How little did I realize that when I first attempted to cross the street several years ago that I would be swept along in the 9/11 Truth Doo-Dah Parade, led down disreputable avenues and into cul-de-sacs, through backyards and over hedgerows, backtracking, sidestepping, weaving, waltzing, and wobbling until there was no one left to lead, said Drum Majors of Truth having fallen into ditches, dropped off precipices, or vanished into thin air.
As I stand here hanging ten over the edge of the chasm, I still hear the faint strains of “The Entry of the Gladiators” (a k a “Thunder and Blazes”) the march that heralds the appearance of the clowns. The void has swallowed up so many ardent voices, all propounding plausible hypotheses of the real story of the events of September 11, 2001, until the first glimmerings of an outside agenda was revealed or the first custard pie was thrown.
I shout into the abyss: “9/11 was an inside job!” There’s a nice echo, so it sounds like there’s more than one of us and we’re chanting. Then, three times in quick succession, “Controlled demolition!” There seems to be a bunch of us now, and maybe they’ll listen to us. Then, all at once I feel the ground begin to crumble beneath my feet, and I step back, just in time. I bump into a fellow seeker of truth, one carrying a huge “TV Fakery” sign. I apologize, and let him peer into the void, which he claims is a video projection. He topples in, and I can’t save him. The last words I hear him say: “This isn’t really happening!”
None of this seemed like it was really happening. From September 11, 2001, real life has been bad science fiction, the kind where you actually can see the wires holding up the pie plates. Pointing to the wires is extremely bad form. The other actors in this movie are sticking to their scripts, and they cannot abide those who break the fourth wall. They may call you names for destroying the illusion.
Gradually, there were enough of us who had detected the mechanism behind the special effects that we had to organize after a fashion or at least support and acknowledge each other’s efforts. Some of us gave money to Mike Ruppert before he rode off the rails. In those first woolly days, anyone who spoke out against the Official Story was embraced as a kindred spirit. We didn’t bother to check if they were wearing shiny narc shoes.
My wife knew it was all a sham on that first day—and so we saw all the various theories as they came out. She found this material on line at work even before we bought a home computer. And then, after declaiming on it for months and even after we sent a contribution to From the Wilderness, she lost interest. It was getting near political season again, and we both fought like cats to elect Howard Dean.
We fought with Republicans, we fought with Democrats, we fought with Naderites, we fought with each other, and we increasingly fought against our own futility. Then Dean succumbed to bad miking at a rally, Kerry fell on his sword, my mother died of cancer, and my aunt suffered a near-fatal stroke. I was numb. I drank plentifully, and I resented how my relatives had treated me as my mother was dying.
It was shortly afterward that my friend Herb had me listen to a radio appearance by David Ray Griffin. Then came revelations by Webster Tarpley. Steven E. Jones posited his theory of thermite, and formed the Scholars with James Fetzer, who directed his ceaseless flow of verbiage toward the cover-up, like an alt-media Bull Connor with the water cannon of truth.
Herb dissected the physics and logistics of 9/11 with his fine analytical mind and I assisted him with my color commentary and sarcasm as we began to appear on local radio. Herb was good from the outset, and formidable in debate. I decided we needed to put up a website. “Uticans for 9/11 Truth” hadn’t been taken by anyone and was a suitable nod to the Scholars, whom we then admired.
If you go to our site and read the posts from early 2006, you’ll see that our admiration for the usual suspects was innocent and profound. My wife and I actually stayed up late to listen to the Scholars on Coast to Coast—it seemed an astonishing victory at the time. Herb actually flew to Chicago to attend a 9/11 Truth symposium and got to hang out with all our heroes. Herb had said, “Tarpley is God.” And there was Tarpley!
As we cheered on Tarpley, Fetzer, Steven Jones, Barrett, Griffin and all others who seemed to advancing the cause in their mainstream media appearances, we received an invitation from Vyzygoth to appear on From the Grassy Knoll. I, for one, was gobsmacked. Our effort had been a local one, and we admired Vyz and listened to him on a daily basis.
There were other broadcasters we listened to at the time, but even then their dabbling in outside agendas was beginning to disconcert me. I’m the least Politically Correct person I know, but I had no patience for the racism and anti-Semitism that was creeping into some of the 9/11 activists’ rhetoric. And certain program hosts began to veer into one-world politics, or New Age philosophy, or other unsavory interests. And some were—and are—obviously in it to sell their books and videos.
After my somewhat garrulous and perhaps all-too-revelatory performance on From the Grassy Knoll, I was further astounded when Vyz asked us back. On balance (with Herb’s scholarship adding the needed counterweight to my one-liners) we did well enough.
Within a few months, and particularly after the mid-term national elections of 2006, we noted a strange occurrence—certain of the major figures in both the 9/11 Truth movement and the attendant alternate media apparently went bonkers. Victor Thorn, who received favorable attention with 9/11 on Trial and his Flight 93 book, published a sloppy Jew-bashing screed called 9/11 Evil. And Dr. James Fetzer gave heed to Dr. Judy Wood and her theory of destructo beams from outer space.
In such fashion was the Hegelian Hoe-down commenced between Fetzer and Dr. Steve Jones—with the result that the Scholars for 9/11 Truth was riven in two. The Fetzer side embraced the magic of Dr. Wood and her ghastly metaphors of powder puffs and marshmallows with the Jones side holding fast to thermite and thermate.
It was to get much stranger as the square-dance fiddle segued into circus calliope. Greg Jenkins, whose video interview with Dr. Wood is still widely circulated, was observed to had an apparently phony shoving match with Jim Fetzer immediately after the taping. Thus the machinery behind the 9/11 Truth Movement—an effort ostensibly created to reveal the machinery behind the 9/11 attacks—was itself momentarily revealed. Jenkins has since disappeared from the scene.
Fetzer, of course, was to go on and advocate the TV fakery theories promoted by September Clues and performance artist Nico Haupt. My response to TV Fakery (which is inextricably allied with No Planes) is that everything on TV is fake. On the other hand, if one credible witness can be found who saw aircraft (of whatever sort) hit the towers, the No Plane aspect of the theory is dead.
(Here, of course, a mini-Hegelian pas de deux is executed between the stalwart No Planers and those who insist that hijacked airliners full of passengers hit the towers. As the old jazz standard would have it, “It’s Gotta be This or That.”)
But Dr. Steven Jones veered into absurdity (and possibly mendacity) going all the way back to his days of debunking cold fusion and asserting that pre-Columbian statues with holes in their hands were inspired by the stigmata of Christ as he visited the New World (in keeping with LDS doctrine). Jones more lately propounded the notion that thermite/thermate was painted on the walls of the WTC towers. Thus we have the Sherwin-Williams theory of global collapse.
As all this was occurring in the center ring under the big top, Herb and I noticed other signs of trouble. Certain key figures that we admired (and who had stayed out of the space beam-thermite fistfight) proved to harbor yearnings for one-world government. David Ray Griffin is one such, and unashamedly so. While we still recommend his books as some of the most valuable references on the subject of 9/11, he has been known to punt interviews.
We were much more disappointed in Webster Tarpley as his once-fine mind began to deteriorate. When a number of luminaries denied that they had signed—or had seen—the dodgy document known as the Kennebunkport Warning, his response was venomous. It appeared that the Overmind of 9/11 Truth could rant and fulminate with the best of them.
When Tarpley decided that Obama was the embodiment of evil he directed his vitriol at the candidate, his supporters, and anyone else who wasn’t convinced that Barack was the next Benito Mussolini. When he viciously maligned Utican John Zogby (whom I know to be a decent man), Webster Tarpley was kicked to the curb with all our other broken idols.
True, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA is a valuable reference work—as Tarpley himself never tires of stating. But even on this subject he’s been known to set up roadblocks. On his former RBN radio program he dismissed out of hand the possibility of mini-nukes, owing to the purported impossibility of fissionless fusion. Other researchers have demonstrated that such fusion is quite possible—but Tarpley Has Spoken. Amen.
At this point, there doesn’t seem to be anyone we would now unreservedly endorse as activists or researchers. Our heroes in the field of 9/11 Truth are all former heroes, compromised to a greater or lesser extent. Here and there a few remain unsullied in their efforts to uncover the reality of September 11, 2001—and their sincere determination is the exception rather than the rule.
Vyzygoth has proven to be the most conscientious of all the hosts on the alternative media. He has no tolerance for agendas, power trips, or phonies. Thus I feel privileged to have been invited to appear on his program—either with Herb or by myself—about 25 times.
We also respect the efforts of Jeff Long and Lynne Bacaj of D.C. 9/11 Truth, 9/11 Blimp Dave, the members of the Citizens’ Investigative Team, and a handful of others (who I hope will forgive me for not enumerating them all here).
A widespread and loosely allied grassroots effort is all that remains, now that the circus has left town. But I have to feel that even the carnival barkers like Alex Jones and the clowns (too numerous to mention) have had some inadvertent laxative effect on our collective cognitive constipation.
Just this morning I heard a guest on the Diane Rehm show say, “How many times after 9/11 did we see those towers blow up and go down?” Well, yes—they blew up, which would imply explosives. The guest uttered this statement as if it were wholly unremarkable, and it was not challenged by the persnickety Diane. They blew up.
Perhaps he meant that they blew up when the planes hit them. But I somehow don’t think so. He said that they blew up and went down. It doesn’t matter whether they blew up as a result of cutter charges, thermite/thermate, space beams, mini-nukes, disposable plasma generators, or cherry bombs. But the Twin Towers blew up.
There’s your 9/11 Truth.
