Posted on 09/11/2006 7:10:10 AM PDT by aculeus
Edited on 09/12/2006 3:52:54 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
They believe there weren't any planes on 9/11, just missiles wrapped in holograms - and there weren't any London terrorists on 7/7 either. The new-wave conspiracy theorists aren't green-ink types: they're educated; they have secret service connections; they live in Highgate.
At first sight, David Shayler and Annie Machon's home in Highgate - the leafiest of London's leafy suburbs - looks like a picture of middle-class respectability. There are Japanese landscape paintings on the living-room walls. Shelves groan under the weight of hardback novels and books on politics. An Alsatian with a well-kept, glossy coat looks on curiously as Belinda McKenzie - the grandmotherly landlady of the house - serves tea in china cups with a plate of delicious shortbread biscuits. "Enjoy," she says in a soft, plummy English accent.
Then you notice the curiosities. On the table sits a document about the "controlled demolition" of the twin towers. The shelves hold books titled The 9/11 Commission Report: omissions and distortions and The New Pearl Harbor: disturbing questions about the Bush administration and 9/11. There's a stack of colourful leaflets advertising a club night called Truth 9/11, to take place in Brixton in a week's time, the "11" in "9/11" represented by two tall stereo speakers. DVDs litter a work desk. One is called 7/7: mind the gap. The cover of another, titled Loose Change, asks: "What if 9/11 were an inside job rather than the work of al-Qaeda...?"
This cluttered house in the heart of respectable, latte-drinking Highgate doubles as the hub of the British and Irish 9/11 Truth Campaign. It's a loose group, founded in January 2004, which suspects precisely that 9/11 was an "inside job", organised and executed by a "shadowy elite" made up of individuals from the FBI, the CIA, the arms industry and politics. Shayler and Machon - the boyfriend-and-girlfriend former spies who famously left MI5 in 1996 after becoming disgruntled - are its leading lights. They've gone from being the Posh and Becks of the whistle-blowing world to something very like the Richard and Judy of the 9/11 conspiracy-theory set.
Sitting on the comfy couch, their cups of tea in hand, they try to convince me that the 11 September 2001 attacks were executed by elements in the west who wanted to launch wars and "make billions upon trillions of dollars".
"We know for certain that the official story of 9/11 isn't true," says Shayler. "The twin towers did not collapse because of planes and fire; they were brought down in a controlled demolition. The Pentagon was most likely hit by an American missile, not an aeroplane." Machon nods. In black trousers and black top, this sophisticated blonde in her late thirties comes across more like a schoolmarm than a 9/11 anorak. "The Pentagon's anti-missile defence system would definitely have picked up and dealt with a commercial airliner. We can only assume that whatever hit the Pentagon was sending a friendly signal. A missile fired by a US military plane would have sent a friendly signal." She says this in a kind of Anna Ford-style newsreader's voice, as if she were speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. She takes another sip of tea.
Say the phrase "conspiracy theorist" (but don't say it to Shayler and Machon if you can help it, because they angrily deny being conspiracy theorists) and most people will think of those nutty militiamen in redneck areas of America who hate Big Government, or of taxi drivers with possibly anti-Semitic leanings in some hot, dusty backwater of the Middle East who revel in telling western clients in particular: "America and the Jew did 9/11." Yet, here in Highgate, I am talking to a man and woman who have worked in the British secret services and who, together with their landlady Belinda, a professional linguist, truly believe that American elements facilitated 9/11 in order to "justify their adventurism in oil-rich countries in the Middle East", in Shayler's words. Here we have a new kind of conspiracy theorist: the chattering conspiracist, respectable, well-read, articulate, but, I regret to report, no less cranky than those rednecks and misguided Kabul cabbies.
The 9/11 Truth Campaign tries to distance itself from the green-ink loons who have been spreading rumours about 9/11 ever since the first plane slammed into the World Trade Center. "In London we meet socially on the first Monday of every month, and for a discussion on the third Monday of every month," says the ever-chirpy Machon, as if describing a Women's Institute get-together to discuss knitting, rather than a meeting of individuals who think a dark cabal of nutters controls the world. Its activists - many of whom are fairly well-to-do, and who include lecturers, film-makers and other whistle-blowers - pore over footage and photos of the events of 9/11, furiously debate them online, and argue that, scientifically, the official version of events doesn't add up. For Belinda - who describes herself as the "tea-maker and dishwasher of the movement" and allows activists from outside London to stay at her home - this is about "getting to the historical truth of what happened".
Yet, for all their forensic pretensions, their views remain crankily conspiratorial and unfounded. Take the claim that a plane did not hit the Pentagon, which has been doing the rounds since the French journalist Thierry Meyssan published 9/11: the big lie in 2002. "Just look at the news footage," says Shayler. "You won't see any plane debris on the Pentagon lawn."
Truth-seekers on a mission
True, but there was plenty of plane debris inside the Pentagon, where Flight 77 entered and exploded. There are numerous photographs of the blackened belly of the Pentagon crash site, taken by officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other rescue workers, which clearly show airliner wheel hubs, landing gear, part of a nose cone and bits of fuselage in the smouldering rubble (I hate to have to do this, but if you don't believe me take a look here: [http://www.rense.com/general32/phot.htm]). What kind of warrior for historical truth doesn't pay attention to basic photographic evidence?
Or consider the claim that the twin towers were brought down in a controlled demolition (which would have involved sinister individuals planting tonnes of dynamite in the weeks prior to 9/11 without being spotted by any of the good citizens of New York). The US National Institute of Standards and Technology investigated the cause of the collapse - during which "some 200 technical experts reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs [and] analysed 236 pieces of steel" - and it found "no corroborating evidence" that the towers had been toppled by dynamite. There is a lot of scientific evidence there, yet it is ignored or discounted by the apparently scientifically minded truth-seekers of this campaign.
At times, the line between these middle-class campaigners' apparently "scientific investigations" and old-fashioned conspiracy-mongering seems uncomfortably thin. One of their leaflets has a web address for David Icke, the former sports presenter-turned-"Son of God" who thinks the world is run by a race of reptilian humanoids. Shayler says: "There is a Zionist conspiracy; that's a fact. And they were behind 9/11." Machon intervenes diplomatically: "Not everyone in the campaign shares that view."
Then things really go off the rails. I ask Shayler if it's true he has become a "no planer" - that is, someone who believes that no planes at all were involved in the 9/11 atrocity. Machon looks uncomfortable. "Oh, f*** it, I'm just going to say this," he tells her. "Yes, I believe no planes were involved in 9/11." But we all saw with our own eyes the two planes crash into the WTC. "The only explanation is that they were missiles surrounded by holograms made to look like planes," he says. "Watch the footage frame by frame and you will see a cigar-shaped missile hitting the World Trade Center." He must notice that my jaw has dropped. "I know it sounds weird, but this is what I believe."
The 7/7 photo "forgery"
What about 7/7? Some in the 9/11 Truth Campaign aren't "really into 7/7", in Belinda's words. But Shayler is. He recently finished making 7/7: mind the gap, a film in which he suggests that, given the late running of trains on that fateful day last year, the four bombers could not have blown themselves up in London at the times claimed. He also believes that the closed-circuit TV image of the four men entering Luton Station is a "Photoshop job - a forgery, and a bad one at that". He goes so far as to argue that those who forged the photo did it badly in order to send a signal to the rest of us. "This could be elements in the New World Order saying, 'Look, we're sick of lying. We've had enough.'"
So have I. The thought of behind-the-scenes suits being cajoled by their evil paymasters to create an image of four rucksack-wearing terrorists in order to cover up their own bombing of London is just too ludicrous. These 9/11 truth campaigners merely add a supposedly scientific gloss to already existing conspiracy theories, trying to make the ridiculous seem respectable. In the process, they actually do a disservice to "historical truth". History gets reduced to a mysterious force beyond our control, and politics - real politics - is imagined to be the preserve of unknown, faceless puppet-masters whom we can never hope to influence. And the rest of us are reduced to the status of helpless spectators, searching amid the rubble of 9/11 and the aftermath of 7/7 for signs of truth and meaning.
Read more of my articles for the New Statesman here.
I deliberately didn't answer that question. A typical 9/11 nutbar's questions contain either an unfounded accusation or an outright lie.
To answer that question in any way would be to agree that there were "tapes held back" (which I don't know any more than they do), and it wouldn't matter what was released anyway. The mere existence of a high-resolution tape would feed into the "foreknowledge" fantasy. I an hear it already---how would they have known to stand in a certain spot and film everything just right, if they hadn't KNOWN AHEAD OF TIME that a missile disguised as a plane was coming in at a preset time?
Morgan Reynolds and Barrie Zwicker were featured in a segment on Brit Hume's show tonight. It repeats at midnight if you want to see it yourself.
Your boy said the attacks of 9/11 were "a psy-op". He said "It was all a hoax". Jim Angle then stated that Reymolds believes that no airliners hit any buildings that day, which is confirmed by Reynold's own website.
Reynolds went on to explain the difference between LIHOP and MIHOP (though he pronounced them "lee-hop" and "me-hop", which I thought was fairly amusing).
He then stated his belief about the attacks, that "it's about oil, Israel, and logistics for the global domination project." And that it had to be an inside job by the White House, as no one else could get the access necessary to the buildings in order to pull off the hoax.
Do you consider these ravings to be an indication of Morgan Reynolds' "intelligence?"
Do you even consider them to be original? Oil, Israel, world domination?
How much did you see?.....a split second of the final impact?
Just have them show all of the confiscated tapes and we can move on.
One thing you seem to keep omitting is the fact he was Chief Economist of the Labor Dept. during the first term of the BUSH ADMINISTRATION......now if he was the loon you paint him to be wouldn't one of those brainiacs figured that out early on? I sure don't remember any public attacks his integrity, intelligence or the work he did for them.......guess he sure snookered them now didn't he?
Bwahahaha! That would be good technology to have.
A. I did not omit it.
B. Big freaking deal if he was. Why is that such a stamp of approval for you?
Forget about his resume. What is your assessment of his competence, based on the CONTENT of the articles on his website?
Many people believe that the towers were destroyed. They just can't be seen anymore because of holograms....It was part of an incredible special effects team from Hollywood used to make a highly suspensful thriller movie /s
Maybe it's good that they have't been rebuilt. It's hard to argue that nothing happened! Just wait 50 years from now, just like the revisionists did with the holocaust!
No.......you're the one dodging the issue here.....as highly placed a person as he was in this gov't. you mean to tell me he could fool everybody into thinking he was competent enough to have a position like that while 'on the side' being a closet loon like you paint him to be? As I said (and how many more times do you have to be told before it sinks in) that there are some things from him and others I do not pay attention to or buy into......any more than you would or others would agree 100% with Bush, Cheney or anybody else on. If you wish to continue believing into the little guy in a cave theory be my guest.
You know what? If you gave it ten seconds of actual thought, you just might stumble onto the likelihood that
NONE OF THIS SH*T CAME UP DURING HIS JOB INTERVIEW WITH THE LABOR DEPARTMENT!
If it had, do you really think he would have gotten the job and title you're so uncommonly enamored of?
And I'm not "painting" Reynolds as a loon. He made a free-will choice to put on a loon suit and start belting out the Call of the Loon. No one held a gun to his head. I owe him no deference simply because he worked in the Bush administration for a while.
As I said (and how many more times do you have to be told before it sinks in) that there are some things from him and others I do not pay attention to or buy into
And yet you won't say what you do pay attention to or do buy into. Even when asked repeatedly. You just drop your snide little insinuations onto threads and try to act innocent.
You're not very convincing.
Neither are you and I'll say it for the last time....if he's as whacked out as you think it would've manifested itself during his time with the Dept. of Labor......and you seem to be incapable of understanding that we all may have fundamental agreements and disagreements with those in the public eye....why is that?
Living lives of luxury on a small island in the Carribean.
How do you know it didn't?
And "As whacked out as *I* think"? I don't know anyone who could read his website and watch his performance on FOX last night and not end up thinking "whack job". Well, maybe you could.
and you seem to be incapable of understanding that we all may have fundamental agreements and disagreements with those in the public eye....why is that?
I have no problem understanding it. You're the one who can't seem to understand why others are not as awed by a bureaucrat's title as you are.
As for those "fundamental agreements and disagreements with those in the public eye", you won't ever come right out and state what yours are. No, you'll just recommend that people watch "Loose Change", praise Morgan Reynolds' intelligence, and scoff at the "little guy billionaire in a cave" theory, and then you'll make like a clam. You're a coward.
The company you keep...
Some people are perfectly "functional" in their jobs while believing totally fringe stuff.
I work with at least 2 such people.
The point about Reynolds is if he is spouting this stuff (which is unbelievable), you have to question his judgment.
And yes, I do question the judgment of my two co-workers.
To be clear, what he is spouting is unbelievable.
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