David Ray Griffin

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www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1270/page/2
truthmod - Administrator

Most of us here think the insidiousness of DRG's continuing promotion of discredited information lies in his associating it with the very legitimate body of evidence for 9/11 skepticism. DRG, as a major spokesman for the movement also has a responsibility to maintain certain standards and to be open to credible critiques from others as well as to revising his positions in light of certain evidence.

I used to think of DRG as some kind of hero. I have a signed copy of "The New Pearl Harbor." I used to buy copies of that book and give them to friends. He seemed like an eminently logical/reasonable person to me. When I began to see the obviousness of the case AGAINST no-plane-at-the-Pentagon, I assumed DRG would also revise his position soon enough. I was mistaken and have been exponentially disappointed over the last few years, to the point where I wouldn't recommend his books to anyone or put an ounce of trust in him.

 

OilEmpire.US sponsored event: July 28, 2004 in Eugene, Oregon

On July 28, 2004, in Eugene, Oregon, OilEmpire.US co-sponsored the second public event that David Ray Griffin spoke about 9/11. Nearly 500 people attended.

Griffin's speech, archived at the link below, was one of his best about 9/11 complicity. It was focused on the falsehoods of the 9/11 Commission report, which was released a few days before this presentation, in particular the bogus timelines used to justify the incompetence theory to supposedly explain how 9/11 was unable to be prevented.

Mercifully, Griffin did not stress the themes that his presentations morphed into in later years - the "no plane" hoaxes, the absurd claims that the phone calls from the doomed planes were all faked by military intelligence or the demolition theories. However, he also avoided the broader context to understand 9/11 complicity such as the history and methods of the military industrial complex, the efforts to control Middle East oil fields or the deep politics of the American Empire. In summary, Griffin's initial efforts were his best, and it has been downhill since then.

This speech was given as alleged allies were increasing their efforts to insinuate themselves as alleged allies of the 9/11 truth movement. As the confusion and distraction campaigns accelerated, many well-intentioned but careless advocates got fooled by the mix of true and nonsense claims injected into the Truth Movement. Unfortunately, Professor (Emeritus) Griffin has made virtually no effort to carefully evaluate various claims to evaluate their credibility. Whether the motivation behind mixing together this toxic stew of truth, half-truth and disinformation is incompetence, an ego-based failure to admit mistakes or intentional deception, promoting the mix is not "truth" even if parts of the presentation are accurate.

www.permatopia.com/audio/griffin20040728part1.mp3
60 minutes, 14 mb
www.permatopia.com/audio/griffin20040728part2.mp3
24 minutes, 5 mb

 

Debunking David Ray Griffin: The Truth and Lies of 9/11 Truth

"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments."
-- Nietzsche

On November 28, 2001, journalist Michael Ruppert (www.fromthewilderness.com) gave an incredible presentation at Portland State University that documented that the Bush administration had complete foreknowledge of 9/11. This lecture was turned into the film “Truth and Lies of 9/11” and subsequent book “Crossing the Rubicon,” and the core of the evidence has withstood more than five years of examination. While From the Wilderness has shut down as a business and is no longer selling the video, a bootleg copy of it is available at Google Video, and the basic information in the lecture is available at the FTW archives which are still on that website. In summary, Ruppert's presentation established beyond any reasonable doubt that the highest echelons of the federal government had complete foreknowledge of the events

On May 21, 2007, theologian David Ray Griffin spoke about 9/11 in the same auditorium where Ruppert gave his first 9/11 speech. Griffin’s books on 9/11 have good summaries of the evidence for complicity, but they are also marred by some false claims that he has accepted uncritically, the most important of these is the idea that the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon did not happen. When the Washington Post reviewed his first 9/11 book “New Pearl Harbor” in October 2004, they only focused on this false claim and ignored the rest of the book.

There was very little overlap between these two presentations, as if they were about events in parallel universes.

Ruppert spent a lot of time discussing the financial and "deep politics" background that led to 9/11: ties between Wall Street and the CIA, the role of drug money in the US economy, how the coup d'etat against President Kennedy was covered up, detailed evidence for specific foreknowledge of 9/11, and the underlying factor of Peak Oil as a primary motivation of the Cheney/Bush regime for allowing the attacks to happen. None of these points were made during Griffin's presentation - indeed, the word OIL was not mentioned at all, which is the same curious omission that the major media and the "left gatekeepers" make when discussing the War on Iraq and the broader so-called War on Terror.

Ruppert's "The Truth and Lies of 9/11" doesn't need corrections more than five years later, although subsequent research found additional material about the war games that day that were not yet public in November 2001. One of the questions posed to Griffin after his speech was about the war games (which were not even hinted at during the lecture). Griffin replied that he did not think there was anything to them, and that they were a form of limited hang out. In other words, David Ray Griffin essentially says that the fact the CIA and National Reconnaissance Office ran a "plane into building" exercise in Virginia as 9/11 unfolded should be ignored by 9/11 truth activists in favor of the claim that phone calls cannot be made from airphones on commercial jet planes.

Griffin had to admit a couple of times that there were some major errors in his new book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" (about some of the claims that the jets did not have airphones on board that were used by passengers and crew to make phone calls during the hijacking).

Most of Griffin's new focus is on tertiary points, speculation about demolition theories and flagrantly erroneous claims. The worst part of the Portland presentation discussed alleged evidence for fake phone calls from the doomed planes, one of the most ridiculous claims for complicity. (The complicated logistics that would be required to simulate the voices for any and all of the passengers and crew for four semi-randomly selected jetplanes defies calculation and is not believable as a component of a highly risky, extremely compartmented covert operation.) It is a claim created by an aggressive promoter of the false Pentagon "no plane" meme, and probably was intended to offend the family members in order to ensure they would not cooperate with the "conspiracy theorists." Keeping that wedge in place prevents the administration's worst nightmare -- that the family members would link up with independent investigators who put together the pieces for official complicity.

 

If David Ray Griffin is sincere in his advocacy of 9/11 truth, it would be stronger if he acknowledged the proliferation of false claims to distract from the best evidence of complicity. Worse, a recent article by him for Tikkun, a liberal Jewish magazine, included respectful links to white supremacist neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers as credible sources of 9/11 information. It is psychologically difficult to admit that one has had deliberately false material given to you by alleged friends who are not actually your friends (a "false friend" operation).

Sincere 9/11 truth activists who welcome any claims for complicity regardless of the quality of the evidence should consider the fact that the "Jersey Girls" endorsed Paul Thompson's book adapted from the Complete 9/11 Timeline but won't go near "9/11 truth" events featuring people promoting "no planes" and "no phone calls" as serious claims.

This story suggests that writing about theology and investigative journalism are different skills. Griffin is now going to be the fact checker for the next version of the Loose (with Truth) Change movie (the popular conglomeration of nearly every nonsense claim combined with some true evidence for complicity). It would be surprising if his involvement ensured that the script would focus mostly on best evidence and discard the memes long ago debunked by 9/11 truth activists.

An interesting correlation: most of the 9/11 activists who are the most upset about the false claims are also those with the most interest in putting 9/11 into a broader context (Peak Oil, the history of imperialism and empire, etc). They are also the ones who are more focused on permaculture and other solutions to the energy and ecology crises.

9/11 "truth" by itself doesn't lead anywhere for political change, although it is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle to understand our collective predicament at the end of the age of oil.

 

Griffin promotes discredited "no plane" hoax

"the initial damage to the west wing's facade was far too minimal to have been caused by the impact of a Boeing 757"
-- David Ray Griffin, April 2005 lecture in Madison, Wisconsin

 

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html
The Pentagon No-757-Crash Theory:
Booby Trap for 9/11 Skeptics
by Jim Hoffman October 7, 2004

The idea that no 757 crashed at the Pentagon is easily the most controversial and divisive issue among researchers of the 9/11/01 attacks. Effectively promoted since early 2002, this idea has enjoyed an increasing acceptance in the 9/11 Truth Movement, despite its blatant incompatibility with the extensive body of eyewitness evidence that a 757-like twin-engine jetliner flew into the Pentagon and exploded.
Many researchers have ignored or dismissed this eyewitness evidence in favor of a seemingly overwhelming physical evidence case that no 757 crashed at the Pentagon, based on photographs of the crash site. As I show below, however, each of the pieces evidence adduced in favor of the no-757-crash theory can be reconciled with the crash of a 757.

 

Victoria Ashley (regarding "New Pearl Harbor's" choice of sources):

To me, any person supposedly in a faith-based or spiritual-based profession who says something like "those eyewitnesses can't trump the physical evidence," or that the eye witness testimony isn't valid, has some issues, or has something else going on.

Why would a person invest his life and career in what it means to be human and spiritual, but discount all the views of over 100 people in the event of a tragedy, in favor of a handful of internet personas and people in other countries who have never even been to DC

 

Tikkun, a liberal Jewish magazine, published Griffin's article citing Holocaust deniers as allegedly credible sources

In March 2007, Tikkun published an article by David Griffin promoting the no plane hoax and demolition theories (which curiously avoided most the best evidence about suppressed warnings and wargames).

If Griffin had been interested in fact checking his sources, he probably would not have included neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers as the sources for several of his material -- likely the first (and last) time that Holocaust denial publications have been inadvertantly promoted in Tikkun. It is the ethical equivalent of writing an article for the NAACP newsletter and relying on the KKK for allegedly accurate information -- although the American Free Press, touted by Griffin in his Tikkun article, works closely (by their admission) with KKK leader David Duke.

 

sent to Tikkun magazine:

To the editor:

Tikkun's publication of David Ray Griffin's article about 9/11 -- www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0703/frontpage/empire911 -- is both courageous and detrimental. It is courageous because there is a lot of good evidence for Cheney/Bush complicity. Close US allies, including France, Germany, Israel, Jordan, Russia and others provided specific warnings that 9/11 was imminent. At least five FBI investigations were undermined just before the attacks. During 9/11, numerous war game exercises seem to have confused the air defenses or moved fighter planes too far away to intercept the hijacked planes. And the National Reconnaissance Office (which operates spy satellites) was conducting a "plane into building" exercise at the same time as actual events. In short, 9/11 was allowed to happen and probably was provided technical assistance to make sure that it happened -- since the "new Pearl Harbor" was needed to provide the excuse to seize the Middle East oil fields as we pass the global peak of petroleum production. That is what the "Cheney energy plan" is really about.

However, David Griffin's article is in desperate need of a fact checker, since not all claims of complicity are true. The most important disinformation is the false claim that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, a piece of outrageous nonsense first concocted by Donald Rumsfeld in a October 12, 2001 interview in Parade magazine. Every claim for this hoax has been debunked for years, even by many 9/11 truth activists. www.oilempire.us/pentagon-truth.html has a list of some of them, and it is intellectually dishonest for Griffin to pretend that this fact checking has not happened. Hundreds of people saw the plane crash and the plane parts afterwards. No one saw a missile. The width of the damage to the Pentagon was the width of the plane. Perhaps he could travel on Interstate 395 and Washington Boulevard (which pass near the Pentagon) the next time he is in Washington, D.C. and he might understand how lots of commuters saw Flight 77 crash into the nearly empty, recently reinforced and strengthened sector of the Pentagon. Why it was not intercepted (even after the second tower was hit) and how it was steered into the nearly empty part of the Pentagon are the real issues.

Griffin's article even promotes offensive attacks on the 9/11 family members by claiming that the phone calls from the doomed passengers were somehow all faked. While it's true that voice morphing software does exist, the complexity that would be required to stage this for dozens of randomly selected passengers shows the value of Occam's Razor. The source for this alleged claim is a Canadian who supposedly couldn't get a good cell phone signal from a plane somewhere in Canada -- as if that had any relevance to the final moments of the planes as they neared their targets. Additionally, many if not most of the calls were made on Airphones, which even the most extreme disinformation promoters on 9/11 don't deny actually function quite well in planes.

Worse, Griffin's article relied on several neo-Nazi Holocaust denial propagandists as alleged reliable sources -- which is especially outrageous to insert into a publication like Tikkun. The American Free Press, which Griffin considers credible, is a white supremacist publication that also publishes "The Barnes Review," the largest Holocaust denial publication in the country. (Barnes Review sells lots of titles claiming the Holocaust did not happen and praised Hitler as worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize!). Eric Hufschmid, also cited as a credible source, proudly boasts on his website that he doesn't believe the Holocaust happened, either. Rense.com, also given publicity in Griffin's footnotes, promotes the cause of Holocaust denial along with kooky stories of the paranormal that are entertaining to some but not appropriate for a serious examination of government malfeasance.
www.oilempire.us/holocaust-denial.html and www.oilempire.us/afp.html provide details.

However, the most damning problem of relying on neo-Nazis for "facts" is not the fact that they are racists lying about the Holocaust -- but they are also lying about the topic of 9/11 complicity. Yes, there's solid evidence for foreknowledge and paralysis of the air defenses via the wargames -- but the no plane claims are as fake as the racist canards about Auschwitz supposedly not being a death camp (a claim found at the websites of Hufschmid, American Free Press and Rense.com).

Nearly three years ago, oilempire.us co-sponsored the second public presentation that David Griffin made on 9/11 complicity issues. It is very disappointing to see him embrace Holocaust deniers and other liars promoting "no planes." Meanwhile, the media attack on the 9/11 truth movement focuses only on the "no plane" hoaxes and demolition theories -- not the well documented evidence of suppressed warnings and military wargames on 9/11 simulating actual events. It would be nice to see Mr. Griffin learn from these mistakes, since promoting a mix of real and false claims makes it difficult for most people to differentiate the good from the bad.

Skeptical Tikkun readers who want to read about the best evidence for 9/11 complicity while steering clear of the disinformation should start with the Complete 9/11 Timeline published by the Center for Cooperative Research at www.cooperativeresearch.org It doesn't have the most fanciful claims, but it does have solid evidence documented by mainstream media sources and official testimony.

from David Ray Griffin's article at
www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0703/frontpage/empire911

[24] A photograph taken by Terry Schmidt can be seen on page 63 of Eric Hufschmid’s Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002). According to Schmidt, this photo was taken between 3:09 and 3:16 PM, hence only a little over 2 hours before Building 7 collapsed. It shows that on the north side of the building, fires were visible only on floors 7 and 12. Therefore, if there were more fires on the south side, as some witnesses have claimed, they were not big enough to be seen from the north side.
[25] Quoted in Christopher Bollyn, “New Seismic Data Refutes Official Explanation,” American Free Press, Updated April 12, 2004. For several more examples, see the subsection labeled “Molten Steel” in my chapter, “The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True,” in Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, or the discussion of molten metal in Chap. 3 of Debunking 9/11 Debunking.
[56] See Ted Twietmeyer, “Judicial Watch Caught Pulling a 180 on Pentagon Footage,” Rense.com, May 21, 2006
[69] See Michel Chossudovsky, “More Holes in the Official Story: The 9/11 Cell Phone Calls,” Aug. 10, 2004) and A. K. Dewdney, “The Cellphone and Airfone Calls from Flight UA93,” Physics 911. However, the technology of “voice morphing,” through which the calls could have been faked, was sufficiently developed at the time, as explained in a 1999 article by William Arkin (“When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing,” Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1999). I discuss this issue at considerable length in Debunking 9/11 Debunking.

 

Magical Thinking

oilempire commentary is in red

Morons and Magic: A Reply to George Monbiot
David Ray Griffin
ICH
Thursday, March 8, 2007

In “Bayoneting a Scarecrow The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a coward’s cult.” (Guardian, February 20), George Monbiot accuses members of the 9/11 truth movement of being “morons” and “idiots” who believe in “magic.” Having in his previous attack---“A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world,” Guardian, February 6---called me this movement’s “high priest,” he now describes my 9/11 writing as a “concatenation of ill-attested nonsense.”

03/07/07 "ICH " -- - If my books are moronic nonsense, then people who have endorsed them must be morons. Would Monbiot really wish to apply this label to Michel Chossudovsky, Richard Falk, Ray McGovern, Michael Meacher, John McMurtry, Marcus Raskin, Rosemary Ruether, Howard Zinn, and the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, who, after a stint in the CIA, became one of America’s leading civil rights, anti-war, and anti-nuclear activists?
If anyone who believes that 9/11 was an inside job is by definition an idiot, then Moncbiot would have to sling that label at Colonel Robert Bowman, former head of the U.S. “Star Wars” program; Andreas von Bülow, former State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defense; former CIA analysts Bill Christison and Robert David Steele; former Scientific American columnist A. K. Dewdney; General Leonid Ivashov, former chief of staff of the Russian armed forces; Colonel Ronald D. Ray, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; all the members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, Veterans for 9/11 Truth, and Pilots for 9/11 Truth; and most of the individuals listed under “Professors Question 9/11” on the “Patriots Question 9/11” website.

 

Andreas von Buelow's book The CIA and September 11 is supposedly excellent, but unfortunately it is only in German and therefore unreadable for those of us who do not speak that language. He gave an early interview about the possibility of remote control of the planes shortly after 9/11.

Bowman is probably sincere but pushes "no planes." He narrowly lost his campaign for Congress in November -- what the vote would have been if he had been a little more careful with his facts -- perhaps he might have won, even considering the fraudulent nature of vote counting in Florida.

Bill Christison is a "former" CIA agent who is urging the "truth" movement to focus especially on the no plane hoax and demolition theories instead of the CIA sponsored plane-into-building exercise at the National Reconnaissance Office during 9/11. It must be an oversight for this "former" CIA officer to omit this.

Mr. Dewdney is the guy who went up in a plane somewhere in Canada and couldn't get his cell phone to work, so he then wrote a paper that claims that the phone calls of 9/11 (from the doomed passengers) were all faked even though (1) he didn't test cell phones at the locations and altitudes and (2) most of the calls were made with Airphones, which presumably do work in airplanes (that's why they charge so much for their use). It was a wonderful way to ensure the 9/11 families and the independent investigators would not work together, which is probably the biggest fear of the conspirators.

Most of the "truth" groups listed above look more like cointel operations than social justice efforts. The "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" is run by a philosophy professor who also peddles the "moon landings were faked" disinformation, which suggests either extreme lunacy (pun intended) or a deliberate disinformation effort. There are some sincere people trying to get some of those groups to steer away from the disinformation, but they are all frustrated and having very little success.

 

http://rigint.blogspot.com/2006/11/back-to-wilderness.html
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Back to the Wilderness
These days in the 9/11 Truth demimonde, early and clear-eyed researchers like [Peter Dale] Scott, Paul Thompson and Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed are rarely heard over the likes of Morgan Reynolds and the thermate/"mini-nukes" debate, and rather than contributions such as the discovery of 9/11's concurrent war games we have "scholars for 9/11 Truth" tearing one another new impact holes over speculation on space-based beam weaponry. If you think that indicates progress, and that we're closer to 9/11 justice than we were three years ago, I don't know what more to tell you.

 

One of the reasons these people reject the government’s conspiracy theory is that, if they were to accept the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Centre, they would need to affirm magical beliefs. A few examples:
The Twin Towers came straight down, which means that each building’s 287 steel columns all had to fail simultaneously; to believe this could happen without explosives is to believe in magic.

Not necessarily. Once the collapse started it is unrealistic to expect it could stop by itself.

At the onset of each tower’s collapse, steel beams were ejected out as far as 600 feet; to believe that these horizontal ejections could be explained by gravitational energy, which is vertical, is to believe in magic.

Either the towers "came straight down" or the debris was widely ejected. It's hard to contradict oneself from one sentence to the next but here it has been done.
A physics course (as opposed to metaphysics) would answer this nicely for this theologian.
Sometimes downward energy can push things to the side, this is not difficult to understand.
Some of the side energy damaged other buildings, including WTC Building 7.

Virtually all of the concrete in the towers was pulverized into extremely fine dust particles; to believe that fire plus gravity could have done this is to believe in magic.

There wasn't much concrete in the towers. None in the walls. A small amount in the floors. It is one of the reasons they collapsed so quickly. This has nothing to do with controlled demolition.

WTC 7 and the towers came down at virtually free-fall speed, meaning that the lower floors, with all their steel and concrete, provided no resistance to the upper floors; to believe this could happen without explosives is to believe in magic.

Or that a half million tons of building falling up to a quarter mile would have tremendous ability to shatter the lower floors. It's not "no resistance," merely just insufficient to stop a falling skyscraper.
This type of rhetoric ("magic") is propaganda, not science.

Pools of molten metal were found under each building. Because steel does not begin to melt until it reaches about 1,540°C and yet the fires could not have gotten over 1000°C, to accept the fire theory is to believe in magic.

Aluminum melts at a much lower temperature (what are planes made from???). 1000 degrees C is enough to weaken steel supports (they don't need to "melt" to lose structural strength). This is also a contradiction - if the fires were hot enough to melt metal (steel or aluminum?) then demolition is not needed as an explanation for the collapses.

Monbiot, regarding the 9/11 truth movement’s conspiracy theory as a wrong-headed distraction, fails to see that the obviously false and truly distracting conspiracy theory is the official 9/11 myth, which has been used to justify imperial wars and increased militarism, thereby distracting attention from global apartheid and the ecological crisis. We focus on the 9/11 myth because, until it is exposed, getting our governments to focus wholeheartedly on the truly urgent issues of our time will be impossible.
David Ray Griffin has published over 30 books, including four about 9/11. His next book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, will be out in April.

Griffin is unwilling or unable to recognize that Popular Mechanics and other debunkers focus on the false claims to avoid the best evidence.

 

David Griffin says 9/11 disinformation is irrelevant

www.wirenh.com/Features/
Cover_Stories/system_breakdown_200603291183.html
System Breakdown
by Larry Clow
The Wire
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

.... Ruppert said he's trying to distance himself from the 9/11 movement. The one subject he doesn’t tackle is physical evidence--the why and how of the Towers’ collapse, the strangeness surrounding the destruction at the Pentagon and the debris left behind by Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. This is the one area where the 9/11 movement is focusing most of its energies now, he says, and physical evidence arguments are "absolute minefields when you get into the legal arena," with discussions devolving into a competition between whichever side can provide the most experts.
The greater danger, according to Ruppert, is that the 9/11 movement has been "heavily, heavily infiltrated … by government disinformation operatives" who have put proverbial "poison pills" into its debates.
Sounds paranoid, right? Not really. In the 1960s and 1970s, federal programs like COINTELPRO used undercover operatives to infiltrate the anti-war movement and discredit it, and the practice apparently continues today. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union released data confirming that the government has been spying on anti-war groups since the conflict in Iraq began in 2003.
[David Ray] Griffin, on the other hand, is skeptical of talk about disinformation and infiltrators.
"I really haven’t had any strong suspicions about anybody," he said. "Even if there is some truth to it, I don’t think it’s a very important concern."
Some of the more outlandish theories--like French writer Thierry Meyssan’s claim that a cruise missile, not an airplane, hit the Pentagon--are only diluting the waters, Ruppert said. There are other theories, too: that there were no planes at all, only holographic projections of planes (used in conjunction with explosives planted by some shadowy group); or that one of the planes that hit the WTC had some sort of anomalous "pod" attached to it that caused extra damage. But this is all "bullshit," Ruppert said, and is either intentional disinformation or sheer stupidity.
The research conducted by the movement itself is getting lazy, as well, according to Ruppert. Most of the Web sites reference previous research done by Ruppert and others, or they simply reference themselves, which hardly makes for a compelling case.
"My job is to keep my case pure, so if I've fallen out of the mainstream with 9/11, so be it. But if 9/11 ever gets opened in a meaningful way, my book is where (people) will have to come to," Ruppert said.