Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

[TRUTH]

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece

[John White]

Excellent!

[Mick Meaney]

At last.

Fisk has clearly done his research, hopefully other journalists follow his example.

[flamesong]

Let's not forget the preamble to that extract - for those who might not think to click the link and read the whole story:

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

Then...

...the above posted text.

[John White]

We take what we can get

If fisk supports some of the questions we have about 9/11, those questions are showing themselves as becoming that much harder to ignore: and thats not happening by accident!

[Rowan Berkeley]

What I think you have to expect is that he will now go twice as far in the opposite direction under the pretext of disavowing antisemitic elements in the 911 truthling world (who put them there? he won't enquire).

[andyb]

[John White]

Andy, I merged your topic with this identical one, no probs

[Thermate911]

It always seems to be 'tip of the iceberg' with these kind of reporters - Fisk, Palast, Monbiot but not Pilger, who is a special case (doesn't have anything to do with any NWO funding).

All very intelligent guys in their own way, in their own fields - but all except Pilger, IMO, hamstrung by the larger implications of what they are trying desperately not to think about or integrate. There is a large dose of cognitive dissonance at work here. Note the way Palast, who most certainly does know what time it is, ungraciously backed down on his vacuous ad hominems against Prof Jones, whilst at the same time raising the Z bogey... Note the way Monbiot has gone silent on the subject of 9/11 since getting roasted on CiF...

Perhaps these journos might now start taking notice of Aaron Russo, then they might just a get a clue to the longterm 'big picture'?

One thing they all, Pilger excepted, have in common, I think, is an emotional and incomplete understanding of what will probably happen if the true perpetraitors [sic] of 9/11 were to be exposed, let alone be bought to justice.

World perception would generalise immediately and Israel would be wiped off the map, wholesale, guilty and innocent alike. The entire US/UK political house of cards would collapse overnight and the maximum of anarchy would ensue.

Only a gracious Rothschild and Rockefeller retreat from their decidedly psychopathic present aims could defuse the situation now.

Personally, I don't see this happening - do you?
.

[Andrew Johnson]

Does Robert Fisk read "Society Matters"??


http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&tas k=view&id=49&Itemid=60

Maybe I am being "biased", but it looks like he copied from 1 or 2 paragraphs - and the end. He mis-spelled "Salomon" though... (or someone incorrectly "spell-checked" it...

[chek]

[TonyGosling]

Great news for lovers of truth and freedom everywhere.

Loads and loads of good stuff for the public minds to chew on here. Munch, munch and munch away Joe and Josephine. It's a disaster for the forces of darkness - be assured - and won't have been easy to write.

Of course there are always some blind as a bat types who will complain because he didn't go far enough for them.

[chek]

[rodin]

Fısk joıns the party late

Must be gettıng near tıme to pull the plug on the US

Kosher Nostra LT plan rolls along

[Anthony Lawson]

A letter barrage to the Independent?

Robert Fisk undoubtedly knows more than he seems prepared to admit to. What is intriguing is that he begins his piece talking about the 'ravers', when it becomes clear, later on, that he knows that there are many erudite 9/11 researchers and that most of them know how to ask the questions, but are not given the media space that the issue deserves.

It couldn't do any harm to write to the Independent asking for more of what Fisk and their editors seem now prepared to dabble in, but that, in future, more weight is given to the science and engineering professors; the pilots; the ex-air traffic controllers and ex-military whistle blowers and other researchers whose work is virtually unassailable, not in the sense that definitive answers are immediately available about what happened, but in the sense that it is now so obvious what could not have happened.

[Justin]

This article by Robert Fisk is a real step forward to our campaign and we must use it to our full advantage. Clearly there is a lot of rhetoric and debating tactics being used in this piece - he feels it is quite acceptable to mock the more outrageous and passionate campaigners amongst our number (kicking over chairs in Cork!) if it means that the Leftie and Greenie chattering activists, who read and absorb every word he writes, don't desert him for other 'intellectual', all knowing writers such as Monbiot. He is doing us a real service if he makes some of these activists wake up to the REAL politics that are going on behind the scenes.

It is, however, a pity that he singled out David Icke's groundbreaking book Alice in Wonderland.....but again that is just the use of well tried and tested debating tactics. "Knock old shape shifting Ickie and I will be seen as sane by my supporters!" Robert obviously does know a lot more than his courage (or lack of) and career prospects will let him write. After all he needs a job to pay the bills like the rest of us. But he does know the dam is cracking and breaking as the pressure for exposing the truth builds up on a daily basis. He has positioned his flag very carefully for when the inevitable dam burst happens!

Can I suggest we all send this piece to our MPs. They too are feeling increasingly uncomfortable and this would just help them make them feel more so.

The Summer is almost over with all its distractions - let's get back into proper campaigning mode and get the job done!

[acrobat74]

[Rowan Berkeley]

The only way I can see to draw a sufficiently convincing distinction between the perps and everybody else (short of telling the truth, of course) would be to paint them as nasty nazis. Stand by for lots of meretricious amateur psychology from the likes of John Loftus.

[skadseye]

i attended a talk with fisk at manchester town hall and had a few questions for him that weren't chosen for discussion.

my main problem was that audio and video tapes that were constantly released and attributed to the mainstream media as 'by bin laden' were rarely given the provisor of 'alleged'. they always seem to be given the benefit of doubt, when there is clearly a lot of doubt about their origins.

robert fisk, as one of the leading bin laden authorities, having interviewed him, does not seem to do this either. i've read several articles by him where he doesn't question the authenticity of these tapes. i've also read articles by him where he has pretty much ridiculed the 911 truth movement. it's good to see that he is prepared to acknowledge these problems at last.

[xmasdale]

[xmasdale]

Here's my letter to the Indy:

Sir

Ravers and crazies are a noisily conspicuous minority in all political movements. There are undoubtedly both crazies and sane people who doubt the truth of the Bush government theory on who conspired to produce the 9/11 attacks, but there are also crazies and sane people who support Bush and his War on Terror, which Robert Fisk so eloquently reports on.

Those who are concerned that the world should not be plunged into endless warfare based on the alleged post-9/11 Islamist threat need to look at what sane people are saying on both sides of the argument. We need to listen to the physics and engineering professors; the pilots; the ex-air traffic controllers, 9/11 witnesses, ex-military and ex-CIA whistle blowers, not some drunken chair-kicker in Cork.

Yours faithfully

J Noel Glynn

[chek]

[Thermate911]

[kbo234]

Here's the email I sent to the Independent this morning (for what it's worth). My guess is that the editor allowed old Robert to get that quietly off his chest.
It is obvious that such an important and potentially explosive declaration should have been featured much more prominently in the paper. His column was tucked away somewhere near the middle page.

He is normally featured on the first two or three pages, or even the front page if he is railing against the Iraq war. This is 'safe' stuff as the public hate the war and Brown is changing government policy. It seems the troops there will be coming home.

It is unlikely the editor will allow any heat to be generated over this article on the 9/11 issue......so there's little point in expecting this to be a big breakthrough although it has.....happily, been a small and significant one.


Dear Sir or Madam,

Well done Robert Fisk.

At last someone has raised the difficult questions about 9/11 in the public domain. It is a pity though that he feels the need to refer to people who have been determinedly trying to raise these questions for the past five years as 'ravers' and 'conspiracy theorists'. I hope your paper will now take the obvious next step and openly examine the questions that Mr. Fisk raises.

The work done on the World Trade Centre collapses by many scholars, including physics professor Stephen Jones, should be put before the public. Many who were in and around the twin towers also testify that they heard explosions going off inside the buildings prior to and during the collapses. Some of this evidence was put before the 9/11 Commission (in camera) but not included in the final report.
The official narrative is full of holes and we, the public, surely have the right to see all the evidence that we might understand the issues.

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq came out of 9/11. Now, while the USA is banging war drums in the direction of Iran, is it not the time to take another hard look at any controversial or contradictory evidence that is available to us.

If Iran is attacked China and Russia will get sucked into the morass and a world war will almost inevitably follow.

9/11 truth really matters.

Sincerely,

Kevin Boyle.

[member of the London branch of 9/11 Truth (UK & Ireland)]

[Anthony Lawson]

Letter to the Independent
Sent Saturday, 26th August, 2007

Dear Sir,

Robert Fisk, in his article 'Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11' seems to be denigrating, by association, the many science and engineering professors, airline pilots, ex-air traffic controllers, ex-military personnel and other intelligent people who have been questioning the official story of 9/11 ever since they first noticed far more of the many discrepancies than he points out. Why else would he introduce such a subject by bringing up the ‘ravers’, as he calls them, who harass him at some of his lectures, where he would be, undoubtedly, the supreme expert in his own field?

The latter part of the article is more balanced, but why were the opening two paragraphs—245 words—devoted to the ‘ravers’ and not to the articulate researchers who know how to ask the right questions, but who are not being given the coverage which they deserve, by those who control the mainstream media?

If ‘even’ Robert Fisk questions the ‘truth’, yet chooses not to publish or otherwise express his doubts and concerns, in a straightforward manner, about what triggered the most recent wars and devastating internal conflicts, bang in the middle of his own geographical area of expertise, then there is little hope that others will be encouraged to do so.

Sincerely,

Anthony Lawson

[Rowan Berkeley]

They have reverted the headline in the front page link to "Robert Fisk's Latest" to his previous, although if you click it you will still see the new article at the top of the list.

[outsider]

It's up on Information Clearing House http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18252.htm
To those unaware this is an excellent free email newsletter.
I've posted following, and copied it to Fisk at Indy:

Robert Fisk insists he is not a conspiracy theorist. This does not sit well with all his very real problems with the official line on 9/11; that these problematic impossibilities should be fed out as the truth implies conspiracy both in their formulation and propagation, and also lack of questioning by the media. But 9/11 aside, is Mr. Fisk unaware of precedents throughout history? Hitler's burning of the Reichstag (not personally!); his ordering fake attacks on German bases and a radio station to frame Poland and give a pretext to attack; the 'Gulf of Tonkin Incident', used by LBJ to massively escalate the Vietnam war and which is now shown as a fiction: Pearl Harbor (see 'Day of Deceit', Robert Stinnett), enticed by FDR, and with all Japanese naval codes broken; Nero burning Rome, and blaming the Christians? But the killer for Mr. Fisk should be the USS Liberty.
In 1967 Israel launched a murderous attack on the USS Liberty, attacking it with HE bombs, napalm, machine gun fire, cannon, rocket and even brought in 3 MTB's who torpedoed it, and machine-gunned the liferafts both on deck and in the water. The US threatened the survivors with courts martial, prison OR WORSE, if they breathed a word to anyone, even their families, about the attack. To this day there hasn't been a proper inquiry. He may know all this already; what he probably doesn't know is that the US Sixth Fleet launched nuclear-armed planes to bomb Egypt in 'retaliation' for Israel's (but to be blamed on Egypt) attack, and they were recalled with 3 minutes to target. He should check out the sites below, and also Peter Hounam's book 'Operation Cyanide', which should be required reading for all students or reporters on the Middle East.

This stuff is really dynamite, and very useful in exposing US/Israeli machinations, with an immediate application in throwing a spanner in plans to attack Iran. PLEASE CHECK THIS STUFF OUT. The survivors have a website, and are still trying to get a proper inquiry.
Here are a couple of sites on the subjest: (See 'Loss of Liberty'
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7267134620652018859 and 'Dead in the Water' http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5073.html ) 'Dead in the Water' is BBC programme commissioned from Peter Hounam (who broke Mordechai Vanunu's story about Israel's nuclear arsenal) who also wrote the excellent 'Operation Cyanide' on the same subject.
I hope someone ensures Mr. Fisk is made aware of this post.

[Rowan Berkeley]

I think the Lavon Affair is even more relevant:

"The Lavon Affair refers to the scandal over a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah, in which Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt were bombed in the summer of 1954. It became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or cryptically as The Unfortunate Affair (Hebrew: העסק הביש HaEsek HaBish). Israel admitted responsibility in 2005."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_affair

[xmasdale]

I have been rapped over the knuckles for implying that the alleged chair-kicker in Cork was drunk.

He or she may not have been, if they existed at all. My apologies to the inhabitants of Cork (birthplace of the Irish 9/11 Truth movement) if they felt insulted by that implication. I was insulting chair-kickers not Corkians. I spent several pleasant days in Cork at the launch of the Irish movement and never once saw anyone kick a chair.

[Rowan Berkeley]

let's just get this clear : did you see any drunks?