Letter from Ground Zero

Hello friends,

I’m in New York for the We Demand Transparency Conference, where I’ll be speaking tomorrow at noon — hope to see you there. Special low price at the door for students and the economically challenged: only $20!

The amazing news is that NYCcan.org has prevailed and is on track to have the NYC Ballot Initiative on the ballot this November. This puts the bad guys in a difficult position: How can they stop it without publicizing it? Stay tuned for updates in this astonishing battle between the forces of good and evil…

My interview yesterday with the TV news channel Russia Today is getting good reviews. Check it out:

Kevin Barrett 9/11 – ‘Van Jones should’ve done what I did!’

It’s also archived on my RadioDuJour page.

Don’t miss my interview tomorrow (5 pm Central, American Freedom Radio) with two of the smartest, best-informed, careful, sober, meticulous AND nicest guys in the 9/11 truth movement, David Ray Griffin (whose new book on WTC-7 is now shipping) and Michael Andregg. Who’s Michael Andregg, you ask? Visit my radio schedule page for more…

Finally, some terrific news from my hometown of Madison, WI. Lou Stolzenberg, who has been running the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth and its spin-off Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth for the past two years, managed to draw some (gasp!) favorable mainstream media coverage! I’ve appended the complete story below.

Thanks for your work for truth and justice, hope to see you tomorrow.

Kevin Barrett
http://www.truthjihad.com
Author, Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters: http://www.questioningthewaronterror.com

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(to find the story below on-line, go to http://www.yournews.com/copyroom/mynews.asp and enter Madison, then click on any of the Madisons with 537** zip codes)

Eight years after 9/11 horrors, “Truthers” movement gains momentum

Like many 9/11 truthers, Lou Stolzenberg, coordinator of the Madison-based Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, questions whether or not the attack on America was done on purpose to open the door for a more bellicose U.S. foreign policy and unrestrained surveillance of the American people.

By Brian D’Ambrosio

Eight years after the horrors, 9/11 remains a thorny, even divisive issue.

On one side of the issue, there are the “truthers.” In the weeks before the 9/11 attacks, they feel that warnings poured in from the world’s spy agencies, but U.S. officials ignored them. Instead, our intelligence agencies were harnessed, air interceptors grounded – and the attacks exploited to launch a preemptive war on Afghanistan. The results, they say, have been a U.S. corporate stranglehold of Central Asia’s and the Middle East’s oil and gas, a wealthier Bush dynasty, and restrictive censorship in the form of the Patriot Act.

On the other side: the camp of the traditional, widely unquestioned line of thinking. These folks believe that the White House and the intelligence community were in no way accomplices in the horrific attacks, that a full-scale investigation isn’t needed, and Osama bin Laden is indubitably the heinous culprit. After all, they say, Osama bin Laden has been intimately linked to global terror for more than three decades. When Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was captured in Pakistan, a subsequent search of his former residences led investigators to believe he was financially tied to bin Laden. Moreover, he had stayed at a bin Laden financed guest house while in Pakistan.

At first, Madison truther Lou Stolzenberg, coordinator of the Madison-based Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, thought it was far-fetched to think Bush had been somehow complicit in the events of September 11. Swindle an election? Perhaps, she thought. But in her mind, she was simply unable to ponder such a wicked possibility.

Yet it is just this possibility that Stolzenberg considers.

Like many 9/11 truthers, she questions whether or not the attack on America was done on purpose to open the door for a more bellicose U.S. foreign policy and unrestrained surveillance of the American people.

“When I first heard information questioning traditional 9/11 thought three years ago,” says Stolzenberg, “my first reaction was to think it was an extreme type of thinking or nonsense conspiracy theory. But after reading many books and scholarly sites, I began to think otherwise. It has been a gradual process for me, as I am a very cautious person.”

Since then Stolzenberg has urged citizens to scrutinize some of what she and others see as contradictions and inconsistencies in the official 9/11 record. And she hopes to not only share information challenging the formal 9/11 record with all those who are willing to listen, but she wants to convey that it is patriotic, circumspect, and dutifully American to do so.

“One of the things I try to do is refute the myth that all people who present an alternative view of 9/11 are incompetent. Many of them are intelligent, respected, and from many different disciples. They are scientists, engineers, and military people, not delusional nutcases.”

Stolzenberg has some reason to fear that her opinions may be maligned by the majority. Last week, an adviser to President Obama who once voiced suspicion that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush White House, was quickly dumped by the administration for his “offensive words . . . (which) do not reflect the views of this administration.”
The beleaguered advisor, a member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, signed a petition in 2004 calling for an investigation into whether “people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.” That same year, Bush critics asked New York’s then-attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, to make a “deeper inquiry” into evidence aiding the conspiracy theory.

Main Points of 9/11 Truthers

Truthers have recently rallied around a study released in April by independent scientists and researchers that suggests that the cause behind the destruction can be seen in the WTC dust: active highly engineered thermitic materials. Dr Niels Harrit, of the University of Copenhagen, alleges that the destruction of the twin towers, and the lesser remembered Tower 7, was caused by nano-thermite, a combination of aluminum and rust powder that reacts to intense heat, producing molten iron and an explosion.

The substance, the report claims, “is useable as a rocket propellant and contains more energy than dynamite” – and more than ten tons were found near Ground Zero. Thermite can be bought by anyone, but the nano process is a “strictly military and still experimental affair.” The FBI is analyzing the paper, which lends new support to the demolition theory put forth by faultfinders.

Truthers have maintained for years that WTC buildings 1 and 2 exhibited many unusual characteristics of controlled demolition, including extreme explosiveness, symmetry, pulverization, and lateral ejection of debris. The mushroom-like canopy exhibited upward not outward arching streamers in the first few seconds – a geometry of explosion, not gravitational collapse.

Other theories allege that a missile fired from inside the U.S. rather than a plane hit the Pentagon, and that United Airlines flight 93 was shot down instead of crashing. Possibly the most intriguing, though, is that WTC 7, a 47-story, steel-framed skyscraper, housed a clandestine bunker from where 9/11 was orchestrated and that it was destroyed by a controlled explosion to cover up the evidence. (The D epartment of Defense (DOD), CIA and US Secret Service all had offices there.) Additionally, floor 23 was a New York City command center on standby for civil emergencies – but it had already been evacuated.

Opponents of the 9/11 truthers say that the initial timeline and original data support the generally accepted version of events that what happened on that dreadful day was the work of a group organized, trained, radicalized, and funded by the notoriously bloodthirsty al-Qaeda and the reactionary Taliban.

A Few Questions

Whether you believe that a handful of doggedl Arabs hijacked airlines, used them as fuel-laden missiles, in an attempt to fulfill their religious obligations for Allah, or that Dick Cheney, the evil maestro, orchestrated the attacks from a hermitically-sealed bunker, some things about 9/11 don’t jibe or still require a more cogent explanation than what’s previously been put forth.

Some questions that I personally would like to see better and more clearly answered: Who blocked investigation of known bin Laden associates? What happened to our defense measures? When was the Afghan offensive first conceived? Why did America not protect its citizens and scramble jets? San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was booked to fly from the Bay Area to New York City on the morning of September 11. Certain high-level U.S. security authorities anticipated some sort of grave danger, and believed it to be urgent and threatening enough to warn Brown, who was about to catch a flight to New York – but not the public. The London Times reported that the famous novelist Salman Rushdie, receive a similar warning to avoid U.S. and Canadian airlines. Why weren’t the American people warned?

What is the true nature of the business connections between the Bush and bin Laden families through the Caryle Group? Why it is that the first Afghani Prime Minister was a former paid UNOCAL oil consultant?

And, the all-important, yet stomach-turning question: Who benefited from September 11?

Suspicious stock trading in the days leading up to Sept. 11 involving United Airlines and several WTC companies, made someone tremendously wealthy or even wealthier.

Vice president Dick Cheney’s statements conclude that the White House, not the FAA, was in control regarding scrambling on Sept 11, making the White House responsible for standard operating procedure failure. Why did the White House take the authority to be in charge on Sept. 11 and then not actually scramble jets until it was too late?

Inconsistencies and Contradictions

The position of the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission is contradicted by the FBI, which does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which bin Laden is wanted because, the FBI has said, it has no solid evidence of his responsibility for 9/11.

On the day of the hijackings, Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader, is said to have flown from Portland, Maine, to Boston, and then into the World Trade Center; the government says that it was able to determine the identities of all 19 hijackers immediately after the attacks thanks to Atta’s luggage. The luggage, which didn’t make the connection, contained a number of revealing items, including correspondences, a passport, a driver’s license, and a flight simulator. Curiously, Atta was the only passenger among the 81 aboard American Flight 11 whose luggage didn’t make the flight.

The reported trajectory of Flight 77, which crashed in to the Pentagon, was allegedly manned by Hanji Hanjour, who, according to all reports, was an awful pilot, even in a small plane. Experts say the plane was flown in a very competent manner.

Motive, means, and opportunities

Ultimately, says 9/11 truthers such as Stolzenberg, all those of palpable motives, means and opportunities should be investigated.

“Neo-cons were hoping for an event like 9/11,” says Stolzenberg. “They wanted a new Pearl Harbor, in order to fulfill their goal of getting the U.S. into the Middle East, to control the oil supply and maintain the American standard of living. The plan to go in to Iraq was set long before 9/11. Since then, we’ve seen key elements of the constitution negated, people being tortured, and the military budget doubled, which would have never been possible without 9/11.”

Stolzenberg can usually be found at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, but this weekend she will be operating the Wisconsin Coalition for 9/11 Truth booth at the Bob Fest, September 12-13, at the Sauk County Fairgrounds. She says that several encouraging developments are reshaping the movement.

“There has been a dramatic change in the makeup of the 9/11 truth movement in the last three years.” says Stolzenberg. “It is now led by independent scientists and other professionals in relevant fields. The number of architects and engineers calling for a new investigation is almost eight hundred. And, in NYC, 78,000 have signed petitions for a new investigation.

“The mainstream news providers have done a masterful job of convincing readers that anyone who asks questions about 9/11 is a conspiracy nut,” adds Stolzenberg. “That’s not true.”