David Ray Griffin's Fake Phone Calls from the 9/11 Planes Theory Debunked Again

David Ray Griffin has responded to Paul Zarembka's recent critique of his fake phone calls from the 9/11 planes theory.

Zarembka comments:

Late arrivals were those TRULY last day or even last minute. Here is what my ITHP article reported, in addition to pp. 51 and 309 in The Hidden History of 9-11:

--"For late arrivals, Griffin could also read Jere Longman (Among the Heroes, New York: Harper Collins, 2002). There we find that Tom Burnett switched from flight 91 (p. 8), Jeremy Glick’s prior day flight had been canceled (p. 20), Mark Bingham was using a “companion pass” (p. 28), and Lauren Grandcolas switched from flight 91 (pp. 12 and 128). Also, Elizabeth Wainio switched at the last minute from a flight to Denver (www.ebroadcast.com.au/lookup/encyclopedia/ho/Honor_Elizabeth_Wainio.html). Todd Beamer had delayed a September 10 departure (www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=todd_beamer) although it is unclear how late he booked UA 93. For its convenience, I can recommend 'Last-Minute Pilots, Passengers, and Flight Attendants: The Unexplained Oddity of 9/11' (at http://shoestring911.blogspot.com/2008/03/last-minute-pilots-passengers-and.html)."

Flight 91 had the same destination from the same airport scheduled for one hour and 20 minutes later (if I recall correctly the exact timing). Burnett and Grandcolas seemed to have taken advantage of being early to the airport to switch to 93 instead of 91 (to their great misfortune).

Voice morphing is the single most important issue in my 2700-word ITHP article. Griffin's book never mentions the issue of late arrivals and the problem of being able to morph those persons and also having needed personal family information. As I remarked in my article regarding his Chapter 5, "Griffin devotes seven pages to Burnett, while Beamer receives four pages, Glick has an equivalent of a page, and Bingham, Grandcolas and Wainio are three more for two short paragraphs each". For all of them, only voice morphing is offered to explain how the calls were faked.

In this morning's posting, I stated why I am unconvinced by Griffin's response (in 6000 words at that). He is speculating, without any evidence, that tens or hundreds of thousands of "possible passengers" on UA 93 had been taped over the years in preparation for 9-11-2001. Then perpetrators waited to see who happened to appear on the manifest as UA 93 leaves and executes morphed calls from a large data base. This is simply far-fetched, in my view.

At least I now know, for the first time, how Griffin answers the issue of late arrivals.

I think Griffin's failure to see the validity of Zarembka's criticisms stems from his black-or-white view that inside involvement and Al-Qaeda involvement in 9/11 are mutually exclusive.

Jonathan Kay offers another explanation in his book Among the Truthers:

Many come to their crankdom in middle age, or at the end of their their working lives, as they are casting about for some project to occupy their hyperactive brains. In some cases, cranks are high-functioning intellectuals frustrated by a menial profession... Many cranks have a Asperger's like-like obsession with arithmetic, flowcarts, maps, and lengthy data lists... What drives the cranks on an emotional level isn't the substance of their theories: Many of the Truther cranks I've interviewed-including David Ray Griffin, Barry Zwicker, and Paul Zarembka... treated the issue as a debating exercise, and seemed curiously detached from the profoundly disturbing implications that flow from their claims. What cranks truly crave is exhilarating sense of independence, control, and superiority that come from declaring oneself a self-sufficient intellectual force.

As I wrote in my review:

Economics Professor Paul Zarembka, who Kay mentions in his diatribe on cranks, has recently written that the work of Mike Williams at the debunking site 911myths.com has caused him "to reconsider [his] prior conclusion of high probability of insider trading in put options" for American and United airlines stocks. I have previously stated that I believe the insider trading issue had been effectively debunked. Again, not very cranky of us.

The fact of the matter is, the best criticism of debunkers, such as that of the 9/11 fake phone calls theory of David Ray Griffin (who Kay calls the "leading crank" of the movement) has been accepted and expanded upon by many truthers. In this case and with the no plane at the Pentagon claims, many 9/11 truth activists never accepted these claims in the first place.

And while Griffin and many others still don't accept these criticisms, a possibly cranky trait, its very existence proves the movement can accept criticism and can't be pigeonholed.

Still highly recommended is Griffin's analysis of the destruction of the WTC Towers and lack of air defense on 9/11. As well as his book The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, which I wrote about here.

Thank you professor Zarembka for your efforts to separate the wheat from the chaff; for the wheat cannot be debunked!