On Oct. 15th and 16th, New Yorkers filled two venues to hear the prominent theologian and author of two books on 9/11 give a presentation entitled "The Destruction of the Trade Towers: A Christian Theologian Speaks Out." Dr. Griffin has continued to blaze a trail of courage, leading where most media and elected officials have feared to tread. His presentation went straight to the core of one of the most powerful indictments of the official story, the collapse of the towers and WTC 7.

Dr. Griffin included excerpts from the firemen's tapes, which were recently released as a result of a prolonged court battle led by victim's families represented by attorney Norman Siegel and reported in the NY Times. He also included statements by many witnesses. These sources gave ample testimony giving evidence of explosions going off in the buildings. A 12-minute film was shown for the audiences, who saw for themselves the undeniable evidence for controlled demolition.

Dr. Griffin listed ten characteristics of the collapses, which all indicate that the buildings did not fall due to being struck by planes or the ensuing fires. He explained the buildings fell suddenly without any indication of collapse. They fell straight into their own footprint at free-fall speed, meeting virtually no resistance as they fell—a physical impossibility unless all vertical support was being progressively removed by explosives severing the core columns.

The towers were built to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 and 160 mile per hour winds, and nothing about the plane crashes or ensuing fires gave any indication of causing the kind of damage that would be necessary to trigger even a partial or progressive collapse, much less the shredding of the buildings into dust and fragments that could drop at free-fall speed.

The massive core columns-the most significant structural feature of the buildings, whose very existence is denied in the official 9/11 Commission Report--were severed into uniform 30 foot sections, just right for the 30-foot trucks used to remove them quickly before a real investigation could transpire.

There was a volcanic-like dust cloud from the concrete being pulverized, and no physical mechanism other than explosives can begin to explain how so much of the buildings' concrete was rendered into extremely fine dust.

The debris was ejected horizontally several hundred feet in huge fan shaped plumes stretching in all directions, with telltale "squibs" following the path of the explosives downward. These are all facts that have been avoided by mainstream and even most of the alternative media.

Again, these are characteristics of the kind of controlled demolitions that news people and firefighters were describing on the morning of 9/11. Those multiple first-person descriptions of controlled demolition were hidden away for almost four years by the City of New York until a lawsuit finally forced the city to release them.

Dr. Griffin's study of these accounts has led him beyond his earlier questioning of the official story of the collapses, to his above-quoted conclusion: The destruction of the three WTC buildings with explosives by US government terrorists is no longer a hypothesis, but a fact that has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

It's important to note that Dr. Griffin is one of many prominent intellectuals—including the likes of Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Peter Dale Scott, Richard Falk, Paul Craig Roberts, Morgan Reynolds and Peter Phillips—who have seen through the major discrepancies of the official explanation of 9/11 and have risen to challenge it. These brave individuals represent the tip of an ever-growing iceberg of discreet 9/11 skeptics.

Indeed, 9/11 skepticism appears to be almost universal among intellectuals who have examined the evidence, since there has not yet been a single serious attempt to refute the case developed by Dr. Griffin and such like-minded thinkers as Nafeez Ahmed and Mike Ruppert.

As for the general public, polls have shown that a strong majority of Canadians (63%, Toronto Star, May '04) and half of New Yorkers (Zogby, August 2004) agree that top US leaders conspired to murder nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11/01.

How, then, can the mainstream US media continue to ignore the story of the century? Perhaps the best answer was given by Dr. Griffin himself in the conclusion of his talk, and is worth quoting at length:

"The evidence for this conclusion (that 9/11 was an inside job) has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream press, perhaps under the guise of obeying President Bush's advice not to tolerate "outrageous conspiracy theories." We have seen, however, that it is the Bush administration's conspiracy theory that is the outrageous one, because it is violently contradicted by numerous facts, including some basic laws of physics.

"There is, of course, another reason why the mainstream press has not pointed out these contradictions. As a recent letter to the Los Angeles Times said: "'The number of contradictions in the official version of . . . 9/11 is so overwhelming that . . . it simply cannot be believed. Yet . . . the official version cannot be abandoned because the implication of rejecting it is far too disturbing: that we are subject to a government conspiracy of 'X-Files' proportions and insidiousness.'

"The implications are indeed disturbing. Many people who know or at least suspect the truth about 9/11 probably believe that revealing it would be so disturbing to the American psyche, the American form of government, and global stability that it is better to pretend to believe the official version. I would suggest, however, that any merit this argument may have had earlier has been overcome by more recent events and realizations.

"Far more devastating to the American psyche, the American form of government, and the world as a whole will be the continued rule of those who brought us 9/11, because the values reflected in that horrendous event have been reflected in the Bush administration's lies to justify the attack on Iraq, its disregard for environmental science and the Bill of Rights, its criminal negligence both before and after Katrina, and now its apparent plan not only to weaponize space but also to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike.

"In light of this situation and the facts discussed in this lecture---as well as dozens of more problems in the official account of 9/11 discussed elsewhere---I call on the New York Times to take the lead in finally exposing to the American people and the world the truth about 9/11. Taking the lead on such a story will, of course, involve enormous risks. But if there is any news organization with the power, the prestige, and the credibility to break this story, it is the Times. It performed yeoman service in getting the 9/11 oral histories released. But now the welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed. I am calling on the Times to rise to the occasion.

Dr. Griffin's speech given at the University of Wisconsin earlier this year, entitled "9/11 and the American Empire," was broadcast twice on C-SPAN. In late September Dr. Griffin was asked to give expert testimony at hearings sponsored by Cynthia McKinney and the Congressional Black Caucus investigating the 9/11 Commission Report. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Claremont College in California.

The events were sponsored by NY911truth.org, WBAI and the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth: * Kevin Barrett Coordinator