Bcc: contributors ============================================================================ From: "Suzanne Taylor" <•••@••.•••> To: <•••@••.•••> Subject: RE: VISION TV on truth re: Sept. 11 Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 18:36:17 -0800 I don't know about this Michael Ruppert guy. I am as pissed off as anyone at the Bush insanity ( http://www.theconversation.org -- featuring Richard Moore's Matrix piece...and the great Kucinich speech), but don't want to be an extremist myself, in response. Have a look at this, re Ruppert: David Corn "When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad" http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12536 ===================== Dear Suzanne, Thanks for letting me know about Corn's article. I'm including the article below in full, followed by a very cogent rebuttal from Michael Ruppert. I read Corn's article with considerable disgust. It is what I call a 'hatchet job'. His arguments are shallow and sophistic. He knows most of his audience will like what he's saying, so he is able to seem clever be persuasive, without actually making sense. He summarizes his core argument this way: > Simply put, the spies and special agents are not good enough, evil enough, or gutsy enough to mount this operation. He supports this with some shallow reasoning, but for the most part, he's depending on the 'reasonableness', the 'common sense' of these 'simply put' claims. But do his words make sense? If the CIA, with all its resources and levels of secrecy, is 'not good enough' to pull off such an operation, then why are we to blithely assume that a rag-tag bunch of immigrants with no real piloting experience could succeed in the same operation? Corn conveniently ignores this obvious question, this gaping hole in his logic. And why would we think 'they' are not evil enough? The number of people killed was a very small number compared to how many the same regime kills on a routine basis with CIA-sponsored civil wars, genocidal restructuring programs, and inhuman sanctions against Iraq - not to mention the thousands of civilians incinerated by high-power US bombs in Afghanistan. If they are evil enough for all that, evil enough to spread poisonous uranium pellets all over the world, and evil enough to announce they're planning to make first-use of nuclear weapons, then why would they not be evil enough to destroy their own World Trade Center? Is that because only American lives count to the regime? Do they really count to the regime? What about poisoning our own troops with Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome? Or is this argument convenient to Corn because the ~reader~ can be assumed to think only American lives count? As for 'not gutsy enough', I can only laugh. Anyone who had doubts about the gutsy-ness of Bush, and of the global regime, must surely shed those doubts given all that has been done in the name of 911 and 'terrorism'. The Constitution is now gone; people with no relation to terrorism are still being detained in prison without charges, without hope of trial, and with little public discussion of the matter. Bush has launched an open-ended military campaign that reminds one of the military aggressiveness of the Nazis. It's the thousand-year-reich all over again, with the will to conquer the world, and a complete disregard for human life and human rights. Not gutsy enough? Get real. --- Nonetheless, Suzanne, the article seems to be fulfilling its propaganda function, judging by your response. You don't want to be an 'extremist', and yet you know there are many unanswered questions about 911. Corn comes along, seeming clever and knowledgeable, and helps you dismiss those uncomfortable thoughts, tossing your doubts into the category of 'unknowable conspiracy theories'. Perhaps what I'm saying is off the mark in your own case, but I think what I am describing is probably on the mark in terms of the effect of Corn's words on much of his liberal audience. I'm intrigued by your use of the word 'extremist'. In that context, it seems to mean something like 'not believing what everyone else seems to believe', or 'straying too far from media reality'. If one strays from the flock, if one appears 'unreasonable', then one is an extremist. Such a fear of extremism is very understandable, it reflects our social need to feel part of the society around us, to not be isolated. Again, what I'm saying may not apply to you at all, but your words bring up these thoughts for me. --- This seems to clarify how centrally-controlled media propaganda succeeds in creating a nation of sheep. The all-pervasive television media creates a 'default matrix reality', the standard against which all other beliefs and ideas are compared. The majority of people, it seems, simply accept that reality without doubts. Thus the core mass of the flock obediently follows the Orwellian shepherd. Those who question the matrix reality must start out by straying from the main flock, putting themselves into social discomfort. Thus another big chunk of the flock - those who don't want to deal with that isolation discomfort - obediently falls into line, ignoring their doubts for comfort's sake. That creates even more isolation and social pressure on the rest of us, the ones who are seeking truth and who cannot accept the matrix. One must wonder why Corn would allow himself to function as an enforcer of sheep mentality in this way. We know from his other work that he is a genuine social reformer, not a sheepish follower of the main herd nor a slave to the regime. One answer is that he isn't really aware of the consequences of his actions - assuming our analysis is accurate about how propaganda functions, how the herd is controlled, etc. Perhaps his motivation for his article lies in this notion of 'extremist' and 'isolation' that we've been talking about. Liberal journalists, like Corn, do find themselves straying from the flock a good deal of the time. Much of their work is devoted to debunking official statements, and publishing alternative views. So when a chance comes along to identify with the mainstream, Corn can use it to say "Look, I'm not a crazy, I'm reasonable just like you are." It's a chance to reduce his isolation / marginalization from mainstream readers and journalists. But he pays a bigger price than he understands. He sacrifices the truth, he prostitutes his journalistic integrity, and he unknowingly serves as the agent of a larger propaganda system that he wouldn't choose to support knowingly. --- Notice, by the way, that 'conspiracy theory' can be applied to any belief that contradicts media reality. If the reporters and the officials are all telling us something, then to believe otherwise is automatically to suggest that some kind of conspiracy is going on. Either the media doesn't know what's going on, which would suggest one kind of behind-the-scenes conspiracy - or else the media is lying, which would suggest a conspiracy of another kind. Either you believe television, or else you're a conspiracy theorist. This makes it very easy for any journalist or official to use the rhetoric of 'conspiracy theories' and the X-Files to discredit almost any non-mainstream observations or ideas. rkm http://cyberjournal.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12536 When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad David Corn, AlterNet March 1, 2002 Viewed on March 18, 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Please stop sending me those emails. You know who are. And you know what emails I mean ... Okay, I'll spell it out -- those forwarded emails suggesting, or flat-out stating, the CIA and the U.S. government were somehow involved in the horrific September 11 attacks. There are emails about a fellow imprisoned in Canada who claims to be a former U.S. intelligence office and who supposedly passed advance warning of the attack to jail guards in mid-August. There are emails, citing an Italian newspaper, reporting that last July Osama bin Laden was treated for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and met with a CIA official. There are the emails, referring to a book published in France, that note the attacks came a month after Bush Administration officials, who were negotiating an oil deal with the Taliban, told the Afghans "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." Get the hint? Washington either did nothing to stop the September 11 attacks or plotted the assaults so a justifiable war could then be waged against Afghanistan to benefit Big Oil. One email I keep receiving is a timeline of so-called suspicious events that "establishes CIA foreknowledge of [the September 11 attacks] and strongly suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part of the U.S. government in their execution." I won't argue that the U.S. government does not engage in brutal, murderous skulduggery from time to time. But the notion that the U.S. government either detected the attacks but allowed them to occur, or, worse, conspired to kill thousands of Americans to launch a war-for-oil in Afghanistan is absurd. Still, each week emails passing on such tripe arrive. This crap is probably not worth a rational rebuttal, but I'm irritated enough to try. It's a mug's game to refute individual pieces of conspiracy theories. Who can really know if anything that bizarre happened at a Dubai hospital? As for the man jailed in Canada, he was being held on a credit card fraud charge, and the only source for the story about his warning was his own word. The judge in his case said, "There is no independent evidence to support his colossal allegations." But a conspiracy-monges can reply, wouldn't you expect the government and its friends in Canada to say that? So let's start with a broad question: would U.S. officials be capable of such a foul deed? Capable -- as in able to pull it off and willing to do so. Simply put, the spies and special agents are not good enough, evil enough, or gutsy enough to mount this operation. That conclusion is based partly on, dare I say it, common sense, but also on years spent covering national security matters. (For a book I wrote on the CIA, I interviewed over 100 CIA officials and employees.) Not good enough: Such a plot -- to execute the simultaneous destruction of the two towers, a piece of the Pentagon, and four airplanes and make it appear as if it all was done by another party -- is far beyond the skill level of U.S. intelligence. It would require dozens (or scores or hundreds) of individuals to attempt such a scheme. They would have to work together, and trust one another not to blow their part or reveal the conspiracy. They would hail from an assortment of agencies (CIA, FBI, INS, Customs, State, FAA, NTSB, DOD, etc.). Yet anyone with the most basic understanding of how government functions (or does not function) realizes that the various bureaucracies of Washington -- particularly those of the national security "community" -- do not work well together. Even covering up advance knowledge would require an extensive plot. If there truly had been intelligence reports predicting the 9/11 attacks, these reports would have circulated through intelligence and policymaking circles before the folks at the top decided to smother them for geopolitical gain. That would make for a unwieldy conspiracy of silence. And in either scenario -- planning the attacks or permitting them to occur -- everyone who participated in the conspiracy would have to be freakin' sure that all the other plotters would stay quiet. Not evil enough. This is as foul as it gets -- to kill thousands of Americans, including Pentagon employees, to help out oil companies. (The sacrificial lambs could have included White House staff or members of Congress, had the fourth plane not crashed in Pennsylvania.) This is a Hollywood-level of dastardliness, James Bond (or Dr. Evil) material. Are there enough people of such a bent in all those agencies? That's doubtful. CIA officers and American officials have been evildoers. They have supported death squads and made use of drug dealers overseas. They have assisted torturers, disseminated assassination manuals, sold weapons to terrorist-friendly governments, undermined democratically-elected governments, and aided dictators who murder and maim. They have covered up reports of massacres and human rights abuses. They have plotted to kill foreign leaders. These were horrendous activities, but, in most instances, the perps justified these deeds with Cold War imperatives (perverted as they were). And to make the justification easier, the victims were people overseas. Justifying the murder of thousands of Americans to help ExxonMobil would require U.S. officials to engage in a different kind of detachment and an even more profound break with decency and moral norms. I recall interviewing one former CIA official who helped manage a division that ran the sort of actions listed above, and I asked him whether the CIA had considered "permanently neutralizing" a former CIA man who had revealed operations and the identities of CIA officers. Kill an American citizen? he replied, as if I were crazy to ask. No, no, he added, we could never do that. Yes, in the spy-world some things were beyond the pale. And, he explained, it would be far too perilous, for getting caught in that type of nasty business could threaten your career. Which brings us to.... Not gutsy enough. Think of the danger -- the potential danger to the plotters. What if their plan were uncovered before or, worse, after the fact? Who's going to risk being associated with the most infamous crime in U.S. history? At the start of such a conspiracy, no one could be certain it would work and remain a secret. CIA people -- and those in other government agencies -- do care about their careers. Would George W. Bush take the chance of being branded the most evil president of all time by countenancing such wrongdoing? Oil may be in his blood, but would he place the oil industry's interests ahead of his own? (He sure said sayonara to Kenneth Lay and Enron pretty darn fast.) And Bush and everyone else in government know that plans leak. Disinformation specialists at the Pentagon could not keep their office off the front page of The New York Times. In the aftermath of September 11, there has been much handwringing over the supposed fact that U.S. intelligence has been too risk-averse. But, thankfully, some inhibitions -- P.R. concerns, career concerns -- do provide brakes on the spy-crowd. By now, you're probably wondering why I have bothered to go through this exercise. Aren't these conspiracy theories too silly to address? That should be the case. But, sadly, they do attract people. A fellow named Michael Ruppert, who compiled that timeline mentioned above, has drawn large crowds to his lectures. He has offered $1000 to anyone who can "disprove the authenticity of any of his source material." Well, his timeline includes that Canadian prisoner's claim and cites the Toronto Star as the source. But Ruppert fails to note that the Star did not confirm the man's account, that the paper reported some observers "wonder if it isn't just the ravings of a lunatic," and that the Star subsequently reported the judge said the tale had "no air of reality." Does that disprove anything? Not 100 percent. There's still a chance that man is telling the truth, right? So I'm not expecting a check. Conspiracy theories may seem more nuisance than problem. But they do compete with reality for attention. There is plenty to be outraged over without becoming obsessed with X Files-like nonsense. Examples? There's the intelligence services's failure to protect Americans and the lack of criticism of the CIA from elected officials. Or, General Tommy Franks, the commander of military operations in Afghanistan, declaring the commando mis-assault at Hazar Qadam, which resulted in the deaths of fifteen to twenty local Afghans loyal to the pro-U.S. government, was not an intelligence failure. (How can U.S. Special Forces fire at targets they wrongly believe to be Taliban or al Qaeda fighters, end up killing people they did not intend to kill, and the operation not be considered an intelligence failure?) More outrage material? A few months ago, forensic researchers found the remains of people tortured and killed at a base the CIA had established in the 1980s as a training center for the contras. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras at the time is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte. There are always national security misdeeds to be mad about. They may not be as cinematic in nature as a plot in which shady, unidentified U.S. officials scheme to blow up the World Trade Towers to gain control of an oil pipeline in Central Asia. But dozens of dead Hondurans or twenty or so Afghans wrongly killed ought to provoke anger and protest. In fact, out-there conspiracy theorizing serves the interests of the powers-that-be by making their real transgressions seem tame in comparison. (What's a few dead in Central America, compared to thousands in New York City? Why worry about Negroponte, when unidentified U.S. officials are slaughtering American civilians to trigger war?) Perhaps there's a Pentagon or CIA office that churns out this material. Its mission: distract people from the real wrongdoing. Now there's a conspiracy theory worth exploring. Doesn't it make sense? Doesn't it all fit together? I challenge anyone to disprove it. David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation. ============================================================================ From: "Brit Eckhart" <•••@••.•••> To: <•••@••.•••>, <•••@••.•••> Subject: Fw: Ruppert Defends His Work Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 05:42:59 -0500 -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Munson <•••@••.•••> To: •••@••.••• <•••@••.•••> Date: Sunday, March 17, 2002 11:58 PM Subject: Re: Ruppert Defends His Work Letters: Ruppert Defends His Work March 8, 2002 Evidence to the Contrary re: When 9/11 Conspiracies Go Bad, by David Corn I read with great amusement your ill-supported attack on my work and was surprised that, for a man of your supposed intellectual prowess, you had such a blatant disregard for facts that you so incorrectly reported. Your criticisms focus on the case of Delmert "Mike" Vreeland, a U.S. Navy intelligence officer imprisoned in Canada who, by admission -- in court -- of Canadian authorities, wrote an accurate warning of the September 11 attacks. That warning, which is now an official part of the court record in Canada, was placed into the sole custody of Canadian jailers on either August 11 or 12, a month before the attacks. A copy of it (obtained directly from court records) is available on my web site. The stamp admitting the document into evidence is clearly visible in the upper right hand corner of the document. The date of admission into evidence is not the date when he wrote the letter. It is the date, however, when the Crown Solicitor stipulated, under oath, that the letter had been written on August 11 or 12 and placed in the "sole" custody of Vreeland's jailers where he could not access it. Therefore the document itself is a bona fide source. I repeat, during Vreeland's extradition hearings Canadian authorities have acknowledged, under oath, that they had sole possession of the sealed letter for one month prior to the attacks. All of this was accurately reported by me in a From The Wilderness story dated January 25th and available on my web site at www.copvcia.com. Either you did not have the thoroughness to read the story or your investigative abilities are severely impaired. But then you state only that the CIA has used drug dealers and avoid the full (and well documented) truth that they have dealt drugs directly for decades. I will be happy to debate you on this one too, but I doubt if you'll accept the challenge. In addition, you attempt to discredit Vreeland by innuendo. You state that he is in jail on fraud charges. True enough, but did you also mention the fact that it was his own credit card? For a man such as yourself, with such great expertise on the CIA, who was Ted Shackley's chosen biographer (that should be enough to discredit you right there), I am surprised that you did not recall that during Iran-Contra a number of well documented intelligence sources were controlled by their respective agencies through the use of criminal charges connected to their areas of expertise. Vreeland had a per diem of $19,000; ergo he was controlled through a fraud charge. Similar victims during Iran-Contra included Scott Weekly (weapons), Steve Carr (drugs), Jack Terrell (weapons), Bo Gritz (passport), Scott Barnes (fraud) and Al Martin (fraud). There are others. While many of these men, to this day, have questionable reputations, it is beyond doubt, as established by official records, that they were intelligence operatives. In addition, I have hired a Toronto correspondent who sits in on every court date as "Mike" Vreeland fights extradition to the U.S. and certain death. I have just returned from Toronto and a series of meetings with Vreeland's attorneys and a face-to-face interview with him. I will be publishing another story soon. This was not the first time that I have been there or sat in on his court proceedings. But you didn't print that either. Oh, yes, and you also forgot to mention that, in a call placed on a speaker phone from open court, a Pentagon operator confirmed Vreeland's Rank and office assignment at the Pentagon, This is a part of the court record too. No, the Toronto Star did not confirm Vreeland's story. The Canadian court system did. And the fact that he wrote a warning of the 9-11 attacks a month before they happened and that it was sealed away from his access by his jailers who admit that no one else had custody is a shameful and incriminating fact that not even your sophistry can gloss over. Rational people will want to know how this man knew of the attacks and why the U.S. government and The Nation are trying so hard to kill this story. No, you will not get $1,000 from me. The facts are good. The story is good. My analysis is good and it is left for The Nation's readers to wonder whose interests you really serve. Your feeble attack reminds of a quote from Gandhi, "First they ignore you. Then they attack you. Then you win." Let's see if AlterNet will have the integrity to print my letter. - Michael C. Ruppert Publisher/Editor of From The Wilderness ============================================================================
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