Preliminary reply to “nanothermite”

In reply to my post Back from a long hiatus, “nanothermite” wrote:

Now, Diane, I thought you claimed in the past to be scientific or that using a scientific approach was the way forward. How can you claim to be a 9/11 truth activist for a few years and thoroughly familiarize yourself with the scientific evidence of controlled demolition

I’ve pointed out for a long time that a lot of the more popular presentations of this evidence, including Richard Gage’s, are either mistaken or incomplete on various points. See, for example, my post Demolition of WTC: Let’s not overstate the case, please, written back in November 2007.

At the time I wrote that post, I nevertheless believed that a few of the popular arguments for WTC demolition were very strong, including: (1) the almost straight-down nature of the collapse of WTC 7, and (2) the iron-rich spherules as evidence of thermite.

Tracking down data on intercepts

Justin A. Martell has called attention to a 911blogger post by Aidan Monaghan, Debunking Popular Mechanics?: PM Book Alleges FAA Source For Statistical Data; FAA Concedes No Such Data Records Exist.

Air defense failures, war games, etc.

In a comment in reply to my post Hiding the planting of incendiaries, explosives, or whatever? Response to a common a priori objection, “realitydesign” wrote:

“Can you tell me one significant claim that the truth movement gets demonstrably correct?”

Comment by ref1 — February 14, 2008 @ 1:45 pm

One thing that stands out is the 4 verified WAR GAMES on 9/11 facilitating the ensuing documented confusion in terms of (not) responding adequately.

Indeed there certainly were war games (military exercises) on 9/11.

However, there has been some debate about what the war games imply.

Common a priori objections by “debunkers,” including arguments from authority and the “someone would have talked” and “too many people” arguments

Every now and then I get a wave of “debunkers” visiting this blog. They’re welcome to post here; I’ve learned a lot from them. But, in the future, I would like to try to avoid certain repetitious arguments, or at least confine those particular arguments to relevant threads such as this one.

There are some a priori arguments they almost always bring up in an effort to prove that there could not have been any government complicity in the attacks of 9/11. In recent debates here, those arguments got jumbled together with other, meatier issues in comment threads.

To avoid such jumbling in the future, I’ve decided to devote this post to the more common a priori arguments. I’ll then add a rule to my comment policy requiring that, in the future, these and similar a priori arguments be discussed only in comments below this post (or other posts on these same topics), rather than jumbled together with other, more substantive discussions.

In this post I’ll also provide a brief review of my debates with “debunkers” in general, for the benefit of “debunkers” visiting this blog for the first time. Some of the discussions we’ve had here have been very worthwhile.

Explicit stand-down order found! NORAD tape timestamps altered to bury it???

I really was NOT expecting to find this. An explicit stand down order would be too obvious, one would think. But, lo and behold, here it is – although, as we shall see, it not yet clear what relevance, if any, it may actually have as evidence, given the alleged timing and the alleged context. I found it in, of all places, the NORAD tapes, as quoted in the August 2006 Vanity Fair article 9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes by Michael Bronner.

If the timestamps on the tapes are to be believed, an explicit no-shoot order was given after Flight 93 had crashed, but while it was still believed that there might be other attacking planes in the air. As we shall see later, there is reason to question the timestamp. Perhaps the no-shoot order might actually have been given earlier, at a time when it could actually have caused harm? But for now I’ll assume that the timestamp is accurate.

“9/11: Press for Truth” – my response to an official-story defender’s comments

ref1 has asked me to comment on this review of “9/11: Press for Truth”:

George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Myers: Their whereabouts on 9/11

During the attacks of 9/11/2001, pretty much the entire top of the U.S. military chain of command found more pressing things to do than to give their full attention to the attacks. This was a serious dereliction of duty, especially on the part of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, given the regulation (CJCSI 3610.01A, discussed in the comments on my post Why we need a new investigation of 9/11 – first draft of a leaflet) requiring the Secretary of Defense to approve any intervention involving use of lethal force.

My main reasons for being suspicious about 9/11

Below is a summary of the things I personally find strangest about 9/11, and which lead me to suspect complicity by high officials in the U.S. government.

• Bush’s under-reaction
• The lack of air defense
• WTC 7
• The war in Afghanistan
• Credible allegations of U.S. government complicity in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
• Other issues
• The most important issue: A truly independent investigation is needed

“Stand down” feasibility, etc. – Reply to “9/11 Guide,” part 2 (to ref1)

Continuing my review of ref1’s site 9/11 Guide, I’ll now look at some of the items on the Documents & Interviews page.

First on the page is Q&A With 9/11 Boston Center Air Traffic Controller. Unfortunately this interview is anonymous, with the air traffic controller referred to only as “Cheap Shot,” so this interview can’t really be used as evidence. But, for what it’s worth, it is very interesting.

Reply to “9/11 Guide,” part 1 (to ref1)

The owner of the 9/11 Guide site has posted comments here now and then, using the name “ref1.” So, I’ll now post a brief review of ref1’s site.

More about the FAA, NORAD, and intercepts

A couple of nights ago, I posted the thread FAA regs, in effect 9/11/2001, found on Internet Archive in the TruthAction forum, asking if anyone knows of any pre-9/11 examples of intercepts of passenger jets approaching major cities. Detailed knowledge of such cases would be helpful in establishing whether the performance of the FAA and/or NORAD on 9/11/2001 was, in fact, drastically below par for its era.

So far, no such specific cases have been brought to my attention. But some other very interesting information has been posted to the above thread, including the following excerpt from the Appendix on Air Defense on 9/11 in the 2004 Complaint & Petition to the NY Attorney General (Spitzer at the time) for a new criminal investigation into 9/11:

“Stand down” evidence on the “Emperor’s Clothes” site, including FAA web pages

The website Emperor’s Clothes contains a fairly good, though outdated and incomplete, presentation of evidence for a NORAD stand down on 9/11 (or at least a de facto stand down, even if there wasn’t an explicit stand down order). It’s outdated because it does not take into account the 9/11 Commission Report, which put all the blame on the FAA for not contacting NORAD soon enough about all four planes. It’s also lacking some other pieces of information I still haven’t seen anywhere, but which would be needed in order to prove that either the FAA or NORAD was indeed responding slower than normal on 9/11.

But the “Emperor’s Clothes” website does contain quite a few relevant links to the FAA site, useful in analyzing whether the newest version of the official story is credible, and also very useful (though not sufficient) on the more general issue of whether Flight 77 could have been intercepted (and then either forced down or shot down) before it hit the Pentagon. These links are all broken, but I was able to find all the referenced pages on the Internet Archive site. Links to the archived FAA pages, and some other relevant archived pages, will be provided further down on this page. These pages are a vital piece of evidence, filling one of the gaps I complained about in War games, etc.: A preliminary overview of some of Mark Robinowitz’s evidence about 9/11.

War games, etc.: A preliminary overview of some of Mark Robinowitz’s evidence about 9/11

In a comment on my post about Chip Berlet and “Conspiracism”, charlienneb has asked me to recommend an assertion of Mark Robinowitz’s for him to take a look at. So, I’ll now try to present what Robinowitz has said is some of his best evidence. I cannot vouch for everything he says, because he deals with a lot of matters I personally have not yet researched in depth.

For me personally, regarding 9/11, the smoking gun is the straight-down vertical, almost-symmetrical collapse of WTC 7, plus all the subsequent hampering and fudging of investigations. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time studying arguments for and against the idea that WTC 1 and 2 too were demolished with explosives and/or thermite/thermate, and I’m inclined to think it’s highly likely that they were.

But Robinowitz, on the other hand, prefers not to rely on demolition theories, or on physical-evidence arguments of any kind. He has made some good arguments against relying on physical evidence. Most people have almost no scientific background whatsoever and hence are not in a good position to evaluate physical evidence on their own. Although I’m no expert either, I personally do have a strong general scientific and engineering background, including two years of physics in college, which, I believe, is enough background for me to evaluate most (though not all) of the scientific arguments that have been made on both sides. But most people don’t share my background, so it would behoove me to see if I can build a solid case for government complicity in the 9/11 attacks (at least LIHOP, if not MIHOP) without any reference to demolition, either in the direct physical evidence or in the evidence of a coverup.