: By Adam Syed; August 1, 2023

"A lie can travel halfway around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."

- a quote attributed to Mark Twain

"Name just one. Name just one structural engineering expert who said that it is not feasible that the planes caused the towers to go down."

- Amy Goodman to David Ray Griffin in 2004

Astonishing as it is to write this, I have been a 9/11 truth, justice, and awareness activist for 18 years now. June 2005 was the month when I went from feeling fairly sure we had been lied to about 9/11, to being 100% sure that the official story was false, and that there was no going back to believing it. I knew that I had to be 100% sure because I did not want to blow my time on a cause only to later feel egg on my face and realize I had been duped and misguided. As such, I looked at all the 'debunking' literature I could get my hands on at the time, most notably Popular Mechanics. Observing all the flaws in PM's literature only served to reinforce that the truth movement was on the correct side of history.

In June 2005, when I began my life as an activist for the cause, Loose Change had not yet gone viral. At the time, the most popular videos on the internet advocating for controlled demolition were In Plane Site and Painful Deceptions; the former was made by a musician and the latter by a software engineer. At the time, Dr. David Ray Griffin had published his original The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 (NPH), one year prior, and had just published a second book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions.

When Dr. Griffin published his NPH in 2004, he was invited on to Democracy Now! hosted by Amy Goodman. Democracy Now! is a left-leaning outlet that was heavily opposed to Bush's administration and his war in Iraq. When she interviewed Dr. Griffin, she pressed him (at 47:20):

"Name just one. Name just one structural engineering expert who said it is not feasible that the planes caused the towers to go down."

This was 2004. Dr. Steven Jones, physics professor at BYU, would not publish his original thermite paper for another year, and it was three years before Richard Gage founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The strength of Griffin's argument hinged largely on testimonies from firefighters and first responders regarding explosions as well as testimony that it was "like" a demolition, but 'debunkers' could spin those testimonies as analogous comparisons, and say that rivets popping or materials burning up can create explosive-like sounds. But in 2004, there wasn't a vocal structural engineer screaming from the top of Mount Everest that this could have only been a controlled demolition. So, when Ms. Goodman asked her question, Dr. Griffin had no choice but to respond with:

"I’m sorry, I don’t have that information at my fingertips right at this moment."

As somebody who has been in the movement since June 2005, I can attest with certainty that the popular crest of interest in the topic of 9/11 truth came in 2006. There were three things that contributed to this crest: the renewed attention because of the 5th anniversary, the turning tide against the Bush administration and the Iraq war, and the advent of YouTube (and its predecessor Google Video) allowing the viral popularity of Loose Change, which coincided with those first two factors.

While the quote about a lie traveling around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on cannot be firmly traced to Mark Twain, its truth is apt. Unfortunately for the 9/11 truth movement, the scores of credentialed experts in appropriate fields did not start coming out and putting their shoes on until after the 5th anniversary crest of interest had subsided. But, during that crest, and before it, like Goodman in 2004, Popular Mechanics and the rest of the debunker camp were very successful in disseminating the notion that every relevant expert in the world supported the official story and that not one single expert with the appropriate knowledge supported the truth movement's claims.

I'm sure that Amy Goodman truly believed in 2004 that no experts supported controlled demolition. I have often wondered: what if Richard Gage had started his petition in 2002 instead of 2007? What if, in 2004, Dr. Griffin had been able to answer: "More than 3,000 architects and engineers have said this, and I can give you the names and credentials of several dozen who are specifically structural engineers! I can even show you the testimony of European demolition expert, Danny Jowenko!"

But as Dr. Griffin was not able to name one single structural engineer, many listeners would regard this as a win for the debunkers. For balance, Ms. Goodman also featured debunker Chip Berlet, from a left-leaning think tank called Political Research Associates. (The subtle messaging here was: "it's not just Bush supporters and FOX who are opposing your message; we anti-war lefties also think you are barking up the wrong tree.") After Dr. Griffin conceded he couldn't name a structural engineer who supported controlled demolition, Berlet delivered his "knockout punch":

"Well, there was an extensive engineering study of the Twin Towers and what caused their collapse which is publicly available and conducted by one of the largest forensic engineering companies in America."

He did not name the firm, nor is it cited in Democracy Now!'s article, but as far as official reports, this was still one year before the NIST report on WTC1 and 2, and four years before its report on WTC7. In 2004, there was the FEMA report, which, for the Twin Towers, promoted the "pancake theory" that even NIST itself later abandoned, replacing it with the "crush down-crush up" theory. And FEMA passed the buck of WTC7's collapse with the following: "The specifics of the fires in WTC7, and how they caused the building to collapse, remain unknown at this time."

The 2006 crest of 9/11 truth was so visible that mainstream media had no choice but to cover its existence. So, being "balanced," they gave some airtime to Dr. Griffin, Dylan Avery, and a few others, but then they would always let a debunker have the last word, as was the case with Ms. Goodman and Mr. Berlet.

We can have our debates and speculations as far as who in the media is knowingly covering up 9/11 truth, versus those who genuinely believe that the movement's claims have been debunked. But the mainstream media around that time firmly cemented a narrative that all experts supported the official story and only amateurs with no expertise in anything were truthers.

I also remember that around this time, Amazon allowed comments on people's customer reviews of books. I would spend quite a lot of time arguing against official story apologists on threads for both Dr. Griffin's books and the Popular Mechanics book. Like Ms. Goodman, they were so sure that every expert in the world had no problems with the official account that they would say: "maybe you conspiracy folks would be taken more seriously if you could find ONE structural engineer to agree with you, but I won't be holding my breath for that one."

Since the mainstream media crafted their narrative around the 5th anniversary that the conspiracy theories had all been very conclusively debunked, they then offered radio silence when architects and engineers (and former pilots, air traffic controllers, and various relevant experts to other aspects of 9/11) did start coming forward. And this, for me, was an epiphany in my understanding of the iron curtain that is the mainstream establishment. As someone who was following the cause as it unfolded, my naivety was that I thought the mainstream media would start covering the issue when AE911Truth was founded. Much the way we saw, day by day, the mainstream media report "and now yet another woman has come forward to accuse Bill Cosby..." I thought the mainstream media would start reporting "and now yet another verified structural engineer has put his name to the petition alleging..."

But, even though in 2004 Amy Goodman (and online shills) would have supposedly been impressed with "just one" structural engineer speaking in favor of controlled demolition, neither she or virtually any mainstream media outlet made any stir when the AE911Truth petition reached 1,000, or 2,000, or 3,000. The one exception was when Geraldo Rivera featured engineer Tony Szamboti and 9/11 family member Bob McIlvaine on his FOX News show in 2010, at which time the petition was 1,300. Geraldo declared that he was very impressed by the number of experts who were on board, and indicated he would start taking the movement's claims more seriously, but never followed up with the story.

All of the mainstream media greeted the 2012 documentary 9/11 Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out with deafening silence. Not one mainstream media outlet dared to review ANY of David Ray Griffin's 10 or so books on the topic. Now, not only does the AE911Truth petition have close to 4,000 signatories from those with the relevant expertise, but at least four scientific papers plus the University of Alaska Fairbanks study, (links below), validate what the 9/11 truth movement has been saying for two decades. (Funny enough, the first of those links is to the NIST website itself, which has one of Dr. Jones's essays posted in its entirety.)

While Ms. Goodman has been quiet on 9/11 for many years, today's mainstream media reared its ugly head at the 20th anniversary. Instead of acknowledging that indeed, there were thousands of credentialed experts who supported the claims made by "those Loose Change guys," they went into one of the most vicious attack modes I have ever witnessed. Article after article referred to AE911Truth as a "group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists" even though the group sticks to scientific and technical facts that refute the official story, refraining from publicly theorizing who was behind it and how it was done. The NIST Report was declared to be an irrefutable scientific investigation, and the University of Alaska study was not mentioned at all.

In his article that successfully resulted in Spike Lee capitulating and pulling the 30-minute 9/11 truth segment from his HBO series, Slate Magazine columnist Jeremy Stahl wrote that Lee featuring the spokesmen for AE911Truth alongside those for NIST, so that viewers could make up their own minds whose arguments sounded stronger, was akin to featuring Holocaust deniers alongside the director of the Wiesenthal Center, or climate deniers alongside legitimate climate scientists. He then, of course, proceeded to declare that all of these conspiracy theories had been debunked in the mid-2000s by Popular Mechanics. Even though, of course, Popular Mechanics has itself been thoroughly refuted by the very people Stahl was seeking to silence.

I know that Amy Goodman and Jeremy Stahl are two different people who said different things in different decades. But collectively, they are part of the establishment; in this case, the left-leaning journalistic establishment. At first, that establishment challenged us to name one credentialed expert who supported us, with the implication that if we could do so, our message would be taken more seriously. But when numerous such experts were about to air on HBO at the 20th anniversary, that same establishment screamed "No! We can't have millions of people hearing what these folks have to say! HBO must step in and stop this!" I hope this infuriates you as much as it does me.

Speaking of the University of Alaska study, while its existence has so far been greeted with radio silence from the mainstream media, we can predict the attack pattern of the naysayers if a podcaster with a large audience like Joe Rogan suddenly makes its existence known to millions overnight, largely because these things have already been said on Quora and Reddit threads. They will say that we can't possibly trust the results of the study because the funding came from AE911Truth. Quite the irony to hear this from people who have no problem believing that NIST, an arm of the federal Department of Commerce and under the Bush administration's control, was neutral and unbiased. Or, if they don't take that naysaying route, they will say "okay, that's just UAF, now let's see Princeton and Stanford and MIT replicate this study's results." But of course, nobody has or will refute the science.

Despite that AE911Truth has more than answered the call for a substantial list of experts to stand by the evidence of controlled demolition of the WTC towers on 9/11, and that the organization has existed now for a decade and a half, the media establishment maintains its staunch refusal to acknowledge any credence behind the issue. Such would likely be the case, even if millions of engineers suddenly signed AE911Truth’s petition and became vocally active in calling for a new investigation, or if a hundred more university studies corroborated UAF's findings. This is because the mainstream media’s aim has been to stifle any challenge to the official story, and to cement what we were told about 9/11 into the minds of the world and into history forever.

This is why AE911Truth’s continuing mission is so important, and why I remain a vocal supporter and activist on their behalf. If we allow the last voice of reason on the 9/11 issue to be lost in the din of those entities with the biggest microphones to drown out the truth, then we lose the only chance we have to attain true justice for the people who died that day.

I’m thankful for AE911Truth and will continue to stand by it as it shines a light on one of the biggest lies in modern history.

9/11 Free Fall · Adam Syed

Adam Syed is a longtime 9/11 researcher and activist.

***

Since We're on the topic of the Operation Mockingbird Controlled Media. . .

Gatekeepers, Brassplates, Front Companies, Celbrity Spooks, and their CIA Funding

According to the CIA connected foundatons, such as Ford Foundation's 2002 Annual report, available on their web site on page 135, a $75,000 grant was made to Democracy Now to "continue incorporating the aftermath of the September 11th attacks into future broadcasts." https://www.ae911truth.org/images/PDFs/Ford_Foundation_ar2002.pdf | https://www.fordfound.org/media/1529/ar2002.pdf

Here's a sampling of research articles on the history of the CIA/Ford Foundation/NGO connections.

The CIA uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source. From the early 1950s to the present the CIA's intrusion into the foundation field was and is huge. A U.S. Congressional investigation in 1976 revealed that nearly 50% of the 700 grants in the field of international activities by the principal foundations were funded by the CIA (Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders, Granta Books, 1999, pp. 134-135).

The CIA considers foundations such as Ford "The best and most plausible kind of funding cover" (Ibid, p. 135). The collaboration of respectable and prestigious foundations, according to one former CIA operative, allowed the Agency to fund "a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities, publishing houses and other private institutions" (p. 135). The latter included "human rights" groups beginning in the 1950s to the present. One of the most important "private foundations"

Gloria Steinem Discussing Her Time in the CIA

While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying:

“In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”

Steinem doesn't regret her time as a spook, saying, "If I had a choice I would do it again."

Steinem's Fascination with Deep State Men

"Despite her so-called liberal feminist credentials, Steinem has had a clear preference for right wing men, often with CIA and/or FBI links. She had a nine-year relationship with Stanley Pottinger, a Nixon-Ford assistant attorney general, who played a prominent role in undermining civil rights enforcement under Nixon and Ford. He also obstructed FBI investigations into the assassinations of Martin Luther King, and the ex-Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Latelier.

In 1984 Pottinger was investigated for participating in Irangate, a CIA scheme to illegally smuggle arms to Iran.**

In the 1980's, Steinem dated Henry Kissinger."

Project Due Diligence

Project Due Diligence is a coordinated effort by a team of engineers around the world to engage the profession in performing its due diligence regarding the official reports on the three catastrophic building failures that occurred on September 11, 2001.

As engineers, we have a legal responsibility to guard the public’s safety. Given the magnitude of the building failures at the World Trade Center, which resulted in greater loss of life than any other building failure in history, it is our duty to understand the official reports and to call for further investigation if those reports are not satisfactory.

To facilitate this process of due diligence, we are giving our presentation to groups all over the world. At the conclusion of each presentation, we invite engineers to sign our petition and to join us in disseminating this information to the entire engineering profession.

As engineers, we have a legal responsibility to guard the public’s safety.

Give today to continue the fight for 9/11 Truth!

"Steel buildings do not globally collapse due to fire, and yet on 9/11, we're told that three of them came down from office fires alone in the same day."

From Architects & Engineers for 9/11Truth and filmmaker, Dylan Avery comes this short documentary that is both hauntingly beautiful in its presentation and startlingly grim in its revelations.

Join civil engineer, Jonathan Cole through an informational odyssey as he revisits the controversy surrounding the impossible destruction of towers 1, 2 and 7 on September 11th 2001, and how his research, along with the research of others, has pulled the rug out from under the conclusions offered by the federal government on why those three buildings ultimately failed.

Through Cole's testimony, and that of mechanical engineer, Tony Szamboti, a dark picture comes into focus that demonstrates that not only is the official story of what killed so many people on America's darkest day provably false but that the federal government actively and willfully turned a blind eye to the observable facts during its unscientific investigation of the building collapses.

In a little over twenty minutes, Thirty Seconds of Silence reveals more about the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers on 9/11 than the media has revealed to the public in the over twenty years since the event took place.

How Many Architects & Engineers Will it Take?

"A lie can travel halfway around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."

"Name just one. Name just one structural engineering expert who said that it is not feasible that the planes caused the towers to go down."

"Name just one. Name just one structural engineering expert who said it is not feasible that the planes caused the towers to go down."

"I’m sorry, I don’t have that information at my fingertips right at this moment."

"Well, there was an extensive engineering study of the Twin Towers and what caused their collapse which is publicly available and conducted by one of the largest forensic engineering companies in America."

Since We're on the topic of the Operation Mockingbird Controlled Media. . .

Gatekeepers, Brassplates, Front Companies, Celbrity Spooks, and their CIA Funding

Gloria Steinem Discussing Her Time in the CIA

“In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”

Steinem doesn't regret her time as a spook, saying, "If I had a choice I would do it again."

Project Due Diligence

As engineers, we have a legal responsibility to guard the public’s safety.

"Steel buildings do not globally collapse due to fire, and yet on 9/11, we're told that three of them came down from office fires alone in the same day."

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