I've probably said this before, I am a reformed JFK Assassination Conspiracy loon. I used to devour the latest books with the latest "New Found Evidence" proving that the CIA, Mafia, General Dynamics, DAR, LBJ, Nixon or the Bush family was behind the murder of the late President. I liked the idea of having "Inside Knowledge", knowing stuff that only super-duper CIA big-wigs, and international corporate banker dudes knew. I admit that for a brief time I wondered what would happen if the wrong person found out that I knew "Too Much"? I really liked knowing things that the general public was unaware of, because I liked the idea that I was smarter than everyone else.
In short, I was a stupid douche bag.
I probably would still be lost in fantasy land had I not gone to Dallas to visit my brother. He took me to the Sixth Floor Museum at the Texas Schoolbook Depository. I stood on the curb at the exact spot of the fatal head shot, and then I looked back at where Lee Oswald had been on the sixth floor.
It was an easy shot. I mean ridiculously easy.
When I returned home to California I got rid of most of my JFK conspiracy books. None of those authors had been in Dealy Plaza on that day, and few of them had never even set foot in Dallas either. The day I was there the X-Files movie was being shot a few blocks away, and they had a helicopter flying around. The first thing that I noticed was that Dealy Plaza has a wicked echo, and it was impossible to tell in which direction the chopper was coming from. I would imagine that three quick rifle shots would be a thousand times more confusing to pin-point the source. So the fact that some witnesses thought that those shots came from elsewhere is no longer surprising. Now there WAS a conspiracy, RFK closed down avenues of investigation mostly to protect his and his late brother's image. All of that is now open-source material at the National Archives, and no big secret.
9/11/2001 brought the worst terrorist attack upon U.S. soil. I can tell you that within days the conspiracy nuts were hard at work. I was told by a well-meaning paranoid friend that the footage of Palestinians dancing in the street was actually vintage footage from 1995, this in spite of the fact that a 2000 Toyota minivan can be seen prominently in the video. Then there was the van of Israelis that was stopped on one of the bridges just before the attack, which later turned out to have never happened. Eventually the first seriously constructed conspiracy book , written by a French millionaire, was published and it was off to the races. YouTube is now full of morons who have posted their expose' about what really happened on 9/11. You have the controlled demolition crowd, Pentagon was hit by a missile crowd, Bush let it happen crowd, and so on.
Now I could point out that thousands of police, fire fighters, iron workers, FBI agents, FEMA agents, Customs agents, and investigators from the city and state of New York poor all over Ground Zero. Later many of them also surveyed wreckage at the Fresh Kills landfill where the ruins of the WTC were trucked piece by piece. Just by the sheer volume of personel on site at both locations it is certain that had something been amiss it would have been reported. Not every government agent (FBI, FEMA, NTSB, etc) is a Republican, in fact the ideological split mirrors what you see in the rest of American society. The idea that some FBI agent withheld evidence that would implicate anybody other than the Al Qaeda hijackers is crazy. That agent would become a rock-star, they could name their price and the FBI would roll out the red carpet.
Then the idea that any NYPD or NYFD investigator would turn his back on the lives of his/her fellow officers who died in the collapse of the towers is...obscene.
Instead, as a reformed conspiracy loon myself, I will point out how their conspiracy theory contradicts larger conspiracy theories.
The World Trade Center was home to banks, law offices, shipping companies, and other high-end commerce businesses. It was also home to Cantor-Fitzgerald, the bond trading firm. Some of the most important people in the world made phone calls to the WTC a couple of times a week. Some of the wealthiest and powerful men in the world were on the phone to Cantor-Fitzgerald daily. As a conspiracy loon I would have once told you that rich people only care about their money. So why would they allow an attack on the people who manage it? Seriously if 9/11 was an inside job so that the wealthy and powerful could line their pockets then why target the place where their assets went through and kill the people who managed their wealth? Also, rich people hire private investigators. The conspiracy loon inside me would add that they hire the dangerous kind of PIs, the kind who are not frightened or intimidated by government assassins. I am supposed to believe that none of these dangerous PIs have not been able to find out the "Truth" behind 9/11? With the thousands of people that need to be involved in keeping the big secret, I'm supposed to believe then none of them have talked?
The rational part of my brain believes that it is indeed possible that a few private investigations into the attacks of 9/11/2001 have taken place. Friends of powerful people were lost, allegations have been made that might have warranted a closer look. Yet nothing has come to light. Politics is a blood sport, and there is a long list of powerful people being brought down by anonymous sources (Deep throat). George W. Bush would certainly be an easy target, yet the "Truth" movement has found nothing. The media has found nothing.
The WTC was also home to the Thai embassy. Thai intelligence has not discovered anything to discount the official story of the events of 9/11.
I feel sorry for the "Truthers". I also do not. What they are doing is taking Al Qaeda out of the terrorist attacks, and then inserting their own political agenda. They are terrorist by proxy.
Shame on them.
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