I also have a highly technical background. Furthermore, I have been trained in the dispassionate reasoning of the law. However, as I have posted elsewhere, finding our government culpable in the murder of its own citizens is not beyond the range of my imagination, on purely experiential grounds: My father was a Peal Harbor truther. Why? Because he was a navy cryptographer and he personally knew the message to FDR concerning the imminent attack on Hawaii sat in a mail slot somewhere unattended and was not delivered in a timely fashion. Furthermore, he explained that there was motive: The pacifist movement was blocking FDR from helping Churchill and Pearl Harbor overcame that and substantially changed the dynamic of the war.
Now true, no trial was ever held and no judicial body has ever declared FDR’s guilt posthumously. So the entire theory resides on the edge of credibility to the public at large. But it is precisely that ability we call critical thinking that allows us to process facts objectively and suspend judgment where plausibility and incomplete fact patterns require it. If that is where Medina was coming from, that is an honest and respectable position. Did she botch the interview? Certainly. She should have directly stated her factual doubts and not tried to be evasive.
My own position? I, like her, have never taken the theory seriously, because what little I have looked at seems implausible. Except for one thing. Unlike most folks here, for reasons stated above, I do believe our government, even under Bush, is capable of extremely cynical behavior, up to and including actions harmful to the people. If I did NOT believe that, I would probably NOT be a constitutionalist, as men would be angels and oversight of the government by the people an unnecessary source of indigestion.
Pearl Harbor, that is. Sorry.
My position is that even if any particular administration were capable of such perfidy, the execution would involve so many people that the coverup would never hold. The government can’t even keep the lid on legitimate national security secrets. How in blue blazes could it keep the lid on something like this?
As for Pearl Harbor, a belatedly delivered coded message does not culpability make, especially on the part of FDR. That a faction inside his administration could have sat on this message for a time is entirely believable, but is a far cry from what the government is accused of on and leading up to 9-11.
The American Firsters were not pacifists, but isolationists. Bob Taft never did give up his Fortress America mindset.
Is Rhetoric one of the many curricula now permanently removed from Public Education?
It is hard to believe people can not understand a "gotcha" media attack.
Best regards