Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Screw Loose Change Blog on Psychological Study of Truthers and Debunkers Online - Me on Minutiae


Pat Curley of Screw Loose Change writes:
Psychological Study of Truthers and Debunkers Online

Worth a read... 
I do have an alternate explanation for this observation:
We also found that hostility was higher in persuasive arguments made by conventionalists than in those by conspiracists. As 9/11 conspiracism is by and large a minority viewpoint in the West (WorldPublicOpinion.org, 2008), this makes sense: conventionalists, rather than focusing on presenting novel information, instead attempt to enforce conformity to the majority viewpoint (Latanรฉ, 1981).
There's an element of truth in that; keeping people in line lends itself more to denigrating the opposition, whereas converting people requires gentler persuasion.  But there's another dynamic as well.  In general, Truthers know a great deal more of the minutiae of 9-11 than those debating them.  I have been at this for over 7 years now, and I'll freely admit that many if not most Truthers know more about that day than I do (although on the important issues I have them cold).  This is probably true for most conspiracy theories for an obvious reason; if you are into a conspiracy theory you are going to spend a lot more time studying up on the event than if you believe in the conventional explanation.

But of course, what happens when a conventionalist without a lot of background knowledge runs up against a conspiracy theorist who can provide a lot of detail?  He gets frustrated and angry; he knows he's right, but he cannot provide the evidence to support his opinions and hence tends to lash out.  There's an old joke about how lawyers work: When you have the facts on your side, pound the facts.  When you have the law on your side, pound the law.  When you have neither, pound the table.
Yeah, have us cold on the important issues do you, Pat? Issues like whether the NORAD stand-down, various whistleblowers, and physical evidence centered around the destruction of the 3 World Trade Center Buildings in New York, makes a strong enough case that the attacks involved substantial inside help, as to warrant a new investigation? Your trotting out of 9/11 Commission staffer Miles Kara's suggestion, that "the erroneous assertion that the military found out about Flight 93 long before they did," was due to erroneous log books, as a plausible reason for absolution of NORAD's "Lies", fails in the face of the minutiae, those "small and often not important details." But how could one know of the importance level of those details without knowing of them at all? Really though, it is no minor detail that that the initial report about Flight 93 is supported by statements from two NORAD commanders that they were already tracking the flight when it changed direction at 9:36. As noted on HistoryCommons.org:
Before 9:36 a.m. September 11, 2001: Officials Claim NORAD Is Monitoring Flight 93

According to one account given by NEADS Commander Robert Marr, some time before around 9:36 when it changes direction, while it is still flying west, Flight 93 is being monitored by NEADS. Marr describes how, “We don’t have fighters that way and we think [Flight 93 is] headed toward Detroit or Chicago.” He says he contacts a base in the area “so they [can] head off 93 at the pass.” Not only does NORAD know about the flight, but also, according to NORAD Commander Larry Arnold, “We watched the 93 track as it meandered around the Ohio-Pennsylvania area and started to turn south toward DC.” (This change of direction occurs around 9:36 a.m.) [Filson, 2003] This account completely contradicts the 9/11 Commission’s later claim that NEADS is first notified about Flight 93 at 10:07 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004
As Kevin Ryan recently put it, "credible explanations were never given for throwing out the years of testimony and evidence that supported entirely different timelines." The original timelines would have been strong evidence for complicity, because as Ryan notes, even NORAD’s 9/11 Commander Ralph Eberhart stated that, "if NORAD had been in the loop as the FAA said it was, his people would have been able 'to shoot down all three aircraft — all four aircraft.'"

And NORAD lied, AKA committed perjury, period. The Washington Post reported on August 2, 2006 that:
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources... "We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. 'It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."
Kean admitted they were lied to and he did not know why. He can think that the 9/11 Commission's story of outlandish incompetence is correct all he wants, but the fact remains that his report failed to tie up “those loose ends" and prove that ineptitude is all that was at hand. Another such loose end that cannot be debunked was noted in the 2004 Complaint & Petition to the NY Attorney General (Spitzer at the time) for a new criminal investigation into 9/11:
Also necessary would be data on cases of errant planes or unknowns in which no scramble orders were issued. Of special interest would be the prior performance within NORAD’s Northeastern Air Defense Sector (“NEADS”), which is headquartered at Rome, New York. Such a cumulative analysis–with special attention to cases when passenger planes deviated from course in the air-traffic control zones within which the 9/11 attacks occurred–would provide indispensable context for serious research into the subject of air defense response on September 11. This data is currently unavailable to the public, and there is no indication such an analysis was undertaken by the Kean Commission.
Regarding whistleblower accounts of prior-knowledge indicating complicity, there is mucho importante minutiae, AKA corroborating evidence, for the whistleblower's statement to 9/11 family member Patty Casazza that "the government knew the exact day, the type of attack, and the targets," whereas Pat is just brushing it aside based on his world view which dictates it had to be "some con man" she was speaking to.

As Fran Shure at colorado911visibility.org pointed out to me, Casazza's account corroborates an earlier account by David Schippers, former Chief Investigative Counsel for the US House Judiciary Committee and head prosecutor responsible for conducting the impeachment against former president Bill Clinton. Schippers stated that at the behest of several FBI agents he had attempted multiple times to warn US Attorney John Ashcroft, along with other federal officials, of the impending attacks weeks before they occurred, only to be stalled and rebuffed in each attempt.

As summarized in the books The War on Freedom and The War on Truth by Nafeez Ahmed, who personally corresponded with Schippers, "According to Schippers, these agents knew, months before the 11th September attacks, the names of the hijackers, the targets of their attacks, the proposed dates, and the sources of their funding, along with other information."

The FBI command, however, cut short their investigations threatening the agents with prosecution under the National Security Act if they publicized this information.

Ahmed has stated, "In The War on Freedom, I merely laid out facts and lines of inquiry for an official investigation. The book was the first read by the Jersey Girls, informing their work with the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, and is part of the 9/11 Commission Collection at the US National Archives (a collection of 99 books, copies of which were provided to each Commissioner)."

Despite this fact, the account of David Shippers is nowhere to be found in The 9/11 Commission Report.

Jesse Ventura's book American Conspiracies recounts another similar warning passed along to John Ashcroft, Ventura writes:
Dr. Parke Godfrey, an associate professor of computer science at Toronto's York University, said under oath in a New York courtroom that a longtime associate of his, Susan Lindauer, warned him several times and as late as August 2001 "that we expected a major attack on the southern part of Manhattan, and that the attack would encompass the World Trade Center," an attack "that would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon." Lindauer, who says she was a CIA asset, claimed to have made an attempt to inform John Ashcroft at the Justice Department, who referred her to the Office of Counter-Terrorism.
Dismissal of this as corroborating evidence doesn't debunk the fact that we will never know if any of these individuals are pulling off an unpaid con job unless we have an investigation willing to investigate their accounts.

Commenting on Jon Gold's book, Pat has wrote:
The "ignored and censored whistleblowers" include Patty Cassazza's mysterious roadside informant who claimed that the US government knew everything about the attacks including the date and method. Gold bitterly notes that I "debunked" that claim by saying that Patty was duped by a conman. But note the oddball response from the Truthers to that particular claim. Sibel Edmonds comes up with the LIHOP faction's dream witness and what happens? Complete and utter lack of curiosity about him or her. If I were a Truther, I'd be asking Patty about this person--was it a man or a woman? How old? Did he say what branch or agency of the government he was in? Can we get him on tape?
As Gold points out in his "Facts Speak..." article, Cassazza stated that most whitleblowers did not come forward because they were not subpoenaed by the 9/11 Commission, which in doing so would ensure them not being retaliated against like FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was, as detailed in the ACLU article, "Sibel Edmonds: A Patriot Silenced, Unjustly Fired but Fighting Back to Help Keep America Safe." So shame on the 9/11 Commission, not truthers. In an open letter to the 9/11 Commission, Edmonds reported that there was "specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama bin Laden," that mentioned major cities, airplanes, approximate timeframe, and operatives already in place in the US. This was reported by FBI agents to Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism Thomas Frields at the FBI Washington Field Office, but was subsequently ignored.

In 2011 Edmonds reaffirmed these points as factual and provided the testimony of the agent who first raised them. As Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Scootle Royale wrote, "Pat Curley is confident that if we were to ever see the unredacted testimony, it will bear no resemblance to what Sibel posted. Well, how about supporting the truth movement in a quest for a new investigation so we can maybe see it unredacted then? No? Didn't think so."

Lastly, were explosives used? No debunking the fact that if the 9/11 probers hadn't skipped key forensic tests we might have settled that issue long ago. I'm still working on getting it laid to rest once and for all with the campaign I'm helping spearhead at MarkBasile.org, if you want to help out! No use looking for what's not there the government investigators said. A circle back to them retort, no way to know unless we look. F-ing simple!

Again, no shortage of missed "minutiae" on this topic by Pat.

I might be wrong about where I suspect this all leads, but you are wrong that we shouldn't have an investigation that gives credible explanations for contradictions, investigates whistleblower claims, and conducts forensic tests. If 9/11 didn't have an inside element, what's to stop such a scenario from taking place in the future when we get investigations like this?