[THS] !!!!! David R. Griffin: A Deeply Flawed Book

[Peter Webster]

"Zelikow had secretly written a detailed outline
of the Commission's report before his research staff had even begun its work." 

A Deeply Flawed Book
By
David R. Griffin

http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259355013&sr=1-1



Although John Farmer's "The Ground Truth" has attracted a lot of favorable
attention, it is a deeply flawed book, containing misleading claims and providing an
extremely one-sided account of 9/11.

Much of the attention received by the book has been prompted by misleading claims
made by Farmer and his publisher. The book's dust-jacket calls it the "definitive
account" of 9/11, but it actually deals almost entirely with only one question about
that day: why the airliners were not intercepted.

Also, the book's subtitle calls it "the untold story" of 9/11 and its dust-jacket says that
it "breathtakingly revises" our understanding of that day. In reality, however, it
simply provides new support for the story told about the planes in "The 9/11
Commission Report," which appeared in 2004, and in two publications that appeared
in 2006: Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton's book "Without Precedent," and Michael
Bronner's essay in "Vanity Fair."

Most provocatively, Farmer presents his book as a rejection of the "official" account of
9/11, which was given by "the government," by which he means primarily the FAA
and the Pentagon. But this rhetoric is misleading for three reasons.

First, Farmer's book is a defense of the 9/11 Commission's report, which he calls
"accurate, and true" (2), and the Commission was itself a governmental body: its
chairman, Thomas Kean, was appointed by Bush; the other members were
appointed by Congress; and the executive director, Philip Zelikow, was essentially a
member of the Bush White House.

Second, the "official account of 9/11," as generally understood, is the Bush-Cheney
administration's conspiracy theory, according to which the 9/11 attacks resulted from
a conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and some members of al-Qaeda, and Farmer
supports this theory.

Third, in rejecting the "official version," Farmer is referring only to the first version of
the official account. It was replaced in 2004 by the 9/11 Commission's version, which
since then has been the official version of the official account. In spite of his rhetoric,
therefore, Farmer is defending the official account of 9/11 produced by the
government in 2004, so the book is far less radical than it has been promoted as
being.

Even more serious than the book's misleading rhetoric is its one-sidedness. Rather
than containing an impartial examination of various types of relevant evidence, this
book by Farmer - a former prosecuting attorney - reads like a lawyer's brief: Besides
citing a large number of facts that appear to support the Bush-Cheney conspiracy
theory and trying to undermine some of the contrary evidence (which supports the
alternative theory, according to which 9/11 was an inside job), it seeks to suppress,
by simply ignoring, the enormous bulk of this contrary evidence.

This one-sided approach is acceptable within an adversarial law court, given the
presence of an opposing lawyer, but it does not result in a book that is acceptable by
scholarly standards.

The one-sidedness of Farmer's book is manifest in his endnotes, which include no
reference to any writings aimed at exposing serious problems with the 9/11
Commission: Besides not referring to any of my own books, one of which is entitled
"The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Farmer does not even
mention "The Commission" by former New York Times writer Philip Shenon - who
pointed out, among other things, that Zelikow had secretly written a detailed outline
of the Commission's report before his research staff had even begun its work.

This bibliographic one-sidedness is important because it is reflected in substantive
one-sidedness, one form of which is the ignoring of a great number of relevant facts.
I will mention 15.

1. Claiming that the military did not have information about AA 77 in time to prevent
it from striking the Pentagon, Farmer strongly attacks the claim (in the first version of
the official account) that the FAA had notified the military about this flight at 9:24 AM.
In doing so, he ignores a memo - even though it was discussed and read into the
Commission's record in May 2003 - that was sent by the FAA's Laura Brown,
explaining that 9:24 was only the time of the "formal notification" - that the FAA had
set up phone bridges with the Pentagon and that "real-time information . . . about . .
. Flight 77 . . . was conveyed continuously during the phone bridges before the
formal notification" (Griffin, "The New Pearl Harbor Revisited" [NPHR] Chs. 1 & 2).

2. Simply assuming that Osama bin Laden authorized the 9/11 attacks, Farmer fails to
mention that the FBI has admitted that "no hard evidence" supports this assumption
(Griffin, "9/11 Contradictions" [9/11Contra] Ch. 18).

3. While mentioning that some of the alleged hijackers spent time in Las Vegas (62),
Farmer fails to point out that, while there and in other places, they drank, went to
strip clubs, and did other things that contradicted the Commission's portrayal of them
as devout Muslims ready to die for their faith (9/11Contra Ch. 15).

4. Farmer calls Hani Hanjour, who allegedly flew AA 77 (a Boeing 757) through an
extremely difficult trajectory to crash into the Pentagon, a "trained pilot" (45), failing
to mention the much-documented fact that Hanjour could not even safely fly a
single-engine plane (9/11Contra Ch. 19).

5. While claiming that "American 77 crashed into the Pentagon at a speed of 530
miles per hour" (186), Farmer does not point out that, according to the official
seismic report, no station, including one only 63 km away, recorded the impact. He
also fails to mention that many witnesses at the scene, both inside and outside,
reported seeing no crashed airliner (NPHR Ch. 2).

6. Claiming that the alleged hijackers purchased tickets and boarded planes (62,
106), Farmer fails to mention that none of their names - indeed, no Arab names
whatsoever - were on the passenger manifests of the flights released by the airlines
or on the Pentagon autopsy report (NPHR Ch. 6).

7. Repeating the Commission's claim that Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari took
an early morning flight from Portland (Maine) to Boston to catch American Flight 11
(103-05), Farmer does not point out that this story was a late invention, created after
authorities learned that Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, originally said to have taken that
flight, had not died on 9/11 (9/11Contra Ch. 16).

8. Writing as if the alleged phone calls from the airliners actually happened, Farmer
does not point out that, after originally supporting the view that many of the reported
calls were made on cell phones, the FBI in 2004 - after members of the 9/11 Truth
Movement showed that cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners would have been
impossible - quietly withdrew its support for such calls. The FBI thereby contradicted,
among others, Deena Burnett, who was positive that she had been called by her
husband, Tom Burnett (whom Farmer mentions), because she recognized his cell
phone number on her Caller ID (9/11Contra Ch. 17).

9. Farmer repeats the claim, supported in 2004 by "The 9/11 Commission Report,"
that CNN commentator Barbara Olson had twice called from AA 77 to talk to her
husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson (163, 166). But Farmer fails to point out that in
2006, after members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had reported that American's 757s
did not have onboard phones, the FBI - in its report for the trial of Zacarias
Moussaoui (the so-called 20th hijacker) - said that Barbara Olson's (one) attempted
call did not go through and therefore lasted "0 seconds" (9/11Contra Ch. 8).

10. Farmer endorses the claim that the hijackers had box-cutters (161, 163), not
mentioning the fact that this claim had been made only in the reported calls from
Barbara Olson, which the FBI now says never happened (9/11Contra Ch 8).

11. While repeating the Commission's claim that al-Qaeda hijackers finally succeeded
in breaking into UA 93's cockpit 30 seconds after they started trying (189), Farmer
fails to ask why, in all that time, the pilots did not use the transponder to squawk the
hijack code - a procedure that takes about 2 seconds (NPHR Ch. 6).

12. While claiming, like the Commission, that "Vice President Cheney learned that the
Pentagon had been hit while he was in the tunnel under the White House leading to
the shelter" (207), Farmer does not point out that Transportation Secretary Norman
Mineta told the Commission that Cheney had been in the shelter (the Presidential
Emergency Operations Center) at least since 9:20 AM, hence about 40 minutes
before the reported time of the Pentagon attack - an observation that was supported
by other witnesses, including counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke (9/11Contra Ch.
2).

13. While acknowledging that Richard Clarke's account of his White House
videoconference contradicts the 9/11 Commission's claims about the whereabouts of
not only Cheney but also Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Farmer simply
asserts that Clarke's account "does not square in any significant respect with what
occurred that morning" (184), failing to point out that the question of who told the
truth could be cleared up simply by looking at the videotape.

14. Suggesting that the Twin Towers came down because each one was "fragile at
its core" (28), Farmer implicitly denies the fact that each tower was supported by 47
massive core columns and ignores the question of why several scientific studies,
including one by the US Geological Survey, showed that the dust at Ground Zero
contained various elements that, unless explosives had been used to bring down the
buildings, should not have been there (Griffin, "The Mysterious Collapse of World
Trade Center 7," Ch. 4).

15. Although Farmer's entire case for the 9/11 Commission's version of the official
account, which involves his accusing a remarkable number of people of lying, rests
entirely on logs and audiotapes not examined by the Commission until several years
after 9/11, he fails to consider reasons that have been provided for believing that
these tapes and logs had been doctored (NPHR Chs 1-3, 10).

There would be much more to say in a complete review, but the above points suffice
to suggest that Farmer's book is deeply flawed, providing an account that is far from
the "ground truth" about 9/11.