The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Like many, I was absolutely slack-jawed while reading Griffin's Book "The New Pearl Harbor". The claims of conspiracy in the 9-11 attacks were unbelievably controversial yet appeared to be very solidly reasoned and researched, and backed up by numberous sources. But then the Commission Report came out and, after reading it, that volume seemed so mammoth and exhaustive that Griffin's book seemed light and sketchy by comparison. While I was still troubled by many suspicious aspects of the attacks, I was much more satisfied with the official explanation that the whole thing was the result of a simultaneous, catastrophic failure of virtually every civilian and military system that was supposed to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks.

But now Griffin has returned to pull back the curtain to reveal how this supposedly impartial and unbiased commission really conducted their business. The author lays bare their phony cloak of nonpartisanship, their selective examination of only the evidence that supports their foregone conclusions, and their failure to hold anyone in power accountable for what happened. Griffin writes chapter after chapter that patiently and methodically picks apart the methods and conclusions of the comission; what they missed, what they ignored, what they distorted. By the end of the book the 9-11 Commission Report seems like nothing but a shoddy cover-up.

I'd be willing to consider the possibilty that Griffin has got it all wrong but the extent to which you would have to twist and torture the facts and the evidence to explain your way out of the author's incisive conclusions leaves me very persuaded. David Ray Griffin has been called a conspiracy nut (and worse) but I have yet to see any detailed and/or compelling rebuttal to his extensive research. And until I do, I remain convinced of a large scale cover-up and I will never again trust my government to truthfully account for a national tragedy. I invite you to read this book and convince me otherwise.

This book is arguably the most important landmark in the investigation into 9/11 available on the book market so far. It is a very important, but also truly disturbing, book. For it shows to the reader in meticulous detail that the official investigation led by Thomas Kean and Philip Zelikow into the story about 9/11 presented by the White House has omitted and distorted so many facts that it can never seriously be accepted as the true account of what happened on 9/11.

Only very few people have read the 576 pages of the Kean/Zelikow report and tested the quality of the book. It is therefore of great value that Professor emeritus David Ray Griffin has carried out this task and described in detail how sensitive facts regarding mysterious or even illegal behaviour by senior US executives had been supplied in sworn testimony to the Kean/Zelikow commission by members of the FBI but then ignored in the Kean/Zelikow book. Griffin also explains that no mention, let alone explanation, is given of the collapse of WTC 7 or of the BBC report that six of the 19 hijackers were still alive.

While Griffin explicitly suspects that the Bush administration and the Pentagon have covered up the true 9/11 story, he never claims to know it himself but asks for a new and truly independent investigation. It is this latter feature which greatly contributes to the credibility and importance of this courageous book. I use this book with my history students to illustrate how history can be distorted through omissions and distortions. I warmly recommend this book to all those who are interested in both 9/11 and the subsequent cover up.

Dr. Daniele Ganser, Center for Security Studies, Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland

Author of NATO's Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (Frank Cass, London and New York, January 2005)

First I will briefly review Griffin's book, then respond to the 1-star reviewers on this site.

The thumbs-up and thumbs-down:

There are points at which it seems Griffin's theological background does him a disservice, because the tale he spins comes across poorly as a homily. Too often Griffin argues manipulatively, and uses rhetorical tricks unbefitting someone claiming to write a dispassionate expose of the facts. Evermore sad, these machinations are largely unnecessary--Griffin's points ARE rivetting, taken in their entirety. Griffin's scholarship IS generally sound. The connections he makes are, for the most part, logical and difficult to refute. Griffin should have stuck to the facts, acknowledged where his points leave room for debate, and allowed his laying out of the evidence to chew upon readers resistant to the upshot. Griffin too frequently uses cymbals when a metronome would do.

All that said, I have yet to read a solid rebuttal of Griffin's manifesto, or anything countering the inertia built up by his relentless blizzard of facts. I have seen people deflect specific hailstones of Griffin's, but no one has yet succeeded in outshouting the storm.

As for the knee-jerk naysayers: I'm sorry, but saying "US government complicity in 9/11 is impossible because it would be just too, too mean and evil of them!" is not a fact-driven argument. None of us are psychic, or psychologists worthy of mapping all possible rationalizations government members might entertain for complicity in 9/11. Perhaps they believe they are front-ending an inevitable war, amounting to fewer casualties in the long run. We know that the Project for the New American Century put forth an unapologetic call for taking over virtually all of the Middle East, and to hell with civilian casualties and American lives spent in the effort. In short, arguing that "US complicity in 9/11 is too evil to be possible" is a childish, emotion-driven, historically blind sentiment that has no place in a serious review of the facts.

Second, Snopes.com does not offer a thorough discussion of the Pentagon crash. It does not address the issue of confiscated cameras, nor the absence of airplane fuselage or engines or the appropriate number of bodies, nor the dearth of black box recordings, nor the fact that the jetfighter-swoop into the building was supposedly carried out by a pilot whose instructors declared him unfit to fly straight.

Third, the connection Griffin draws to specific Isreali companies and factions (who would hardly have the interests of the Israeli people at heart) is in no way an indictment of "Jews" as a whole, and to suggest otherwise is absurd. Crying "anti-Semitism" in this case is the rhetorical equivalent of arguing that any implication of corruption in, say, The Christian Coalition or The American Family Association amounts to throwing all Christians everywhere to the lions, or any implication of corruption of an American company amounts to hatred of all Americans. Silly, unfair, and pedestrian in the extreme.

Fourth, arguing that "US complicity could not have been possible because SOMEONE would have blabbed" shows an inattention both to how military works (soldiers take orders without question), and to what has happened to people who have tried to "blab." Examine, for example, the wholesale ruin and discrediting of whistleblowers and critics like Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, Sibel Edmonds, Colleen Rowley, Ambassador Wilson, UN inspector Scott Ritter, Karen Kwiatkowski, Rep. Murtha, etc. etc. There has to be an audience and haven for "blabbers" for any sane person to take that risk, especially when exposing something so explosive.

Fifth: the argument about the 3 towers (including WTC 7, never struck by a plane) being brought down with explosives is not just about the fact that they DID collapse, but about HOW they collapsed. The South tower fell first, though its fire was nearly out, and the burning fuel almost completely confined to the outer surface of the building. The towers fell inward at freefall speed, generating huge amounts of powdered dust from the top, in easily removable, neat sections. All of these conditions, historically, have only taken place in cases of controlled demolition. FEMA refused to allow engineers to inspect the evidence, and had the steel shipped off for recycling within an astonishingly brief period.

Finally, one need not be convinced of all of Griffin's conclusions to appreciate the damage Griffin does to the credibility of the 9/11 Commission Report. Any outright dismissal of this book without a solid attempt to engage the bulk of Griffin's points is an intellectually lazy, sycophantic move that is itself worthy of dismissal.