Why I Don’t Speak of 9/11 Anymore
By Edward Curtin
Journal of 9/11 Studies
Letters, September 2016
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a non-teaching day for me. I was
home when the phone rang at 9 A.M. It was my daughter, who was on
a week’s vacation with her future husband. “Turn on
the TV,” she said. “Why?” I asked.
“Haven’t you heard? A plane hit the World Trade
Tower.”
I turned the TV on and watched a plane crash into the Tower. I
said, “They just showed a replay.” She quickly
corrected me, “No, that’s another plane.” And
we talked as we watched in horror, learning that it was the South
Tower this time. Sitting next to my daughter was my future
son-in-law; he had not had a day off from work in a year. He had
finally taken a week’s vacation so they could go to Cape
Cod. He worked on the 100th floor of the South Tower. By chance,
he had escaped the death that claimed 176 of his co-workers.
That was my introduction to the attacks. Fifteen years have
disappeared behind us, yet it seems like yesterday. And yet
again, it seems like long, long ago.
Over the next few days, as the government and the media accused
Osama bin Laden and 19 Arabs of being responsible for the
attacks, I told a friend that what I was hearing wasn’t
believable; the official story was full of holes. It was a
reaction that I couldn’t fully explain, but it set me on a
search for the truth. I proceeded in fits and
starts, but by the fall of 2004, with the help of the extraordinary
work of David Ray Griffin[1] and other early skeptics, I could articulate the
reasons for my initial intuition. I set about creating a college
course on what had come to be called 9/11.
But I no longer refer to the events of that day by those numbers.
Let me explain why.
By 2004 I was convinced that the U.S. government’s claims
(and The 9/11
Commission Report) were
fictitious.
They seemed so blatantly false that I concluded the attacks were a deep-state
intelligence operation whose purpose was to initiate a national
state of emergency to justify wars of aggression, known
euphemistically as “the war on terror.” The
sophistication of the attacks, and the lack of any proffered
evidence for the government’s claims, suggested that a
great deal of planning had been involved.
Yet I was chagrined and amazed by so many people’s
insouciant lack of interest in researching arguably the most
important world event since the
assassination of President Kennedy.
I understood the various psychological dimensions of
this denial, the fear, cognitive dissonance, etc., but I sensed
something else as well. For so many people their minds seemed to
have been “made up” from the start. I found that many
young people were the exceptions, while most of their elders
dared not question the official narrative. This included many
prominent leftist critics of American foreign policy. Now that
fifteen years have elapsed, this seems truer than ever.
So with
the promptings of people like Graeme MacQueen,[2]
Lance deHaven-Smith,[3]
T.H. Meyer,[4] et al., I have concluded that a
process of linguistic mind-control was in place before, during,
and after the attacks. As with all good propaganda, the language
had to be insinuated over time and introduced through
intermediaries. It had to seem “natural” and to flow
out of events, not to precede them. And it had to be repeated
over and over again.
In summary form, I will list the terms I believe “made up
the minds” of those who have refused to examine the
government’s claims about the September 11th attacks and
the subsequent anthrax attacks.
-
Pearl Harbor. As pointed out by
David Ray Griffin and others, this term was used in September 2000 in
The Project for the New
American Century’s report, “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses”[5] (p.51).
Its neo-con authors argued that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to attack Iraq,
Afghanistan, etc. “absent some catastrophic event –
like a new Pearl Harbor.” Coincidentally or not,
the film
Pearl Harbor, made with Pentagon assistance and a massive budget,
was released on May 25, 2001 and was a box office hit. It was in
the theatres throughout the summer. The thought of the attack on
Pearl Harbor (not a surprise to the U.S. government, but
presented as such) was in the air despite the fact that the 60th
anniversary of that attack was not until December 7, 2001, a more
likely release date. Once the September 11th attacks occurred,
the Pearl Harbor comparison was “plucked out” of the
social atmosphere and used innumerable times, beginning
immediately. Even George W. Bush was reported to have had the
time to allegedly use it in his diary that night. The examples of
this comparison are manifold, but I am summarizing, so I will
skip giving them. Any casual researcher can confirm this.
-
Homeland.
This strange un-American term, another WWII word
associated with another enemy – Nazi Germany – was
also used many times by the neo-con authors of “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses.”[6]
I doubt any average American
referred to this country by that term before. Of course it became
the moniker for The Department of Homeland Security, marrying
home with security to form a comforting name that simultaneously
and unconsciously suggests a defense against Hitler-like evil
coming from the outside. Not coincidentally, Hitler introduced it
into the Nazi propaganda vernacular at the 1934 Nuremberg rally.
Both usages conjured up images of a home besieged by alien forces
intent on its destruction; thus preemptive action was in order.
-
Ground Zero. This is a third WWII (“the good war”)
term first used at 11:55 A.M. on September 11th by Mark Walsh
(aka “the Harley Guy” because he was wearing a
Harley-Davidson tee shirt) in an interview on the street by a
Fox News reporter, Rick Leventhal. Identified as a Fox
free-lancer, Walsh also explained the Twin Towers collapse in a
precise, well-rehearsed manner that would be the same illogical
explanation later given by the government:
“mostly due to
structural failure because the fire was too intense.”
Ground zero – a nuclear bomb term
first used by U.S.
scientists to refer to the spot where they exploded the first
nuclear bomb in New Mexico in 1945 – became another meme
adopted by the media that suggested a nuclear attack had occurred
or might in the future if the U.S. didn’t act. The nuclear
scare was raised again and again by George W. Bush and U.S.
officials in the days and months following the attacks, although
nuclear weapons were beside the point. But the conjoining of
“nuclear” with “ground zero” served to
raise the fear factor dramatically. Ironically, the project to
develop the nuclear bomb was called the Manhattan Project and was
headquartered
at 270 Broadway, NYC, a few short blocks north of
the World Trade Center.
-
The Unthinkable. This is another nuclear
term whose usage as
linguistic mind control and propaganda is analyzed by Graeme
MacQueen in the penultimate chapter of The 2001 Anthrax
Deception.[7] He notes the patterned
use of this term before and
after September 11th, while saying “the pattern may not
signify a grand plan ... It deserves investigation and
contemplation.” He then presents a convincing case that the
use of this term couldn’t be accidental. He notes how
George W. Bush, in a
major
foreign policy speech on May 1, 2001,
“gave informal public notice that the United States
intended to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM Treaty”;
Bush said the U.S. must be willing to
“rethink the
unthinkable”. This was necessary because of terrorism and
rogue states with “weapons of mass destruction.” PNAC
also argued that the U.S. should withdraw from the treaty. A
signatory to the treaty could only withdraw after giving six
months notice and because of “extraordinary events”
that “jeopardized its supreme interests.” Once the
September 11th attacks occurred, Bush rethought the unthinkable
and officially gave formal notice on December 13th to withdraw
the U.S. from the ABM Treaty. MacQueen specifies the many times
different media used the term “unthinkable” in
October 2001 in reference to the anthrax attacks. He explicates
its usage in one of the anthrax letters – “The
Unthinkabel” [sic]. He explains how the media that used the
term so often were at the time unaware of its usage in the
anthrax letter since that letter’s content had not yet been
revealed, and how the letter writer had mailed the letter before
the media started using the word. He makes a rock solid case
showing the U.S. government’s complicity in the anthrax
attacks and therefore in the Sept 11th attacks. While calling the
use of the term “unthinkable” in all its iterations
“problematic,” he writes, “The truth is that
the employment of ‘the unthinkable’ in this letter,
when weight is given both to the meaning of this term in U.S.
strategic circles and to the other relevant uses of the term in
2001, points us in the direction of the U.S. military and
intelligence communities.” I am reminded of Orwell’s
point in 1984:
“a
heretical thought – that is, a
thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc – should be
literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on
words.” Thus the government and media’s use of
“unthinkable” becomes a classic case of
“doublethink.” The unthinkable is unthinkable.
-
9/11. This is the key usage that has reverberated down the
years around which the others revolve. It is an anomalous
numerical designation applied to an historical event, and
obviously also the emergency telephone number. Try to think of
another numerical appellation for an important event in American
history. The future editor of The New York Times and Iraq war
promoter, Bill Keller, introduced this connection the following
morning in a NY Times op-ed piece,
“America’s
Emergency Line: 911”. The linkage of the attacks to a
permanent national emergency was thus subliminally introduced, as
Keller mentioned Israel nine times and seven times compared the
U.S. situation to that of Israel as a target for terrorists. His
first sentence reads: “An Israeli response to
America’s aptly dated wake-up call might well be,
‘Now you know.’” By referring to September 11th
as 9/11, an endless national emergency became wedded to an
endless war on terror aimed at preventing Hitler-like terrorists
from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could create
another ground zero or holocaust. It is a term that pushes all
the right buttons evoking unending social fear and anxiety. It is
language as sorcery; it is propaganda at its best. Even
The Journal of 9/11
Studies uses the term that has become a fixture
of public consciousness through endless repetition. As George W. Bush
would
later put it as he connected Saddam Hussein to
“9/11” and pushed for the Iraq war, “...we
cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that
could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
All the ingredients for a linguistic mind-control smoothie had
been blended.
I have concluded – and this is impossible to prove
definitively at this time because of the nature of such
propagandistic techniques – that the use of all these
words/numbers is part of a highly sophisticated linguistic
mind-control campaign waged to create a narrative that has lodged
in the minds of hundreds of millions of people and is very hard
to dislodge. It is why I don’t speak of “9/11”
any more. I refer to those events as the attacks of September 11,
2001. But I am not sure how to undo the damage.
Lance deHaven-Smith puts it well in
Conspiracy Theory in America.
The rapidity with which the new language of the war on
terror appeared and took hold; the synergy between terms and
their mutual connections to WWII nomenclatures; and above all
the connections between many terms and the emergency motif of
“9/11” and “9-1-1” – any one of
these factors alone, but certainly all of them together –
raise the possibility that work on this linguistic construct
began long before 9/11.... It turns out that elite political
crime, even treason, may actually be official policy.
Needless to say, his use of the words “possibility”
and “may” are in order when one sticks to strict
empiricism. However, when one reads his full text, it is apparent
to me that he considers these “coincidences” part of
a conspiracy. I have also reached that conclusion. As Thoreau put
in his underappreciated humorous way, “Some circumstantial
evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the
milk.”
The evidence for linguistic mind control, while the subject of
this essay, does not stand alone, of course. It underpins the
actual attacks of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks
that are linked. The official explanations for
these events by themselves do not stand up to elementary logic
and are patently false, as proven by thousands of well-respected
professional researchers from all walks of life – i.e. engineers,
pilots, architects, and scholars from many disciplines.[8]
To
paraphrase the prescient Vince Salandria, who said it long ago
concerning the assassination of President Kennedy, the attacks of
2001 are “a false mystery concealing state
crimes.”[9]
If one objectively studies the 2001 attacks together with the
language adopted to explain and preserve them in social memory,
the “mystery” emerges from the realm of the
unthinkable and becomes utterable. “There is no
mystery.” How to communicate this when the corporate
mainstream media serve the function of the government’s
mockingbird (as in
Operation
Mockingbird) repeating and repeating
the same narrative in the same language; that is the difficult
task we are faced with.
Words have a power to enchant and mesmerize. Linguistic
mind-control, especially when linked to traumatic events such as
the September 11th and anthrax attacks, can strike people dumb
and blind. It often makes some subjects
“unthinkable” and “unspeakable” (to
quote Jim Douglass
quoting Thomas Merton in JFK and the
Unspeakable[10]: the unspeakable
“is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken
even before the words are said.”).
We need a new vocabulary to speak of these terrible things.
-
David Ray Griffin Books [
↩]
-
The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration & 9/11 (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2004), view all editions in libraries
-
The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, A Critique of the Kean-Zelikow Report (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2004), view all editions in libraries
See Also: The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie
-
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics & Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2004), view all editions in libraries
-
9/11 and American Empire, Volume 1: Intellectuals Speak Out, D.R. Griffin & P.D. Scott editors (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2006), view all editions in libraries
-
Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), view all editions in libraries
-
9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter To congress And The Press (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2008), view all editions in libraries
-
The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-up & the Exposé (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2008), view all editions in libraries
-
The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why The Final Official Report About 9/11 is Unscientific and False (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2010), view all editions in libraries
-
9/11 Ten Years Later – When State Crimes against Democracy Succeed (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2011), view all editions in libraries
-
Cognitive Infiltration - An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishing, 2011), view all editions in libraries
-
Bush & Cheney – How They Ruined America and the World (Northhampton, MA: Olive Branch Press / Interlink Publishing, December 2016), and DRG: Why I Wrote Another 9/11 Book, Journal of 9/11 Studies, September 2016
David Ray Griffin Articles
-
9/11 and the American Empire: How Should Religious People Respond?, lecture at Univ. Of Wisconsin, Madison, April 18, 2005.
-
9/11, American Empire, and Christian Faith, lecture at Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara, CA, March 25, 2006
-
9/11: The Myth and the Reality, lecture at Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, CA, March 30, 2006
-
9/11 and Nationalist Faith: How Faith Can Be Illuminating or Blinding, lecture at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO, October 19, 2007
-
What Really Happened on September 11?, DRG interview by Sam Vaknin, September 7, 2008
-
Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11?, OpEdNews.com, 2008
-
Graeme MacQueen
received his Ph.D. in
Buddhist Studies from Harvard University and taught in the Religious
Studies Department of McMaster University for 30 years. While at
McMaster he became founding Director of its Centre for Peace
Studies, after which he helped develop the B.A. program in Peace
Studies and oversaw the development of peace-building projects in
Sri Lanka, Gaza, Croatia and Afghanistan. Graeme MacQueen was a
member of the organizing committee of the
“
Toronto Hearings”
held on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and is co-editor of
“
The Journal
of 9/11 Studies” – a peer-reviewed, electronic-only journal
covering research related to the events of September 11, 2001.
[
↩]
See Also by Graeme MacQueen:
-
Attorneys Hear Eyewitness Evidence of 9/11 Explosive Destruction from Dr. Graeme MacQueen (44:04), presented at Justice in Focus: 9/11 | 2016, A Weekend Symposium, The Cooper Union, NYC, September 11, 2016. Note: The youbube film of this presentation was still available in Ocotber 2016. As of March 2017 it has been taken down. The above link is to a mp3 recording of that film. Sound quality is intermittently very poor in the first 3:10 min:secs and is fine from then on.
-
War On Terror Or War On Democracy? The Physical Intimidation Of Legislatures, text of talk at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Truth and Shadows, November 18, 2015
-
The October 22, 2014, Ottawa Shootings: Why Canadians Need A Public Inquiry, A Report for Democracy Probe International, October 3, 2015; and follow-up: “We need a public inquiry into the 2014 Ottawa shootings,” Hamilton Spectator, October 21, 2016
-
The 2001 Anthrax Deception, The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, Clarity Press, 2014.
-
Graeme MacQueen: A Brief Overview of Some of the Eyewitness Statements, The Toronto Hearings on 9/11: Uncovering Ten Years of Deception, September 2011
-
Lance deHaven-Smith
is a Professor Emeritus in the Reubin O’D. Askew School of
Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. He
received his B.A. degree from the University of Georgia,
summa
cum laude, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.
A former President of the Florida Political Science Association,
Dr. deHaven-Smith is the author of over a dozen books on topics
ranging from religion and political philosophy to Florida
government and politics. His books on Florida include:
Government in the Sunshine State (co-authored with David
Colburn);
Florida’s Megatrends (also co-authored with David
Colburn);
The Florida Voter; Environmental Concern in Florida and
the Nation;
The 1998 Almanac of Florida Politics (with Tom
Fiedler);
The 2000 Almanac of Florida Politics (also with Tom
Fiedler); and
The Atlas of Florida Voting and Public Opinion.
Published in 2005,
The Battle for Florida: An Annotated Compendium
of Materials from the 2000 Presidential Election analyzes the
disputed 2000 presidential election. His most recent book is
Conspiracy Theory in America,
published in hardback by the University of Texas Press in 2013
and paperback in 2014.
[
↩]
See Also:
-
Conspiracy Theory in America extract from the book, OffGuardian.org, Sp 4, 2016
-
Conspiracy Denial in the U.S. Media, Journal of 9/11 Studies, Letters, March 2013
-
Beyond Conspiracy Theory / SCADs - Patterns of High Crime in American Government, explores the conceptual, methodological, and practical implications of research on 'state crimes against democracy' (SCADs), American Behavioral Scientist, February 2010
-
State Crimes Against Democracy
-
The Toronto Hearings on 9/11 Uncut - Day 1 Lance DeHaven-Smith, PressForTruth.ca, 2011
-
Thomas (“T.H.”) Meyer
was born and resides in Basel Switzerland, where he is the founder
and publisher of
Perseus
Verlag, and editor of the monthly journals
Der Europäer and
The Present Age.
He is involved in Anthroposophical
work as a free lance writer, publisher, lecturer and teacher
of Rudolf Steiner”s legacy of Spiritual Science. Anthroposophy
is a discipline of research as well as a path of knowledge,
service, personal growth and social engagement. Introduced
and developed by
Rudolf Steiner,
it is concerned with all
aspects of human life, spirit and humanity’s future
evolution and well-being.
“The world seems to be standing within a demonic storm that
threatens to overwhelm it”, states Meyer at the outset of
In The Sign Of Five: 1879-1899-1933-1998-Today,
The Five Spiritual Events, Tasks and Beings of the First Half of the
Age of Michael
(East Sussex, United Kingdom:
Temple Lodge Press: 2015).
Building on Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, Meyer’s
career as a writer and researcher has dealt with this question
from a variety of standpoints. By illuminating, for his
contemporaries, the spiritual struggles of key individuals in the
anthroposophical movement who might otherwise have fallen into
complete obscurity, and by shining a clear light on the unfolding
events of our time, Meyer’s life’s work has been an
effort to continually remind us of the central task of our epoch:
the epistemological struggle with evil. The conscious recognition
of this task is the crucial first step in meeting this challenge
of our time.
[
↩]
See Also:
-
REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES
Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September 2000
[
↩]
by Donald Kagan & Gary Schmidtt,
Project Co-Chairmen,
and Thomas Donnelly,
Principle Author
(Available in <
HTML> and
<
PDF> formats).
As stated in the paper’s Introduction,
The Project for the New American Century was established in the
spring of 1997. From its inception, the Project has been
concerned with the decline in the strength of America’s
defenses, and in the problems this would create for the exercise
of American leadership around the globe and, ultimately, for the
preservation of peace.... At present the United States faces no
global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to
preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the
future as possible. There are, however, potentially powerful
states dissatisfied with the current situation and eager to
change it, if they can, in directions that endanger the
relatively peaceful, prosperous and free condition the world
enjoys today. Up to now, they have been deterred from doing so by
the capability and global presence of American military power.
But, as that power declines, relatively and absolutely, the happy
conditions that follow from it will be inevitably undermined.
Preserving the desirable strategic situation in which the United
States now finds itself requires a globally preeminent military
capability both today and in the future. But years of cuts in
defense spending have eroded the American military’s combat
readiness, and put in jeopardy the Pentagon’s plans for
maintaining military superiority in the years ahead.
Increasingly, the U.S. military has found itself undermanned,
inadequately equipped and trained, straining to handle
contingency operations, and ill-prepared to adapt itself to the
revolution in military affairs. Without a well-conceived defense
policy and an appropriate increase in defense spending, the
United States has been letting its ability to take full advantage
of the remarkable strategic opportunity at hand slip away.
With this in mind, we began a project in the spring of 1998 to
examine the country’s defense plans and resource
requirements. We started from the premise that U.S. military
capabilities should be sufficient to support an American grand
strategy committed to building upon this unprecedented
opportunity. We did not accept pre-ordained constraints that
followed from assumptions about what the country might or might
not be willing to expend on its defenses.
In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense
strategy outlined by the
Cheney
Defense Department in the waning
days of the [George Herbert Walker] Bush Administration. The
Defense Policy Guidance
(DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint
for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great
power rival, and shaping the international security order in line
with American principles and interests. Leaked before it had been
formally approved, the document was criticized as an effort by
“cold warriors” to keep defense spending high and
cuts in forces small despite the collapse of the Soviet Union;
not surprisingly, it was subsequently buried by the new
administration.
-
13 occurrences of the word “homeland”
can be found in “REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES”
by performing a search inside the
<
HTML> version.
[
↩]
-
THE 2001 ANTHRAX DECEPTION,
The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy
by Graeme MacQueen,
Clarity Press,
2014. [
↩]
In the author’s words, the book sets out to prove five key points:
- The anthrax attacks were carried out by a group of perpetrators, not by a lone wolf;
- The group that perpetrated this crime included deep insiders within the US executive branch;
- This group of perpetrators was linked to or identical with, the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks;
- The anthrax attacks were the result of a conspiracy meant to help redefine the enemy of the West, revising the global conflict framework from the Cold War to the Global War on Terror;
- The establishment of the Global War on Terror, to which the anthrax attacks contributed, enabled the US executive branch to reduce the civil liberties of people in the US and to attack other nations. Domestically and externally, these events were also used to weaken the rule of law.
See Also:
-
-
-