How I Became A “Conspiracy Nutcase”

Conspiracy NutcaseBefore they went to bed on 9/11/01 quite a few people knew – as they watched the events of that tragic day unfold – that they were viewing a false flag attack whose purpose was to draw us into yet another war on dishonest pretenses.

I was not one of those people!

How was I to know that the September Eleventh attacks – like the bombs that were soon to rain upon Baghdad –  were a strategy of “Shock and Awe”, orchestrated against America by our own fellow citizens, in order to prepare us for the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq?   On that horrible day anyone who dared suggest that the assault upon the Twin Towers was a self inflicted wound was immediately branded a “Conspiracy Nutcase”.  Only much later did I learn that rogue elements of our own government, and their forebears, together with their allies hidden deep within the shadowy bowels of the Military / Industrial / Intelligence Services Complex, had been working since their murder of President Kennedy to promote the “Conspiracy Theory” meme  – the idea that anyone who questions the formal narrative of a nationally traumatic event must be nothing more than a paranoid whacko kook.

It took almost 3 more years for my ever increasing concerns to coalesce into a terrifying set of conclusions – the realization of betrayal by those entrusted with our protection. But by then I had broken free of the spell of “Shock and Awe”.  If “Conspiracy Nutcase” was what some people thought when I offered them 9/11 Truth literature, I was ready to live proudly among those who would question my sanity because I dared to speak the Truth.

Here are just a few of the questions that eventually caused me to totally discard the formal 9/11/01 narrative:

 

 

1) Why did WTC Towers 1 and 2 look more like they were blowing up rather than falling down?

2) How could both of the towers have collapsed at nearly free-fall acceleration?

3) Why did WTC 7 fall straight down to the ground much later in the day, at nearly free-fall acceleration – including, in the initial phase of the collapse, a 2.25 second, 105 foot period of actual total free fall – when it was not even hit by an airplane?

4) What happened to our air defenses once we knew we were under attack?

5) What created rivers of molten metal in the WTC Towers when most of the jet fuel from the planes was burned up in the big initial fire balls? And what was the cause of the “hot spots”, which persisted for many days after the attacks – and the pools of molten metal – detected underneath those tower debris piles?

6) How was Hani Hanjour – a guy who barely passed Cessna flight training school – able to pull off an incredibly complex  corkscrew descent maneuver in order to hit the Pentagon at ground level, and why did he bother doing such a risky maneuver once he had the Pentagon in his sights?

7) Was it just a coincidence that Hanjour’s amazing feat of aero-acrobatics hit the Naval Intelligence section of the Pentagon, killing 19 of the 21 auditors who were investigating details of the missing 2.3 Trillion dollars from the Pentagon budget which Donald Rumsfeld had announced to the American public the day before?

8) Why did President Bush tell us we were unprepared for this attack, and totally taken by surprise by it, when the Pentagon had already practiced responding to just such a scenario, and even a TV pilot, “The Lone Gunman”, had featured precisely this kind of an attack on the World Trade Centers? As National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice put it No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it…into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile”.

9) In the immediate aftermath of 9/11/01, why were all the rules requiring careful research into the cause of building collapses ignored, as well as regulations governing thorough investigation into a crime scene waived, allowing all the valuable debris evidence from the WTC attacks to be shipped off hastily to China for recycling? This struck me as particularly strange once I learned that no steel frame building has ever collapsed due to fire – before or since 9/11/01!

10) And why on Earth was President Bush allowed to continue reading “My Pet Goat” to a group of school children after it was clear we were under attack, when  – in a real attack by our enemies – he and those school children most certainly could have been on the hit list?!

 

BushAs you will read below, with questions like these, and more, mounting daily, by 2004 I found myself among those who no longer believed the formal 9/11/01 narrative and who were now demanding real answers to hard questions. Wondering why others were not asking these very same questions – especially newscasters and talk show hosts, I eventually wrote the letter below to Tom Ashbrook – host of NPR’s “On Point” radio show. I hope that reading my letter to Tom will inform you regarding my evolution from 9/11/01 “True Believer” to 9/11 Truth “Conspiracy Nutcase”.

My fondest hope is that my words may inspire you to work with us to uncover the true facts of all that occurred on that horrible day.

 

BTW, if you should decide to share your own thoughts with Tom Ashbrook you may succeed in reaching him via the On Point Contact email link at:  onpointnpr@gmail.com or, better yet, write to him at this address: On Point Radio, 890 Commonwealth Avenue, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02215.

 

Conspiracy Theory Ahead

Dear Mr. Ashbrook,

I am writing this letter in my capacity as the secretary for the Greater Boston Alliance for 9/11 Truth and Justice. However, I am also writing with my professional role as a licensed psychotherapist in mind. In that latter role I have served as an in-patient family therapist for drug addicted youth with the Phoenix House Foundation, an outpatient therapist for patients transitioning back into our community from nearby Bournewood Psychiatric Hospital and, for the past 20+ years, as a private practice clinician at my office in Newton Massachusetts. It is both from this professional perspective, and from the point of view of being a belated “convert” to the 9/11 Truth Movement as well, that I have contemplated, with interest and concern, the tendency of many media spokespeople to characterize 9/11 Truth Activists as “Conspiracy Nutcases” who merely seek to confirm their preconceived paranoid conclusions.

Not long after 9/11/01, one of my therapy clients came to me nearly in tears saying that she had discovered the attacks of that day were, in her words, “an inside job”. Naturally, I assumed my client was suffering from delusional paranoid thinking. I attempted to calm her down and to reassure her that her fears couldn’t possibly be true. Nonetheless, the intensity of my client’s convictions led me to begin exploring the topic in some detail.

My initial investigations led only to dead ends in which I found myself exploring material that simply dampened my interest in the subject and contributed to my agreeing with the media promoted “Conspiracy Nutcase” image of 9/11 Truth Activists. But haunted by my client’s adamant view and hearing more and more rumors of covert complicity by rogue elements of our own government in the events of 9/11/01, I kept looking into the subject from time to time. Finally, I had the good fortune to run across the solid, fact based research presented by Professor David Ray Griffin in his remarkable book The New Pearl Harbor.

Stunned by the clarity and readability of Professor Griffin’s work I went deeper into 9/11 Truth research. By 9/11/04, I was apologizing to my above mentioned client for my ill-informed and presumptuous response to her concerns. And by the end of that year, I was actively participating in the development of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

I will not go into the details here of all that convinced me that the Bush administration’s own “Conspiracy Theory” could not possibly be true. I have, however, included with this letter a collection of reliable resources for investigating the nature and meaning of the events of 9/11/01. As a loyal American and a concerned World Citizen, I do hope you will explore some or all of the research material I am sending to you.

As a family therapist I have seen first-hand how powerful is the tendency toward denial when a client must come to terms with the reality that an emotionally or physically abusive parent has betrayed their trust through verbal cruelty or physical assault. It hurts, and it is terrifying to confront such betrayal. But the walk along the winding path of emotional healing, which can potentially lead to forgiveness and reconciliation, cannot begin until that pain is faced and the attendant anger, fear and sadness fully felt.

Our highest government servants are to all of us Americans, in an unconscious fashion, much like national “parent figures”. We look to them to keep us safe and provide for our collective needs, similar to the way a child looks to her or his parents to provide safety and support. So from a psychotherapy perspective, it is not at all surprising that any American would find it difficult to face and confront the possibility of acts of national betrayal and murderous treason by our leaders. For me, the evolving realization that we may have been betrayed by those entrusted with responsibility for our protection was a gradual, frightening, disorienting process – the exact opposite of a leap to preconceived ideas I yearned to prove true.

Unlike the eager conspiracy theorists imagined by some in the press, my slowly evolving realizations – that the formal 9/11 Commission Report was essentially mistaken at its best and deliberately misleading at its worst – did not at all confirm the world view I wished to uphold. Nonetheless, as the damning evidence of lies and distortions became increasingly clear and the scientific evidence mounted, I was eventually forced to confront the dark truth behind the attacks of that day. I believe this process of confronting a painful truth of national betrayal on 9/11/01- a truth that I initially denied – was for me very similar to the process my psychotherapy clients have gone through when addressing childhood wounds.

I also believe our collective natural yearning to entrust our safety to our political leaders, and our understandable fear of being in opposition to these powerful parent figures, is a significant factor, though an essentially unconscious one, in our reluctance to confront our leaders and demand the Truth about many other heinous crimes. These crimes have been committed for decades directly by our leaders, or with their support, in the name of “National Defense” at home and abroad. Thus our yearning to trust combines in an unhealthy way with our reluctance to admit to ourselves that our disproportionate enjoyment of material goods is at the expense of our global neighbors in the developing world. We are reluctant to ask questions like “Why were my tax dollars spent to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, the murderous military in El Salvador, the coup plotters who overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and etc.?”

Let’s face this painful truth – the real purpose of American foreign policy, first and foremost, is to protect our affluent lifestyles. Cheap fruit and other resources, cheap labor for American and multi-national companies, maintaining governments that are subservient to US interests – this was the real purpose of our interventions in Central and South America in the 1970s and 80s. And at the dawn of the 21st century cheap oil from Iraq, and cheap gas from the pipeline we yearn to build through Afghanistan have become the potential gifts of 9/11/01 to the American people. Don’t we all know in our heart of hearts that this thinly veiled ambition to steal other people’s resources is among the deepest truths of how our ruling elites decide to use our military might? Are we ready yet to admit the shameful reality that so many of our luxuries are stolen from the starving stomachs of children we will never meet or see?

With courage and respect we could chose to discuss all of these issues. But the truly paranoid mind tends to label and caricature people rather then enter into dialog and debate. It is interesting to note, then, the way in which writers in the popular press go about discounting the concerns of the 9/11 Truth Movement. I have observed that these writers generally “debunk” the 9/11 Truth Movement as a whole by attacking the more peripheral issues raised by the movement while avoiding dialog on – or the offering of concrete evidence as rebuttal to – the central issues raised by the movement’s researchers. For example, Popular Mechanics published an article which attempts to debunk issues raised by the 9/11 Truth Movement. One can review this article in full via this link. However, 9/11 Truth researchers challenge both the logic and veracity of many elements of both this Popular Mechanics article and the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report as well. An articulate reply to the Popular Mechanics article, written by Jim Hoffman, can be found at this link, and a more detailed analysis is available by reading Prof. David Ray Griffin’s book “Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics which can be found here.

Similarly, a concise critical analysis of the work of the 9/11 Commission is available in this report, and a more detailed analysis can be explored in “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions“, also by Prof. Griffin. But sadly this effort at dialogue and debate, offered in good faith by the 9/11 Truth Movement, is generally met with an unresponsive silence from the 9/11 Truth “debunkers”. So who is it in this attempt to confirm the truth of 9/11/01 that is functioning in an irrational or paranoid way?

Authentic dialog has at least two essential components. The first is making an effort to find common ground. Where do we have some degree of agreement that can serve as a jumping off point for exploring our points of disagreement? With this in mind, a careful review of the paper, “Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction”, by Steven Jones, PhD, is in order. This paper was recently published in the respected “Open Civil Engineering Journal” and can be downloaded here .

A second element of authentic dialog is a willingness to respond to reasonable questions raised by individuals who have an obvious personal stake in finding answers to their questions. With this in mind, I would encourage the reader to link to a list of questions raised, via “The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission, by family members of those who were murdered on 9/11/01 . These questions were not responded to by the 9/11 Commission. Given the right of these obvious stake holders to ask these questions and expect thoughtful, well researched answers, the disconcerting question arises “What is the meaning of the reluctance of the 9/11 Commission to respond?” And as these family members continue their struggle through the effort to form a new investigative commission, why do the powers that be seek to keep them from asking NYC voters if this is their collective will?

From my own initial fumbling research, I do understand that there is a great deal of both well intended misinformation and deliberate disinformation available in print and on the internet with regard to the events of 9/11/01. Also I recognize the inevitability that careful, principled researchers may settle upon radically differing interpretations of data. (The controversy over what exactly it was that hit the Pentagon on 9/11/01 – flight 77, a smaller plane, or a missile – is a case in point.) I believe, however, that anyone wishing to more fully understand these events, and the concerns of the 9/11 Truth Movement that have arisen through careful research into all that occurred on 9/11/01 and thereafter, will find the resources accompanying my letter to be highly reliable even where there may be differences of opinion in the interpretation of the available data .

At the very least I would encourage you to review the challenge to the formal narrative about the collapse of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 that has been raised by the 1700+ licensed building professionals of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Then allow yourself to wonder honestly “Why are the many other political figures, military personnel, academicians and other professionals referenced here: http://www.patriotsquestion911.com calling for a new investigation into the unanswered 9/11/01 questions?!”

National consensus with regard to the meaning of the 9/11/01 attacks may ultimately arise through the process of engaged and respectful dialog between currently opposing perspectives. However, that consensus certainly cannot emerge in the current atmosphere of disdainful disregard of the legitimate questions raised by the 9/11 Truth Community. Accordingly, I invite you and all those who are inclined to agree with the formal US government supported interpretation of the events of 9/11/01 to explore the resources which accompany my letter to you and to enter into dialogue about your perspective with me and others in the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Respectfully submitted for your consideration,

Christopher Gruener MA, LMHC
Boston 9/11 Truth Secretary www.boston911truth.org
Office # 617-965-6552
My Professional Website www.crossroads-counseling-services.com

 

To paraphrase Edward Burke

“In order for evil to flourish, all that is required is for good people to do nothing.”

evil monkeys

Ask Questions…Demand Answers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrRaQFobrw  (3:48)

To further your own investigation of 9/11/01 link here.