9/11 "Truthers" a Pack of Liars

Ever since Skeptic magazine published an investigative article on the 9/11 "Truth Movement" and analyzed their claims, which were found wanting, I have been hounded by the so-called 9/11 "truthers" because I am the editor of the magazine and therefore am suppose to be a "skeptic" of the official explanation for 9/11.

In fact, throughout January I have been on a book tour for The Mind of the Market, my book on behavioral economics and evolutionary economics, and at every event during the Q & A one of these "truthers" pretends to ask a question about economics but then quickly shifts to a rant about what "really happened" on September 11, 2001.

At my appearance at Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon, for example, someone with a video camera captured the rambling screed and posted it on YouTube the same night.

For my appearance in Seattle, my web meister, Emrys Miller, came prepared with a video camera just in case the "troofers" showed up. Sure enough, one did.

There was no need for a camera in Philadelphia, as the 9/11 conspiratorialists came prepared with their own recording equipment, and captured the moment here.

They subsequently appeared at my events at Books Inc. in Mountain View, California, Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, California, and at UCLA. What's going on here? As Bill Maher discovered one day during the taping of his HBO series "Real Time," their goal is just to be heard--in any venue at any time under any circumstances. In spring of 2005, for example, I gave a lecture at the Los Angeles Public Library, after which I was buttonholed by a documentary filmmaker with Michael Mooreish ambitions of exposing the "truth" about the 9/11 conspiracy, and he wanted to know if he could interview me. I responded, "you mean the conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and his nineteen Al-Qaeda operatives to fly planes into buildings?"

"That's what they want you to believe," he said.

"Who is 'they'," I queried.

"The government," he whispered in hushed tones, as if "they" might actually be listening in at that very moment.

"Yeah, well, 'the government' is a little vague for me," I suggested. "Who in the government wants me to believe that Al-Qaeda did it?"

"The Bush administration," was the by now predictable answer.

"But didn't Osama and some members of Al-Qaeda not only say they did it," I reminded him, "they gloated about what a glorious triumph it was over America and western capitalism, materialism, and secularism?"

"Oh, you're talking about that video of Osama," he exclaimed knowingly. "That was faked by the C.I.A. and leaked to the American press to mislead us. There has been a disinformation campaign going on ever since 9/11."

"How do you know?" I inquired.

"Because of all the unexplained anomalies surrounding 9/11," he answered.

"Such as?"

"Such as the fact that steel melts at a temperature of 2,777 degrees Fahrenheit, but jet fuel burns at only 1,517 degrees Fahrenheit. No melted steel, no collapsed towers."

At this point I ended the conversation and declined to be interviewed, knowing precisely where the dialogue was going next--if I cannot explain every single minutia about the events of that fateful 11th day in September, 2001, that lack of knowledge, in his mind at least, equates to direct proof that 9/11 was orchestrated by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the CIA in order to implement their plan for global domination and a New World Order, to be financed by G.O.D. (Gold, Oil, Drugs) and launched by a Pearl Harbor-like attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, thereby providing the justification for war. The evidence is there in the details, he explained, handing me faux dollar bill ("9-11" replacing the "1" and Bush supplanting Washington) choc-a-block full of web sites. Where I have heard all this before?

In the early 1990s I launched a full-scale investigation of the Holocaust deniers, initially as the cover story for Skeptic magazine and subsequently expanded into a book length treatment, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say it? The deniers employ this tactic of anomalies-as-proof to great effect. David Irving, for example, claims that there are no holes in the roof of the gas chamber at Krema 2 at Auschwitz-Birkenau. So what? So plenty, he says. No holes in the roof of the gas chamber at Krema 2 means that the eyewitness account of SS guards climbing up on the roof and pouring Zyklon-B gas pellets through the holes and into the gas chamber below where the prisoners were herded into, means that the eyewitness account is wrong, which means that no one was gassed in Krema 2, which means that no one was gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which means that no one was gassed at any prison camp, which means that no Jews anywhere were systematically exterminated by the Nazis. In short, "no holes, no Holocaust," says David Irving, a slogan emblazoned on t-shits of his supporters at his London trial in which he sued a historian for calling him a Holocaust denier.

No holes, no Holocaust. No melted steel, no Al-Qaeda attack. The parallels are equal, and equally flawed. And just as I never imagined that Holocaust denial would wend its way into the mainstream press (Irving's trial was front page news for months), after my above conversation with the filmmaker I never imagined that 9/11 denial would get media legs. But now it has legs for days, and so we have been forced to provide a public response. To read our complete analysis of the claims of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, go here.

Comments

[FarSeeingArt]

The FBI has some issues with respect to OBL and 911.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13664.htm

Here is the poster - still no 911

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

Some recently posted individuals re 911. I think they have sufficent credibility that they should be taken seriously. They are trying to tell us something.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm

Here are a few more

http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/

Clear thinking is difficult, requiring a good faith team effort.

For the beginner, especially those at the 'Skeptic'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

[donw]

Equating 9/11 truthers to holocaust deniers, that's cute.
Well according to you we should just believe without questioning. Of course isn't that what our msm did in the runup to war with Iraq?
In some countrys it's illegal to question the holocaust. To be arrested for questioning anything is just soo stupid.
Of course we could be like you and just believe, like in the bible, but wait, didn't you say on a national tv program that the bible was just a story.

[LeoMarvin]

Michael,

They drive me nuts too, but I question why you accuse them of dishonesty. I have a couple in my family (polar opposites -- one a 9-11 truther type, the other of the "Bill and Hillary killed Vince Foster" school), and I'm confident they believe their nonsense in full sincerity. Not that that says anything instructive about anyone else's sincerity. I just think that logic and civility demand there be a substantive basis for alleging dishonesty. Something beyond merely how wrong and annoying they are.

[westwind]

It's fine for Skeptic Magazine to examine aspects of the theories and proclaim them to be false, but there are literally hundreds of unanswered questions that the 9/11 commission was either not allowed to investigate, or chose not to. Just a few days ago the leaders of the commission revealed that the CIA had blocked some requests for information. To brand as liars all those who believe that we have not been told the truth about 9/11, when most of the investigation was carefully circumscribed, controlled and/or blocked by the administration, is nonsensical.

It's possible that George Bush and Dick Cheney's refusal to testify under oath was not an attempt to hide anything, but it sure looks suspicious, and any skeptic worthy of the name would not pronounce all debate to be over until the relevant facts have been made known. Skeptic Magazine does not have a monopoly on skepticism, and for them to dismiss out of hand anyone who does not believe the results of their investigations when so much is unknown, shows a remarkable lack of open-mindedness.

I feel that those who hound people like Shermer, or protest at Bill Maher's show, would achieve more by pressuring their representatives to back a fresh investigation, but by declaring themselves authorities on what is by definition a currently unknown set of facts, Shermer and Skeptic Magazine are showing themselves to be very incurious journalists indeed.

[condieshoes]

There are too many unanswered and unanwerable question about 911 to believe the commission's report.

How about insider trading right before 911 on airlines stocks. Put options that the stocks would fall. Who knew ahead of time? Lots. And that's just one point.

Sorry, glib put downs don't cover the obvious questions. These people who you call liars, are scientists, architects, pilots and the list goes on. They are not liars, but none other than the American people.

[HeevenSteven]

Dr. Shermer, it's good to see you blogging here more frequently. I've long been a fan --read you books and skeptic mag.

I have a couple of otherwise very intelligent friends who have lost all sense of reason when it comes to 9-11. Like you said in your book, smart people believe weird things because they arrived at their conclusions for non-smart reasons. Like Swift warned, I can't reason 'em out of it, cuz they weren't reasoned into it. I can't even get them to read your book.

[OldOne]

1. Mohammad Atta's singed passport shown on TV the day of the attack. Proof of false evidence prepared in advance.
2. Amateur pilots who could barely fly a Cessna,who had never flown a 757, supposedly hijacked, piloted and navigated 757's to their final destination.
3. Collapse of WTC no 7. Was not hit by a plane. The only steel supported buildings to ever collapse from fire were the three WTC buildings. WTC 7 was not hit by a plane. Why was its collapse not investigated by the Kean/Hamilton commission?
4. Several prior warnings to the government, including from the Afghanistan govt who was afraid of retaliation, and a woman FBI agent, were ignored. Why?

We must conclude, not that it was an inside job, but that Bush and his cronies allowed it to happen, and perhaps facilitated the event. The pilots probably were from Kuwait, were very experienced and willing to commit suicide. So the finger does point at the Saudi's as the masterminds of the event. Certainly Kean and Hamilton wanted to do a more complete investigation. So give them the time and budget, and let them finish the job. Read the following NY Times article,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html
about how the CIA stonewalled the investigation.

Lets stop the name calling, lets not call anyone liars, but with 40% of the American public not convinced by the official 911 conspiracy theory, we should all work to re-open the investigation so it can be properly completed.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

16 foot hole in the Pentagon.

you are thusly refuted.

[nycerbarb]

Thanks for your great work, Mr. Shermer.

[AsaNisMasa]

I think its always important to question things, analyze, and never accept anything at face value. But to assume that those very real questions about the anomolies equal a Bush administration conspiracy is just as dangerous as blindly accepting the truth. Couldn't it be just as likely that the whole thing was orchestrated by individuals in the military industrial complex as it is the Bush admin?

To say that there in unanswered questions lies the answer that the Bush administration is guilty is a little ironic isn't it?