americans to even consider. However, ignoring the issue in the context of multiple proven SCADs since World War II seems far more dangerous for democracy than the consequences of future scientific inquiry and transparent, fact-based investigative reporting. Anything short of complete, open discourse based on all the evidence about these critical issues in our society relating to the possible continuation of SCADs is simply a matter of censorship.8 Peter Phillips is professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, President of Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored, former director of Project Censored, and coeditor of Censored 2010. Mickey Huff is associate professor of history at Diablo Valley College, Director of Project Censored/Media Freedom Foundation, and co-editor of Censored 2010. Notes 1 Lance deHaven-Smith, “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, (February, 2010): pp. 795-825. For more studies on SCADs and related issues see all articles for American Behavioral Scientist, Sage publications, Vol. 53, No. 6, (February, 2010), online at http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6/. For more background reading on this subject with specifics on the controversial cases mentioned in this paragraph, see the following scholarly works: Robert Abele, The Anatomy of a Deception: A Reconstruction and Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq (New York: University Press of America, 2010); Bob Coen and Eric Nadler, Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009); Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking Adult, 2002); Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006); Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987); David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False (New York: Olive Branch press, 2008); Mark Crispin Miller, Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 (New York: Ig Publishing, 2008); Kenneth O'Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983); Robert Parry, Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1993); William Pepper, An Act of State: The Execution of Marin Luther King (Updated) (New York: Verso, 2008); Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq (New York: Tarcher and Penguin, 2003); selected works of Peter Dale Scott, including Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993, 1996), Drugs Oil and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, March 2003), The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008); Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning us to Death (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2005); Lawrence Walsh, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997); Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2nd Edition, 2003); 2 Ibid. 3 American Behavioral Scientist, Sage publications, February, 2010, Vol. 53, No. 6, online at http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6/. Specifically, see Laurie A. Manwell, “In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, (February, 2010): pp. 848-884. 4 “How We Support Our False Beliefs,” Science Daily (Aug. 23, 2009) online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090821135020.htm. For the full study see Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., et al, "There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification," Sociological Inquiry, Volume 79 Issue 2, (2009): pp. 142-162. 5 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol. 2 (April 3, 2009): 7-31, online at http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm. 6 Lynn Margulis, “Two Hit, Three Down, the Biggest Lie,” Rock Creek Press, February 2010, Vol. 4, No. 2, p. 6, and online at http://rockcreekfreepress.tumblr.com/post/353434420/two-hit-three-down-the-biggest-lie 7 Richard Gage, AIA, Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, Press Conference, February 19th, 2010, SF, CA, online at http://www.ae911truth.org/info/160. See the Conference announcement video online at http://www.youtube.com/ae911truth#p/c/891B0945A34D98F7/0/R35O_QQP8Vw 8 For more on issues of media censorship see Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, eds., Censored 2010 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009).