The September 27, 2004 issue of The Nation has a review of David Ray Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor... written by Robert Baer, celebrated CIA agent (whose career involvement with the agency is acknowledged on the review's lead page). Griffin's book has a foreword by Richard Falk, who sits on The Nation's advisory board. But that hasn't inhibited the editors from frying the book in lard.
Baer's review is a heavy load of condescension, flustered contempt, false dichotomies, and a few undisputed facts, borne along by that old workhorse: the claim that elites can't possibly conspire in something horrible (like the murder of an American President in 1963, or three thousand people in NYC in 2001) and then execute it, because (1) too many people would need to know in advance, and (2) once done, it wouldn't remain a secret.
Well, FBI field agents like Robert Wright and Colleen Rowley who desperately tried to prevent 9/11 were stopped by one man, Special Supervisory Agent David Frasca --- not by the entire FBI. All that's required are a few well-placed, key people. As for keeping it a secret, of course the big crimes can't be kept secret. That's where The Nation comes in.
The best way to cope with the emergence of uncomfortable truths is to declare that they can't possibly be true, since if they were, they would have emerged by now -- ahem. Let's go to a commercial.
The facts have come out. Read Michael C. Ruppert's new book, Crossing The Rubicon (New Society Publishers) and Paul Thompson's The Terror Timeline (Harper Collins). Both are built entirely from mainstream news sources and direct testimony. Then ask yourself whether Dick Cheney and elements in the Pentagon would have foregone trillions of dollars and decades of oil out of concern that the facts might come out. They're out! But if they're not in The Nation, they're not facts.
The usually-recommended response to a review like Baer's is a Letter to the Editor. Since The Nation prints this sort of CIA-driven disinfo quite often, there are ample opportunities to find out what happens to such Letters to the Editor at that particular publication. They go into a pretty trashcan with a peace sign on it.
Fortunately, it is still possible to find analysis that transcends the marshmallow-bellyache of this Babyboomer Flagship Publication --- in the peace-trashcan and in some other places:
Here, Mark Robinowitz has assembled an excellent set of resources about left-gatekeeper phenomena --- the politics, the psychology, the practice, the personnel: http://www.oilempire.us/denial.html http://www.oilempire.us/gatekeepers.html#thenation
And here, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed offers a major treatment of left-gatekeeping targeted at Z-Net in particular (especially David Corn and Michael Albert): "9/11 'Conspiracies' and the Defactualisation of Analysis: How Ideologues on the Left and Right Theorise Vacuously to Support Baseless Supposition --- A Reply To Z-Net's 'Conspiracy Theory' Section" http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq37.html
Here, I take a shot at The Nation for its embrace of a disingenuous book by Mark Riebling that alleges a tragic "wedge" (Jamie Gorelick, who learned so much from this book, called it a "wall") between the CIA and FBI: "Failure and Crime Are Not The Same" 9-11's Limited Hangouts": http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112203_failure_crime.html
And here's another: "Bad Faith Again: An Open Letter To The Nation Magazine" http://www.mediamonitors.net/jameyhecht1.html
Helloooo, trashcan!
Best wishes, Jamey Hecht, PhD Author, Plato's Symposium: Eros and the Human Predicament
------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- www.jameyhecht.com www.fromthewilderness.com www.911Truth.org www.oilempire.us
from Mark Robinowitz:
"The best disinformation is mostly correct" -- paraphrase of comments by Peter Dale Scott, author of numerous books on "deep politics"
It is fascinating that The Nation got a genuine, admitted CIA agent to write this hatchet job (Baer's review of "New Pearl Harbor" in the September 27 issue that supports Cheney's innocence by ignoring the evidentiary record).
In early 2002, The Nation ran several articles by David Corn, their Washington Editor, attacking journalist and whistleblower Michael Ruppert, for daring to piece together a mountain of evidence that 9/11 was not a surprise attack. Corn is a long time defender of the Warren Commission (which covered up the coup against JFK), wrote a biography of CIA dirty trickster Ted Shackley that ignored evidence of drug complicity, attacked journalist Gary Webb for writing his series in the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA and the cocaine trade, and attacked the peace movement before the Iraq war for being too leftist (but didn't do anything to organize less leftist peace rallies). After Corn attacked Ruppert, the Colin Powell / Richard Armitage State Department sent Corn on a government paid trip to influence media in Trinidad (a major oil / gas exporter to the United States). Corn's article on Alternet even stated that he had been "dispatched" to go there, and that it was your "tax dollars at work." Real journalists who investigate government scandals usually don't get that sort of treatment -- most get harassed, not feted on taxpayer funded junkets to infiltrate media elites in tropical destinations that export fossil fuels to the US market.
The Nation has clearly allied itself with the CIA by publishing this article, and has announced in no uncertain terms that it is not interested in journalism on this subject that attempts to examine factual evidence. This is far different that merely ignoring the issue (which much of the Left has chosen to do).
The Nation has been perhaps the strongest supporter of the Warren Commission on what's left of "The Left" for four decades -- it is not a surprise that they are providing such critical support (whether witting or unwitting is ultimately irrelevant) to the Cheney re-election effort by urging nervous liberals to shut up about Cheney's complicity in 9/11, just as they defended Bush against accusations of foreknowledge after 9/11, when the allegations had the potential to thwart the political momentum for the US invasion of Iraq. And then they wonder why "The Left" has so little political influence ...
None of the pundits, CIA agents, media "experts," political consultants, candidates, elected officials and other fixtures of the media dare talk about the multiple war games that were being coordinated on 9/11 that paralyzed the Air Force defense of New York and Washington, the multiple warnings from allied intelligence services that specifically identified what, when and where the "attacks" would be, the warnings to selected elites not to fly or otherwise get out of the way (the most famous is the caution given to San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown not to fly to NYC on 9/11), or the stock trades placed a few days before on Wall Street and other financial markets betting the values of United, American and other impacted companies would drop. These are topics that cannot be reconciled with the official story, and therefore must be put into George Orwell's "memory hole."
A Zogby poll of New York City residents released during the Republican National Convention found that 49% of those surveyed think that the Bush administration had foreknowledge of 9/11. It is likely that if the media -- whether corporate establishment or liberal "alternative" -- had covered the anomalies in the official story, the 49% statistic would probably be more like 79% or 89%.
In any military coup d'etat, one of the first places that is seized is the television and/or radio station (depending on the technological sophistication of the country being changed). The US coup d'etat has been more subtle, but more widespread -- encompassing the so-called "alternative" publications like The Nation in addition to the more obvious suspects like the major television networks. The best disinformation is mostly correct -- and The Nation has done a tremendous favor for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort by publishing a CIA agent's critique of "The New Pearl Harbor." Of course, this critique ignored the CIA exercise underway the morning of 9/11 at the nearby headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office, which controls US spy satellites, which simulated a plane-into-buildingn scenario at the exact same time that 9/11 was underway.
It's hard to know what defenders of the official story think about this amazing coincidence, since they don't dare discuss it. (Mike Ruppert's book "Crossing the Rubicon" explores the wargames of 9/11 in considerable detail, and concludes that they were in fact the means used to paralyze the Air Force defense of New York and Washington -- and that they were being coordinated by Cheney in the White House. What does "The Nation" have to say about this? Do they really want four more years of Bush and Cheney, and decades more of the "military industrial complex," which President Eisenhower warned us about as his final statement to the nation?)
It is fascinating that the "book review" in The Nation did not actually deal with any of the evidence presented by Dr. David Ray Griffin in his book, which is a summary of much of the best information unearthed by a variety of investigations into the 9/11 attacks. Dr. Griffin did state very clearly in the introduction that not all of the material needs to be proven true in order for there to be overwhelming evidence for some level of complicity -- yet Mr. Baer's review did not attempt to debunk a single claim with any level of specificity. While it is likely that a couple claims for complicity will not hold up under scrutiny (for example, the claim that a plane didn't hit the Pentagon is likely incorrect - see http://www.oilempire.us/pentagon.html ), the cumulative nature of the evidence that the official story is riddled with lies is overwhelming.
Reading "Crossing the Rubicon" and "The Terror Timeline" should be mandatory reading for every citizen before voting in the National Election. It is unlikely that The Nation will dare to review these books, since the amount of evidence they provide is far too much to be dismissed with a simple "nyaah" by a CIA agent who spent many years manipulating politics in the Middle East.
Discrediting the fiction surrounding 9/11 should be of prime importance for a publication like The Nation, which claims to want lower military budgets, a less belligerent foreign policy, human rights abroad and domestically, energy efficiency and renewable energy, etc. Numerous commentators have charged since 9/11 that The Nation and similar publications funded by the Ford Foundation and other conservative, establishment interests are compromised -- and cannot cover the "deep politics" of 9/11, Peak Oil, and the empire's invasion of the Middle East oil fields due to their dependence upon philanthropic gestures from institutions heavily invested in petroleum interests (ie. Ford).
Please support independent journalists by buying copies of Crossing the Rubicon and The Terror Timeline. If you subscribe to The Nation, you could ask for a pro-rated refund on the rest of your subscription.
http://www.oilempire.us/books.html has lists of prominent persons endorsing these books and other investigations into 9/11 -- politicians, famous authors, former government officials and 9/11 family victims
Michael Ruppert's long awaited book "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" http://www.fromthewilderness.com Read the full announcement of the book http://www.newsociety.com/News/rub_ann.html Read an excerpt: Wargames - Chapter 19 http://www.newsociety.com/News/rub_war.pdf August 31, 2004 speech to the San Francisco Commonwealth Club http://www.fromthewilderness.com/PDF/Commonwealth.pdf
Interview with Sue Supriano, KPFA-FM http://www.suesupriano.com (half hour long, very concise and eloquent)
Paul Thompson's book "The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute" http://cooperativeresearch.org/911_terror_timeline_by_paul_thompson.jsp based on the incredible, impeccable database of mass media articles by the Center for Cooperative Research