BBC vs 9/11 Truth: The Smear Continues

LOOKOUT AGAIN!

Here comes another load of manure from the BBC!

We wondered what kind of documentary the BBC was making about 9/11, and it's becoming clearer by the day. Guy Smith, producer of the upcoming BBC "Conspiracy Files" episode on 9/11, laid the groundwork in a piece called "We're all conspiracy theorists at heart" which was published by the BBC on Friday. In that piece, Smith claims conspiracy theories persist because people are natural story-tellers who instinctively look for elaborate tales to describe events beyond their control. Your nearly frozen correspondent replied with "BBC vs 9/11 Truth: The Smear Begins". I urge you to read both pieces if you have any doubts about our respective positions, or motivations.

On Saturday the BBC laid the next layer of infrastructure for its coming propaganda barrage, under the curiously misleading headline: Q&A: What really happened

In BBC vs 9/11 Truth: The Smear Begins, I half-jokingly claimed the upcoming documentary would be "nothing more nor less than Popular Mechanics on skates". Imagine my surprise, then, to see the current BBC offering taking the same approach used by PM.

The BBC purports to explain the events of 9/11 by asking and answering 10 questions, and I will deal with each of them, briefly or otherwise, below. But first let's talk about why this approach -- the attempted "debunking" of selected "conspiracy theories" -- is an unsatisfactory approach to the problem.

The Madness In The Method

The common approach taken by both BBC and Popular Mechanics consists of a series of vignettes. In each one, they pick out an anomaly between the official story and the available evidence of what really happened, they detail one possible explanation for that anomaly (which both BBC and Popular Mechanics helpfully refer to as a "conspiracy theory"), and then they allegedly debunk the "conspiracy theory" using one means or another.

It's a three-step process and it's vulnerable to corruption at every step. We'll talk about this more below. But here I want to mention a very important limitation on the method. Even if this approach were carried out with rigorous logic, even if no corruption were allowed at any stage of the process, it would still prove unsatisfactory for the following reasons:

[1] There's a vast difference between proving that a so-called "conspiracy theorist" is wrong on a given point and proving that the official story is right on that point.

Here's a concrete example: I happen to disagree with Alex Jones, Jim Fetzer and Dylan Avery on key points and yet I still do not believe the official story. So nobody -- not Guy Smith, not anybody else -- is going to make me believe the official story by pointing out places where Alex or Jim or Dylan has allegedly gone astray. In other words, even if all these so-called "conspiracy theorists" are "wrong", and even if BBC demolishes all of them, that still doesn't prove that the official story is correct.

And for that matter, even the use of the term "conspiracy theorist" is overloaded with spin, because the official story -- the story that Guy Smith is trying to protect -- talks of at least 20 people -- Osama bin Laden and 19 hijackers. Anyone who believes that those 20 people conspired to pull off this enormous crime is also, by definition, a "conspiracy theorist". And anyone who believes they did it without conspiring -- that they just happened to work together without any prior planning or communication -- is flat-out crazy.

To be blunt about it, anyone who thinks the attacks of 9/11 could have been done without a conspiracy is crazier than anything Alex Jones and Jim Fetzer and Dylan Avery and Guy Smith have ever said all combined.

[2] Even if the BBC's answers to all 10 questions were sound and solid, their sum total would barely begin to explain the differences between the attacks of 9/11 and the official version of same, because the number of unanswered questions about 9/11 runs into the hundreds.

Therefore the selection of 10 key questions in effect amounts to a ruling that all the hundreds of others are beyond the pale, and this is the necessary first step in the ongoing propaganda campaign to get you to believe lies about what really happened.

First they get you thinking it all boils down to 10 easy questions, and then they lie to you about the questions -- and then they lie to you about the answers, and kaboom! ... or should I say "Zzzzz" ... you're sound asleep!

1: Could the US Air Force have prevented the attacks?

This is certainly a good question and answering it in the "politically correct" manner requires serious obfuscation, so it's surprising to see it first. However, if the BBC is going to lie to you through all 10 questions, it doesn't really matter which comes first, so they may as well dive in the deep end.

Well, let's go with them:

To sceptics of the official account of 9/11, the idea of 19 fundamentalists hijacking commercial airliners and outsmarting the world's most advanced air defence system seems simply incredible.

Some 9/11 conspiracy theories argue that the US Air Force should have succeeded in intercepting at least some of the hijacked planes, and that someone, therefore, must have prevented them from doing so.

The official version - 9-11 Commission Report - holds that on the morning of 11 September, 2001 a major defence training exercise was taking place.

What an understatement! What was taking place was the most heavily concentrated set of training exercises ever scheduled!

The BBC can roll out any number of explanations as to why these exercises were sufficient to derail the air defense in the Northeastern US that day, but they don't dare approach the next logical question: Who scheduled those wargames?

Did Osama bin Laden send key components of the US Air Force to places like Alaska and Greenland that day? And if not, who did?

BBC quotes Popular Mechanics reporter David Coburn pushing the "incompetence" theory, which simply doesn't wash in the face of so much deliberately sown confusion, and then deals with an issue that's been hanging over the "official investigation" for quite some time:

Following the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report it emerged that the Commissioners were concerned they might have been deliberately misled by the military about the timeline of their response to events on the day.

Suspicions of a cover up by the military were recently addressed by a report from the Pentagon Inspector General.

The report found that there had been no deliberate attempt to mislead the 9/11 Commission, and that the discrepancies in their testimony to the Commission were the result of "a lack of capabilities and thoroughness" within the military.

The next logical question should be: Why is the Pentagon investigating whether the US military colluded in the coverup of 9/11?

But instead the BBC allows the suspects the final word on this issue. It's a ploy we'll see again and again.

Did anybody at the BBC notice that their link to the 9/11 Commission report is broken? (I've fixed it in the quoted passage.)

2: Were the Twin Towers deliberately demolished by explosives?

Of course they were. Anybody watching on TV knew that right away. But the official story doesn't account for Osama bin Laden getting access to the WTC in order to plant explosives there, so now we have to have all these transparent lies.

Was it a "pancake collapse" or a "progressive collapse" or in fact what kind of collapse was it? The official story has changed, but not the official wording.

All the talk about "why the towers collapsed" is absurd because the clear and visible fact -- perhaps the most notable fact of the day -- is that the towers didn't collapse at all; they disintegrated!

BBC prefers to obfuscate these very inconvenient facts in the following manner:

After 9/11, investigations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) determined that the collapse of the Twin Towers was due to the impact of the planes and the large quantities of exploding jet fuel released into the buildings.

Those questioning this account point to the lateral puffs of smoke that emerged from the towers just ahead of their collapse. Could these be explosive devices planted as part of a conspiracy?

They also argue that jet fuel, which has a far lower burning temperature than the melting point of steel, is unlikely to have weakened the steel supporting framework sufficient to prompt the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Jet fuel burns at 800 degrees Celsius whereas temperatures must reach 1,500 degrees Celsius for steel to melt.

Those questioning this account raise a lot of other questions as well, such as why so many firemen and emergency workers testified to hearing bombs going off all around them just before the towers fell, or why the steel beams appear to have been cut rather than having buckled, and why there was molten steel in the basements of the towers so long after the "collapse". But the BBC is not prepared to admit these questions, much less deal with them. Instead, we get a rehash of the official line (which still makes no sense!)

The explanation for the puffs of smoke offered by the authors of the Popular Mechanics study is that as the floors crashed down of top of one another, a pressure wave forced dust and smoke out of the windows.

As for the fuel temperature - the official explanation holds that whilst steel does indeed melt at 1,500 degrees Celsius, it loses half its strength at a much lower temperature of 650 degrees Celsius.

The fuel might not have melted the steel columns, but it weakened the structure, and especially the trusses that supported each floor, to the point that they could no longer support the weight on the building.

So BBC supports the "truss failure" theory. The supports couldn't hold up the floors.

Unfortunately this "explanation" is hugely at variance with the evidence.

If trusses had failed the floors may have come tumbling down but the steel exterior walls and the central steel columns would have been left standing, or at worst would have fallen over, or buckled and fallen partway over, or at any rate the result would have been very different than what we saw that day. The NIST report says the steel buckled but doesn't provide any photos of buckled steel. In some photos of WTC damage the steel appears to be cut. And then there's the issue of molten steel in the basements, or the reports of "rescue workers" working at Ground Zero having to change their boots all the time, because the soles were melting. How could a truss collapse generate that much heat? And why do we have eyewitness reports of underground explosions in the towers before the planes hit?

The BBC doesn't go near any of these questions either. They just pick one detail they like (the puffs of smoke coming from the buildings) and they work that detail into the official story in one way or another (i.e. the puffs of smoke were compressed dust and smoke being squeezed out of the buildings by the collapse) and they move on to the next narrowly framed question, as if the entire issue were settled.

It's a ploy we'll see again and again. But in the meantime ...

Here's a good way for you to evaluate the "steel weakened and buckled" theory at your own convenience: Go out and start your car. Watch what happens when burning fuel heats the steel around it -- in this case the steel is your engine block. Let it run for a while and you'll find that your engine block actually buckles -- because the heat from the burning fuel is so intense that, even though it's not hot enough to melt the steel, it's hot enough to weaken the steel, and this combined with the intense pressures in your engine, make the steel of the engine block lose its strength and buckle. And that's why you can't drive your car for long distances, because the heat from the burning fuel weakens the steel and your engine sags and the next thing you know it loses its compression.

You see this happening to other people all the time, don't you? Cars and trucks broken down by the side of the highway, no longer able to move because their engine blocks are so deformed from the heat of the burning fuel... You see them every day, do you not?

No? Well ... Maybe I'd better go back and check my facts, then!

3: Was WTC7 deliberately demolished by explosives?

Well, yes, it appears it was. In the last week we've had an emergency worker speak out and say yes, bombs were going off, yes, we had a twenty-minute warning to evacuate, and yes, it was what it looked like -- a controlled demolition.

He was using an alias and saying he'd lost his job because he spoke the truth and within a few days other emergency workers started talking and saying "yes, he's right, that's what happened" ... So what does the BBC have?

In the afternoon of 11 September 2001, World Trade Centre Building 7, a 47 storey office block close by the Twin Towers collapsed without even being hit by the planes.

The building had been evacuated and there were no casualties and with so much else happening that day, its collapse was barely reported.

That's another understatement. And it's something skeptics find a bit sinister!

WTC 7 was home to local offices of the CIA, Department of Defense, the United States Secret Service and the city's Office of Emergency Management, among others.

Sceptics of the official account, including those at Scholars for 9/11 Truth argue that the building was deliberately destroyed in a controlled demolition, perhaps in order to conceal important information about a pre-9/11 plot by the authorities.

Some even argue that the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania was intended to crash into Building 7.

The collapse of WTC has been investigated by FEMA. Their interim report found that when the North Tower collapsed, debris crashed into Building 7.

This was the likely cause of fires which quickly took hold. The sprinkler system did not work effectively because the water main in Vesey Street had been knocked out when the Twin Towers came down.

With the intense fires burning unabated, the steel structure supporting the building was fatally weakened. But the FEMA investigators conceded that this hypothesis had a low probability of occurring.

Say again?? "This hypothesis had a low probability" and yet it's being offered as an official explanation? Or is it?

In their final report, due to be published later in 2007, FEMA is expected to back its original hypothesis substantially - the collapse of WTC7 was accidental, not deliberate.

This is supposed to explain anything? This is supposed to make those questions go away?

The two propaganda techniques we see at play here are [1] pretending that the questions which have drawn replies have been answered, and [2] pretending that the questions that haven't been answered don't exist. Sneaky debating tricks. Underhanded but not evil.

This is a pattern which you may see change very soon.

Note the links in this passage. The BBC link to the FEMA interim report leads to "page not found". How convenient. Or how sloppy. Either way, BBC looks ... well, I'm sorry but I can't bring myself to say it. But I have fixed the link in the quoted passage.

4: Were Jews forewarned about the attacks?

The headline alone gives me hives. We'll talk about that in a minute. But first, here's the BBC's take on this aspect of the story:

Shortly after the attacks a rumour started in the Middle East and spread around the world which claimed that 4,000 Jewish employees at the World Trade Centre had not turned up for work on 11 September. Were they warned to stay away?

One conspiracy theory suggests that 9/11 was an Israeli plot to discredit the Arab world; another that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, found out about the attacks beforehand and warned the Jewish community in New York.

The rumour started after the Jerusalem Post reported that roughly 4,000 Israelis were believed to be living or working in New York and Washington.

Crucially it did not say they were dead or missing - just people in the immediate areas of the attacks who might have been affected.

This report was picked up by Arabic media outlets, including Al Manar, the Beirut satellite TV station linked to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.

Al Manar TV added a spin to the story. It reported that 4,000 Israelis working at the World Trade Centre had not shown up for work on 9/11. As the anti-Semitic rumour spread, the details became embellished - like in a game of Chinese whispers.

According to official figures, of the 2,749 victims of the World Trade Centre attacks, 2,071 were occupants of the buildings.

Research by The Conspiracy Files shows that of these 2,071 victims, 119 were confirmed Jewish and a further 72 were believed to be Jewish.

This would make a total of 191 - or 9.2% of victims. This figure is broadly in line with the 9.7% of New York's commuting population which is believed to be Jewish.

This is a straw-man attack of the highest order, and it requires delicate surgery to take it apart.

First of all there may have been a report in the Jerusalem Post saying Jews had been forewarned of the attacks; if so it would clearly be to everyone's benefit to hide that report as quickly as possible. You will notice the BBC has linked to the Jerusalem Post website and the Al Manar website rather than to the two reports in question. Why?

If I wanted to refer you to a particular news report, I would point you to the article I wanted you to read, rather than the publisher's website. Unless I didn't really have anything...

But that's a minor point. Everything we've just read from the BBC about this story could be perfectly true. And yet...

Yesterday Guy Smith wrote that he has spent nine months researching, and today we find out that he doesn't have a link to the Jerusalem Post report he claims started the whole story. If I had spent nine months researching I think I would have come back with a link.

And the use of this one anecdote to dismiss all claims about foreknowledge is not very convincing. In fact, of all the stories I heard shortly after 9/11, this one wasn't even among them. The stories I heard had to do with Israelis, not Jews, and I know there's a lot of overlap, but the two groups are not identical by any means.

The most dramatic story circulating shortly after 9/11 said that employees of the Israeli company Odigo had received text messages early on the morning of 9/11, warning them of the impending attacks. The BBC has done nothing to ease my mind about this story.

But even more chilling are the stories about alleged Israeli foreknowledge that weren't circulating shortly after 9/11. And the BBC hasn't even tried to deal with them!

By speaking of "Jews" rather than "Israelis", the BBC follows in the Popular Mechanics tradition and muddies the waters considerably.

After framing it as a story involving "the Jews", supporters of the official story often move on to play the "anti-Semitism" card, and pretty soon after that the "Holocaust-denial" card, and even though these cards are quite irrelevant, they do derail an awful lot of discussions. The last time I checked, there was nothing anti-Semitic about wanting to know who attacked your country, and there was no hint of Holocaust-denial in asking whether certain highly-placed Israelis knew about the attacks before they happened.

The Odigo story is only one example. Far more serious, in my view, is the story from NYC about the three Israelis who were seen celebrating the attacks by exchanging high-fives, holding up their lighters as if at a rock concert, frolicking for their cameras against the backdrop of the burning towers. These men were later arrested along with two other Israelis; the five were held for 71 days during which they repeatedly failed lie detector tests. Eventually they were released and whisked home, but not before it was established that two of the five were agents of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

Why would Mossad agents be cheering the burning towers?

According to Christopher Ketcham:

After the first plane hit, no one really thought that this was a terrorist attack. I mean, most people thought -- and I was there, you know, on the Brooklyn waterfront watching this whole thing. Everyone thought it was an accident. These guys, when they were interrogated by FBI, told them that -- essentially said that they immediately knew it was a terrorist attack. And they actually told the FBI that the reason they were celebrating was because the attacks would be beneficial to Israel, that it was, quote, “a good thing for Israel” -- that's according to the FBI spokesman who spoke on the record about this -- and that it would bring sympathy for Israel's political agenda in the Middle East.

And there you have it in a nutshell. Israel's political agenda in the Middle East, is, of course, a euphemism, but we can't fault Christopher Ketcham, who has brought so much of this story into the light.

9/11 works to enable Israel's military agenda in the Middle East, and that's what this is about -- not the Jewish people of New York City, who comprise nine point something percent of the population and suffered nine point something percent of the deaths. This is not about them at all, nor is it about anti-Semitism nor Holocaust denial, nor any of the other charges that get thrown at 9/11 skeptics with nauseating regularity.

In fact -- come along with me here for a moment and let's think like a conspirator, shall we? -- if 9/11 was an Israeli black op, a warning to the Jewish workers of NYC would have defeated the purpose. If the plotters hoped to generate sympathy for Israel, and planned to do it by killing a huge number of people, surely they would have realized that if there were no Jewish victims, this might reflect badly on Israel and could cause a backlash rather than an increase in sympathy. So they wouldn't have done it that way. If they did it at all.

5: Did a commercial airline hit the Pentagon?

What difference does it make? Some people think a commercial airliner did hit the Pentagon, but they still don't believe the official story. Some think that whatever hit the Pentagon couldn't have been a commercial airliner, and of course none of them believe the official story.

Some people on each side of the argument think the entire issue has been inflamed by disinformation that's been deliberately injected in order to split the 9/11 truth movement into hostile bickering camps. Whether or not that was the intention, the existence of this split is used by some official conspiracy apologists to discredit all who ask questions about 9/11.

For its part, the BBC says:

At 09:37 on 11 September, the Pentagon, headquarters of the American military, was rocked by a huge explosion.

According to the official account American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the building, killing all passengers on board and 125 military personnel and civilians on the ground.

But some people argue that AA 77 could not have hit the building, as there is little visible wreckage, and the hole in the wall caused by the impact is too small to have been inflicted by a Boeing 757 airliner.

The first photographs taken before the front wall of the Pentagon collapsed show the hole appears to be some 18-20 feet across at its narrowest point.

Conspiracy theories argue that a remote controlled drone or missile struck the Pentagon.

The official explanation is that the fuselage - which is 12 feet wide - punctured the building, but the two engines and the wings largely broke up on impact.

US Defense Department photographs taken shortly after the attack show fragments of aircraft wreckage, some with the distinctive American Airlines livery.

The black box recorders and engine parts were found amongst the wreckage, and many eyewitnesses described seeing the plane hit the building.

Engineers and computer scientists at the Rosen Centre for Advanced computing at Purdue University, Indiana have built a computer model to recreate the crash.

Their research suggests that it was the exploding jet fuel which caused the worst damage inside the Pentagon.

None of this proves anything to me; most telling of all in my estimation is that the BBC chose to link to the US military multimedia site -- rather than to any specific photographs -- on the phrase "US Defense Department photographs". It's as if they're saying:

Photographs proving our point exist -- find them if you can!

6: Can CCTV footage prove what happened at the Pentagon?

BBC says:

Conspiracy theorists argue that the Pentagon, America's military headquarters, was not hit by a commercial airplane.

They say the initial hole in the outer wall is too small and there is no evidence of visible wreckage. Instead they believe the Pentagon was hit by something smaller, such as an unmanned drone or a cruise missile.

For Professor Jim Fetzer, of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, the evidence is clear-cut. "Whatever hit the building was not a Boeing 757," he told The Conspiracy Files. "Anyone that tells you a Boeing 757 hit the building is saying something that is probably false, that cannot possibly be true."

The Pentagon and the FBI have released some footage taken from CCTV cameras in the vicinity of the Pentagon.

Judicial Watch.

Some of that footage - from the nearby CITGO petrol station and the Doubletree Hotel - does not shed any light on what hit the building.

Frames taken from two cameras at a car park in front of the Pentagon appear to show the silver nose cone and tail fin of a Boeing 757 moments before the explosion, but the footage is of very poor quality and not conclusive.

The FBI will not confirm whether or not it holds other security camera footage of the attack. Its lack of openness has fuelled further conspiracy theories.

There are many reports that security cameras at the nearby Sheraton Hotel captured images of the attack, but the hotel manager told The Conspiracy Files that none of their cameras were pointing in the direction of the Pentagon and no such footage exists.

The Conspiracy Files interviewed rescue workers who said they clearly identified wreckage from a passenger jet in and around the building. And photographs taken in the immediate aftermath of the explosion and shown in the documentary, identify parts of a Boeing 757 including a piece of fuselage with the distinctive livery of American Airlines.

And what difference does this make? No matter what hit the Pentagon, the official story is still patently false.

A better question might be: Why did the FBI confiscate all the videotapes from all the area cameras that might have been able to show us what happened? You'd think if they were really interested in catching the terrorists they'd have better things to do than intimidating employees at the local gas stations.

And if you stop to see what they have at Judicial Watch you may find yourself shaking your head in astonishment that anything so vague could be considered evidence of anything.

7: Did a military transport plane control the attack on the Pentagon?

Again it doesn't matter -- and that makes three questions in a row here of the wedge-driver variety.

According to the BBC:

As the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 approached Washington DC, a military transport C-130 aircraft took off from Andrews Air Force Base, en route to Minnesota.

Conspiracy theories suggest that the C-130 may have been controlling the attack that morning as part of a secret government plot, or even fired a missile which downed the Boeing.

The C-130's pilot, Lt Colonel Steve O'Brien, tells a different story. He told The Conspiracy Files that he and his crew were alerted by Air Traffic control to the presence of an unidentified jet approaching the capital.

O'Brien describes seeing a Boeing passenger jet with the distinctive silver and red colours of American Airlines crossing their flight path in an unusually steep bank.

His first reaction was that the aircraft was in trouble and trying to make an emergency landing at the nearby Reagan National Airport. Moments later the Boeing crashed into the Pentagon.

Lt Colonel O'Brien points out the C-130 is not capable of carrying missiles.

This is a wild tale and makes no difference to anything. It amounts to an allegation by the BBC that some unnamed conspiracy theorists are wrong on this point. But so what? I knew 9/11 was a black op long before I heard this story about a C-130.

On the other hand, if you were trying to think of 10 relatively safe questions to ask and answer, the question about the C-130 would be far more appealing than questions about foreknowledge or obstruction of justice, to name but two sorely neglected areas of great concern.

8: Was United 93 shot down?

Here's another question that really doesn't matter.

I was watching the events unfold on television and I knew it was a false flag attack while flight 93 was still in the air. Whatever happened with that flight was not going to make the official story -- as told so far -- any more believable.

Quoth the BBC:

United Airlines 93 was the fourth plane hijacked on 9/11, and the only one not to reach its target.

The official account of the day, as told in the 9/11 Commission Report holds that Flight 93 crashed into open ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, apparently as passengers tried to seize back the controls from the hijackers. But 9/11 conspiracy theorists are suspicious of this account.

Some argue that substantial wreckage from the aircraft was found at Indian Lake, a reported 6 miles from the crash site in Shanksville. If this would true, it would lend weight to the theory that the aircraft disintegrated in mid-air after being hit by a missile.

Leading conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones of infowars.com argues that planes generally leave a small debris field when they crash, and that this is not compatible with reports of wreckage found further afield from Shanksville.

The reports of wreckage at Indian Lake were accurate in so far as small, light fragments of insulation material and paper from United 93 were found by residents at the lake, having blown there from the crash site on the prevailing wind.

However, the distance between the two locations was misreported in some accounts. In fact, in a straight line, Indian Lake is just over a mile from the crash site. The road between the two locations takes a roundabout route of 6.9 miles - accounting for the erroneous reports.

Also, the fragments of debris which were found at Indian Lake were downwind of the crash site and east of the plane's flight path. Had United 93 started to disintegrate in mid-air, wreckage would have fallen below the flight path - to the west of Shanksville.

Wally Miller, the local coroner at Somerset, Pennsylvania is at the centre of another debate about the crash of United 93. In his film Loose Change, Dylan Avery quotes Miller as saying: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes because there were no bodies there."

However, interviewed for The Conspiracy Files, Wally Miller says he was misquoted.

"I said that I stopped being a coroner after about 20 minutes because it was perfectly clear what the manner of death was going to be.

"It was a plane crash, but yet it was a homicide because terrorists had hijacked the plane and killed the passengers."

He says it is technically correct that there were no complete bodies at the crash site, but the recovery operation found many body parts and DNA to identify all the passengers and crew on board.

So here the BBC's claim amounts to saying that Alex Jones was wrong about how far-scattered the debris from Flight 93 was, and Dylan Avery used a quote from Wally Miller who later said he was misquoted. And these two claims of the BBC may very well be true. But even if they are true, so what?

The "crash site" still doesn't look like a crash site, the stories of cellphone calls being made from high altitude didn't make any sense, and we have all sorts of reasons to believe the official story is full of holes (if not full of lies, or something even more aromatic!) on this point, even if Alex and Dylan are both wrong!

And that's not to say that they are wrong. I don't know. It's possible Wally Miller was misquoted. It's also possible Wally Miller changed his tune after speaking a bit too freely. If that's what happened, it wouldn't be the first time a key witness in a key story had changed his tune. Perhaps a shady character drew up alongside Wally Miller one day and alerted him to the fact that he had spoken too freely. It wouldn't be the first time for that, either.

The BBC's link to infowars.com doesn't work, but I've fixed it for you. ;-)

9: Did United 93 crash?

Here's another side of the previous question. But this time it's framed in such a way as to discredit Loose Change specifically. Loose Change has become increasingly popular lately, especially in Britain, and as the defenders of the official story see it, Loose Change needs all the discrediting it can get.

Here the BBC says:

Photographs taken at the crash site near Shanksville show a small crater and fragments of clearly identifiable aircraft wreckage along with personal possessions from some of those on board.

But the size of the crater and the absence of large pieces of wreckage have led some to question whether UA93 actually crashed there at all. This question is examined at the following website:

Killtown: Hunt the Boeing II

Dylan Avery, director of the hugely popular internet film Loose Change, argues that Flight 93 landed elsewhere, with the passengers abducted as part of an elaborate government plot.

Loose Change

Avery's film quotes reports from a local TV station in Ohio saying that two planes had landed at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport because of a bomb threat. Avery suggests that one of these was Flight 93.

In fact, there was one plane diverted to Cleveland that morning, with a suspected bomb on board.

But this was a different flight: Delta Airlines Flight 89, which had been proceeding along the same westward air corridor as United 93. In the chaos of that morning, Air Traffic Control had confused the two flights and ordered the Delta to land.

Local TV stations covered a press conference by the local mayor in which he referred to the Delta flight landing because of a suspect bomb, but later amended their stories when it became clear that Delta 89 had not been hijacked.

So what do we have here? A "crash scene" that doesn't look much like a crash scene, and BBC not even attempting to deny it.

Instead they point to an assertion in Loose Change that's been denied. And what can that mean? First, of course, just because something's been denied that doesn't make it false. Look: Two plus Two isn't Four! Do you believe me?

Secondly, even if Dylan Avery is completely wrong on this one, the "crash scene" still doesn't look like a crash scene, and the BBC still doesn't deny it. Click that Killtown link if you don't believe me.

Really. Check out that Killtown link and tell me a commercial airliner crashed in that field. And watch Loose Change sometime if you haven't done so already. It's not perfect but it asks a lot of good questions.

Thanks to BBC for two good links here. ;-)

10: Could the attacks have been prevented?

Here we have an example of a very broad question being addressed as if it were very narrow. The BBC says:

Were there chances to stop the attacks prior to 9/11? If so, was this failure deliberate?

The CIA knew that two al-Qaeda terrorists had entered the United States as early as January 2000. But the CIA never passed on this information to the FBI - so the FBI did not know to look for them.

The two future hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar settled in San Diego, where they started to take lessons at a local flying school. They used their real names in official documents and one of them - al-Hazmi - was even listed in the local phonebook.

Had the CIA tipped off the FBI that two known al-Qaeda operatives had travelled to America, it would have been easy to track them down - and possibly the 9/11 attacks could have been thwarted.

But Dale Watson, who led the FBI's investigation of 9/11, told The Conspiracy Files that there was no deliberate CIA plot to keep information from the FBI.

He said: "In large organisations you do have breakdowns in communications at the lower end. There was never any top down orders either by the FBI or the CIA. And anybody that believes that - they're wrong."

Dale Watson might just be telling us a tall tale there. We've heard all sorts of stories about agents in the field starting investigations that could have foiled the plot but who were called off the hunt by their superiors. Perhaps there was never any all-encompassing top-down orders from central headquarters in either the FBI or the CIA. But the right people knew that certain sorts of leads ought not to be investigated! We could talk to Coleen Rowley about that, but we'd do most of the listening!

The story of one instance where the CIA had information that could have led somewhere if only the FBI had known of it (1) doesn't begin to cover the question of whether the attacks could have been prevented, and (2) conveniently places the blame on an intelligence agency the administration has been trying to intimidate and eviscerate for years -- first in the pressure to find intelligence that would support the administration's bid to sell their long-planned war in Iraq, later in a reshuffling that eliminated all serious opposition to the unitary executive, based on the pretext that the CIA had been wrong in their assessment that Iraq did in fact have WMD. Oh what a tangled web these professional mass murderers do weave!

After the attacks, government officials were summoned to give evidence before a Congressional Inquiry set up to investigate the intelligence failure before 9/11.

It seems that the CIA information about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar was "lost in the system".

BBC doesn't want to talk about the other things that were lost in the system, or buried by the system, as the case may be.

But at least they're willing to quote Bob Graham.

But Co-chairman Senator Bob Graham told The Conspiracy Files of his frustration at the lack of co-operation from the FBI in that inquiry, and by the government's decision to censor over 30 pages of his report which related to Saudi Arabia.

"Within 9/11 there are too many secrets," he said, "and that withholding of those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government as it relates to their own security."

Interestingly, the BBC has left the last word with a skeptic. And the quote, coming from a US Senator, deserves to be taken seriously.

Within 9/11 there are too many secrets, and the doubts they engender certainly cannot be dispelled by 10 narrow questions.

The Questions They Don't Ask

Some of the questions the BBC doesn't ask are even more interesting than those they do. And perhaps there's a good reason for this.

What about president Bush, sitting there in the classroom doing a deer-in-the-headlights impersonation after being told the country was under attack? If he was a target, why didn't the Secret Service whisk him away? And if he wasn't a target, how could they have known that? And why didn't he do anything? He's Commander-In-Chief, right? Or only during campaign season?

What about the hijackers? How did they get into the country? How did they get their flight training? Why did they seem to be leaving deliberately conspicuous trails? Or do fanatical Muslims usually snort cocaine and pick fights at strip clubs?

What about the bin Laden family? Why were so many members of the alleged ringleader's extended family collected and ushered out of the country so soon after the attacks that the FBI didn't even get a chance to talk to them? And speaking of the FBI, it doesn't list Osama bin Laden as a 9/11 suspect because, it says, it has no hard evidence implicating him.

Why is Sibel Edmonds gagged? She knows things about money, and drugs, and Turkey, which the administration is deathly afraid of. So she's under a State Secrets gag order which prevents her from telling us certain things which we're told would be very detrimental to sensitive diplomatic and business arrangements. I'll say they would! If you take a look at the amount of poppy being grown in Afghanistan and shipped through Turkey you can get a sense of how sensitive it really is!

Why was the steel from the WTC collected as quickly as possible and shipped to China for recycling? Why wasn't the world's greatest-ever crime scene preserved? Why did it take so long for an investigation to be set up? And then why was it run by an administration insider with a specialty in public perception and myth-making?

Don't get me started! There are a zillion and one other unanswered questions, and by not even admitting that those questions are out there, and that we're still waiting for answers, the BBC shows quite clearly that it's not interested in the truth, and hardly interested in supporting the official story, but primarily interested in discrediting those who would question the very absurd official account of that very absurd day.

There's hardly any journalism involved in such an effort. Baby, what a big surprise!

The Method In The Madness

Realistically speaking, it seems crazy to go to air with a case this weak. But circumstances have forced Guy Smith's hand. They've spent money on this. It's been scheduled and advertised for quite a while now. He can't back out at the last minute.

So now it's a question of production. When the propaganda special airs on Sunday night, with all the magic of modern audio/video behind it, spellbound viewers will allow themselves to be put to sleep on the pablum of officially sanctioned lies, with no hint of the tyranny creeping up around them.

But you won't be among them, will you? Nor your friends, nor your families.

I don't usually encourage people to email my articles to others, but if you ever wanted to do something like that, this would be a good time to try it. ;-)

The truth shall set us all free, my friends. But only if we share it!