When the first September 11 conspiracy theories began to
propagate, I thought they were embraced by a very small fringe element of
“crazies.” I assumed they would soon be a minor footnote to the story, such as
skeptics who do not believe U.S. astronauts really walked on the moon. I also
naïvely thought that any reasonable, thinking person could easily be convinced
that so-called questions surrounding the attack on the Pentagon could be
resolved with the undisputed facts at hand.
My first inkling that this might not be the case was when I
got a call from a journalist in France asking about my assessment of Thierry
Meyssan’s allegations in L’Effroyable
Imposture. After about 10 minutes on the phone, I realized that my
explanation that I was at the crash site and saw and photographed parts of the
plane was having no effect, and I was in fact having a discussion with a
doubter, whose mind was made up. I remember ending the conversation with
something I had heard years before. “It’s good to have an open mind about these
things,” I said, “but if your mind is too open your brain can fall out. That’s
what I think has happened to these folks who don’t believe it was a plane.” And
when I asked him about what I considered the major flaw in the missile theory:
“If it didn’t hit the Pentagon, what happened to American Airlines flight 77
and all on board?” the journalist replied that he did not have to resolve every
inconsistency to know that the basic story was a lie.
At that point I began to wonder how smart people could
believe such nonsense.
One factor that was fueling suspicions about the Pentagon
was the lack of any photographic evidence, unlike the attacks in New York,
where there was dramatic video of the planes flying into the World Trade Center
towers. I began making a full-court press with my Pentagon sources to find out
if there was any video, and to get my hands on it. I had two promising leads.
One source told me there was imagery from a security camera. Another source
told me a security camera at the nearby Doubletree hotel in Pentagon City had
also captured the attack. The Doubletree lead turned out to be true, but
unhelpful. The FBI had confiscated the video, and although I talked to one of
the hotel employees who watched it, he could not recall what it showed. Years later, in 2006, I would obtain the full
video, in response to a FOIA request, and it showed the smoke from the
fireball, but not the plane, which was flying so low it was blocked by the
Pentagon building.
But on September 11, at least one Pentagon security camera,
I was told, did capture the plane as it hit. I pleaded with various Pentagon
officials to release the video, using the now growing conspiracy theories as a
basis for my argument for making it public as soon as possible. If they would
release the video, I reasoned, it might put to rest some of the irresponsible,
and frankly infuriating, allegations of “inside job” and “cover-up.”
The appeal went to the highest levels of the Pentagon, and
the answer was “no.” The Justice Department said the video would be evidence in
the upcoming trial of al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and therefore
could not be released. [1]
I thought the decision to withhold the video was a public relations mistake, as
did a senior aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. That Pentagon official
arranged to have a CD-ROM of the images leaked to me at my Pentagon office
several hours later, and I immediately put them on the air. I thereby became
the first reporter to publish the images, although the Associated Press was
provided with the same pictures within an hour of when I showed them on CNN. While
images became widely available and circulated on the Internet, they were not
officially released for four more years.
Figure 7 - Security camera images first obtained and broadcast by
CNN, March 7, 2002.
If I thought the photographic evidence would quell the
debate I was quickly proved wrong. Blog sites seized on the low-resolution
images as evidence it was NOT a plane, but that the white blurry shape looked
to them more like a missile. And while it is true that if what hit the building
was in fact a mystery, the images alone would be inconclusive. But that was the
frustrating thing. The pictures were not an isolated piece of evidence. They
were just one more link in a solid chain of evidence that was consistent and
conclusive.
I would return to the subject many times over the years I
was at CNN. At one point I contacted a forensic crime scene animator, Michael
Wilson, who helped me show graphically how all the evidence fit and was
consistent with a plane hitting the Pentagon.[2]
When I left CNN I wrote an entry on my blog, LineofDeparture.com, again giving my
eyewitness account, laying out all the evidence, and posting the photographs I
took at the scene in an attempt to debunk the myths that were now so linked to
my September 11 reporting.[3]
Some of the comments I received:
“The
pictures posted have no significance. They only further reinforce the fact that
no Boeing Plane hit the Pentagon. That is a sick and futile effort to enforce
an unenforceable lie. Barbara Olson is alive and well. The phone calls were
Phony calls. That was proven using an unusual approach by implementing common
sense. False Flag attack, pure and simple and the coverup was so obvious only a
fool would believe otherwise and only a shill or disinfoagent would attempt to
defend the obvious lie.” Jean
“A few
photographs are just that — photographs. They become evidence of Flight 77 when
backed up by forensic evidence that they came from Flight 77 — some of the
parts would have serial numbers that could be matched to the logs. Then there's
contradictory evidence I lay out in my September 11, 2010 article
"Pentagon Transcripts, Official Records Belie "The 9/11 Commission
Report'." I challenge you to a debate.” Enver Masud
I did in fact try engaging directly with some of the more
thoughtful doubters, spending in some cases hours talking with them, attempting
to use logic to explain why their theories did not fit the facts. But the facts
did not seem to matter.
As an experiment, I decided to agree to be interviewed by a
9/11 truther whom I met at a conference, Victor Thorn. He was an affable,
pleasant person, who seemed genuinely confused about whether a plane hit the
Pentagon. So I agreed to talk to him by phone. I recorded the conversation for
my records, with his permission. I explained how my comments about “no evidence
of a plane” were taken out of context. I shared the pictures I took of the
wreckage. I tried to convince him that no theory or other evidence provided any
creditable alternative explanation.
Thorn subsequently published his article on a website
called American Free Press.[4] When his article was
posted, I found that it trotted out the same old canard about me reporting “no
evidence of a plane,” and then said I had later objected “as possible damage control”
that my comments were taken out of context. Thorn then added, ominously “But
were they?”[5]
The rest of the article was an indictment of my failure to
follow all the false leads that are the focus of the Pentagon 9/11 conspiracy
theorists. Why, he wanted to know, had I
not interviewed any structural engineers to determine why the plane’s five-ton
engines didn’t create any holes? Why
had I not interviewed pilots to get their opinion about whether Hani Hanjour could
have flown the Boeing 757? Why did I not
pursue the theory that documented cell phones calls were impossible, given the
technology of the time.
He characterized my dismissal of those lines of inquiry as
“immaterial.” But in fairness he did sum
up my hour-long discussion with this one paragraph, which is accurate, as far
as it goes:
He
justified this lack of intellectual and journalistic curiosity with the
following mantras: (a) All evidence points in only one direction, (b) There are
no plausible alternatives, (c) These aren’t relevant lines of questioning, and
(d) All this might make sense if we didn’t know whether American Airlines
Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. But we do know that for a fact, so all this other
debate and analysis is irrelevant.
Thorn’s conclusion: “Unfortunately, McIntyre still does not
realize that this type of lazy elitist arrogance is why a growing number of
Americans don’t trust the corporate media.”
Once again, I had
failed. Another mind not changed. I began to wonder if anything could change
the mind of a true disbeliever.
A much more concerted and comprehensive attempt to correct
the record and counter the false beliefs about the September 11 attacks was
launched by the editors of Popular
Mechanics. In 2006, the magazine
editors published a book, Debunking 9/11
Myths, which reported that they analyzed and definitively disproved the 20
most prominent conspiracy claims including that a missile from a military jet,
not a Boeing 757, struck the Pentagon.[6]
The authors said
they “consulted more than 300 experts and sources in such fields as air traffic
control, aviation, civil engineering, fire fighting and metallurgy.” They said
their conclusions were based on “hard facts and irrefutable evidence, including
photographs, transcripts, scientific studies, expert testimony, and other
documentation.”
In a chapter on the Pentagon, the editors addressed the
question about debris, the size of the hole in the Pentagon, and quoted other
witnesses on the scene. One was first
responder, Allyn Kilsheimer, who said he held in his hand part of the tail
section of the plane and saw the black box as well as uniforms from crew
members and body parts. [7]
The authors had high hopes that by deploying facts and
irrefutable evidence, the conspiracy theories would fade away.
In an endorsement for the book, Michael Shermer, publisher
of Skeptic Magazine wrote:
Even
though I study weird beliefs for a living, I never imagined that the 9/11
conspiracy theories that cropped up shortly after that tragic event would ever
get cultural traction in America, but here we are with a plethora of
conspiracies and no end in sight. What we need is a solid work of
straightforward debunking, and now we have it in Debunking 9/11 Myths. The Popular
Mechanics article upon which the book is based was one of the finest works
of investigative journalism and skeptical analysis that I have ever
encountered, and the book-length treatment of this codswallop will stop the
conspiracy theorists in their fantasy-prone tracks. A brilliant exemplar of
critical thinking. [8]
And so it might have been expected that the age of
September 11 conspiracy theories would come to a crashing end under the weight
of indisputable facts and evidence. But it did not.
It turns out skeptic Michael Shermer should have been a bit
more skeptical of his own predictions.
Instead of stopping the conspiracy theorists “in their fantasy-prone
tracks,” the 9/11 “truthers” piled more coal into the locomotive of faulty
logic and took off like a runaway freight train.
Enter: Debunking 9/11
Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official
Conspiracy Theory.[9] The new book, which is twice as thick as the Popular Mechanics tome, vigorously
disputes almost every aspect of the Popular
Mechanics investigation, turning the tables by labeling the widely-accepted
and government reported version of events, “the official conspiracy theory.”
That’s right, the editors of Popular
Mechanics, along with a majority of Americans stood accused of being the
“true believers,” essentially official conspiracists who themselves are blind
to facts and impervious to logic.
The book is impressive in its attention to detail and
careful in its presentation of facts. Take, for example, my infamous “no
evidence of a plane” description. Popular
Science explains that away by saying “very little wreckage was visible from
McIntyre’s vantage point,” glossing over entirely the essential missing
context, namely that’s not actually what I was saying. [10]
By contrast, none of the nuance was lost on the Debunking 9/11 Debunking author David
Ray Griffin, who points out, quite correctly, I was “not, to be sure, denying a
plane struck the Pentagon.” In fact he said my statement “supported the
official view.” He accused Popular
Mechanics of assuming incorrectly that I was too far away to see anything.
“This interpretation, however, is based on the false
assumption that McIntyre’s ‘vantage point’ was the media area in front of the
Citgo gas station, from which the interview was taped. He in reality was
talking about his ‘close-up’ inspection of the area around the strike zone.”[11]
Yes, thank you.
That’s right, except for the reference to a “taped” interview.
It was in
fact a live report, although the immortalized recording of it is now an
Internet video. And while accurately presenting my words, Griffin then went on
to use my description of “small pieces of wreckage” to support the notion that
the Pentagon scene was not consistent with a 757 crash. And therefore, he effectively turns my
testimony into evidence for his side.
Again, it is not my intent to belabor the point of the
misuse of my words or re-argue the case for the “official conspiracy theory.”
Rather, I note that the result of Popular
Mechanics’ laudable journalistic effort to disprove what it called “the
fantasies of 9/11 conspiracists” was not gratitude or contrition, but even more
certitude that all their sophisticated fact-checking was wrong:
In his conclusion, David Ray Griffin writes:
PM (Popular Mechanics) has not presented
convincing evidence the Pentagon was struck by flight 77, or even a Boeing 757.
It has not answered the objections to this claim based on insufficient fire,
impact damage, and debris. It has not provided a plausible explanation for the
hole in the C-ring. It has not shown why we should not find suspicious the
FBI’s destruction of evidence and refusal to release videos. It has not
mentioned the reasons to doubt Hani Hanjour piloted a 757 into Wedge 1… It is
hard to imagine how PM’s attempt in this chapter – to debunk the claim the
Pentagon strike was an inside job – could have failed more thoroughly.[12]
At this point it might well seem that rational people would
be justified in throwing up their hands and declaring the battle to correct the
record a hopeless cause.
Can that be the final answer, that many otherwise
intelligent people are simply entitled to their wacky beliefs, and we should
stop trying to inform them against their will?
Here’s how Senator John McCain answered that question in
the forward he wrote to Debunking 9/11
Myths:
The
conspiracy theorists chase any bit of information, no matter how flimsy, and
use it to fit their preordained conclusions. They ascribe to the government, or
to some secretive group, powers wholly out of proportion to what evidence
suggests. And they ignore the facts that present in plain sight.
We cannot
let these tales go unanswered. [13]
McCain calls the false narratives “a distraction from the
proper lessons of 9/11,” which he says “shakes Americans’ faith in their
government at a time when that faith is already at an all-time low.”
McCain
and many others call for the unfounded accusations surrounding the September 11
attacks to be confronted with facts. But
as I discovered, facts alone are not enough to persuade people with firm
convictions. And the reasons get to the
heart of the challenge of debunking any myth, namely, as cartoonist Walt Kelly
famously put it: “We have met the enemy… and he is us.”[14]
[1] Moussaoui was a French citizen arrested in the U.S. in connection
with the 9/11 attacks. He would plead guilty
in 2006.
[2] Jamie McIntyre, “Sept. 11 Mythbusting,” CNN, 2006.
[3] McIntyre, “The Immortal 9/11 Conspiracy,” 2010.
lineofdeparturearchives.blogspot.com.
[4] AmericanFreePress.net.
[5] Victor Thorn, “Victor Thorn Interviews Former CNN Reporter Who Was
First on Scene at Pentagon on 9/11,” AmericanFreePress.net,
November 9, 2010. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/former_cnn_reporter_243.html
[6] David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, Debunking
9/11 Myths, Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up To The Facts (New York:
Hearst, 2006).
[7] Dunbar and Reagan, Debunking
9/11 Myths, 65.
[8] Ibid, inside front cover.
[9] David Ray Griffin, Debunking
9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanic and Other Defenders of the
Official Conspiracy Theory (New York: Olive Branch Press, 2007).
[10] Dunbar and Reagan, Debunking
9/11 Debunking, 97.
[11] David Ray Griffin, Debunking
9/11 Debunking, 269.
[12] Ibid, 288.
[13] Dunbar and Reagan, Debunking
9/11 Myths, xiv-xv.
[14] Walt Kelly, The Pogo Papers,
(New York: Simon and Shuster, June 1953).
