I was asked to reply to the letter by Scott Petiya.
I believe I understand his concern. I certainly understand his conviction that even the Bush administration would not have orchestrated 9/11, since that was my view for the first year and a half.
However, we should finally let our beliefs be controlled by the relevant evidence, not our a priori assumptions about what people would and would not do. And when I finally looked at the evidence, I was quite amazed to find how strong it is. As I showed in my first book on the topic,
, a very strong cumulative argument leads to the conclusion that the Bush administration planned and carried out the attacks.
Mr. Petiya believes that this conclusion is “silly.” His first argument is that such a conspiracy could not “have gone forward without anyone knowing about it.” To think it could have would indeed be silly. But the question is whether those who knew about it could have resisted talking about it, and many large-scale efforts have been kept secret for a long time.
Petiya’s second argument is that “the Bush administration would [not] have been capable of thinking up such an idea and carrying it out [in] less than eight months.” But as I pointed out in my book, there is good reason to believe that the plan had been formulated long before it was certain that George W. Bush would become president.
Petiya also considers it “craz[y]” to think that the WTC was brought down by explosives. One reason is that no one could have snuck explosives into the buildings. But he might think otherwise if he realized that the CEO of the company in charge of security was the president’s cousin, Wirt Walker III, that the president’s brother Marvin was one of its directors, and that parts of the buildings were reportedly blocked off to everyone except “engineers” in the weeks preceding 9/11.
Petiya believes that the towers collapsed “because of the impact of the planes and the resulting fires.” But perhaps he is unaware that WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed. He may also be unaware that fire has never before caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse, even when the fires were much bigger, hotter, and longer-lasting than the fires in the Twin Towers or Building 7. He may be unaware, in other words, that every previous total collapse was produced by using explosives in the procedure known as “controlled demolition.” He may also be unaware that all 3 buildings showed at least 10 of the standard features of controlled demolition (such as sudden onset, straight down collapse, virtually free-fall speed, and the production of huge dust clouds from pulverized concrete). Petiya believes it is much more plausible that the buildings collapsed because their steel melted, but he must be unaware that steel does not melt until it gets above 2770F, whereas open fires burning hydrocarbons, such as jet fuel (i.e., kerosene), cannot get above 1700F.
It turns out, in other words, that once one is aware of these (and several more) relevant facts, what is crazy is the belief that the buildings could have come down without the use of explosives.
Petiya is “outraged” that my article was published because it is “counterproductive to the peace movement.” I don’t know if he would still hold this view if he, after looking at the evidence, concluded that my article was correct about 9/11. But he might, in any case, be interested to know that my books have been endorsed by Richard Falk, Marcus Raskin, Rosemary Ruether, and Howard Zinn. So perhaps there is room in the peace movement for people who believe that the best way to stop the present administration is to expose its complicity in the very event it uses as its justification for all its other outrages.
David Ray Griffin
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
As a person deeply committed to the cause of peace and justice around the world, and deeply opposed to the Bush administration's bungled efforts to bring the 9/11 conspirators to justice and its misguided disaster in Iraq, I feel obligated to respond to what is unquestionably a grave error on the part of the
Active for Justice newsletter. I was shocked by the assertions made by David Ray Griffin in his article about the mysteries of 9/11 and outraged that any sensible peace organization would publish it.
Some of the questions raised by Griffin I found interesting and, to an extent, legitimate, particularly about the failures of the Pentagon's defenses. However, his overall implication that the attacks were aided or orchestrated from within the U.S. government is silly. I cannot believe that such a conspiracy could have gone forward without anyone knowing about it. I don't think the Bush administration would have been capable of thinking up such an idea and carrying it out less than eight months after it took office, even if it were looking for an excuse to attack Iraq or any other country. As Iraq has proven, foresight is not one of their talents.
The suggestion that explosives were placed in the World Trade Center to cause the collapse ranks high among the craziest things I have ever heard. Nobody, government or terrorist, would have been able to sneak thousands of explosives into the towers without being exposed. As suprising as it might seem that the towers collapsed because of the impact of the planes and the resulting fires, it is completely plausible. The huge explosions caused by the planes and the fires burning for an hour melted the steel support structure, and once the top floors of the tower fell downward onto the floors immediately below, the weight and force of the upper floors continued to crush every level down, one on top of the other. This scenario makes much more sense than someone deliberately planting explosives. Mr. Griffin points to the aspects of the attack which lead him to think it was an inside job, but does he deny that planes were hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists? Is he going to write something later which says that CIA agents were the hijackers? Or that someone paid bin Laden to delcare in his most recent video message that he ordered the attacks?
I recently visited the site of the WTC in New York, where so many innocent people died that day. My aunt lives five blocks north of it, and was among the thousands fleeing from lower Manhattan on that morning. She, like me, has been hurt and angered by the policies of the Bush administration since 2001, but she and all New Yorkers would find Griffins article deeply insulting. Absolutely, grave mistakes were made at every level of the government in failing to investigate, connect, and act on the numerous warning signs before the attack. Absolutely, the way in which Bush has used the attacks to boost his popularity, keep himself and his allies in power, and start a disastrous war in Iraq is appalling. But there is no doubt that what happened on 9/11 was an attack by al-Qaeda, and that bin Laden and his henchmen must be brought to justice. Articles like Griffin's are counterproductive to the peace movement which we support. Such statements make it very easy for Bush and his henchmen to portray the peace movement as unpatriotic, dangerously radical, anti-American, and if they used Griffin's article, they might say we're completely insane. If the peace movement publicizes views like these, it is more likely the right wing will be able to cling to power longer, with terrible consequences for America and the world.
Scott Petiya
Colorado College
