Reflections on Recent Developments in the Truth Movement

To the casual observer, it might seem that WTCD has suddenly taken a keen interest in David Chandler, and having just listened to his interview by John Bursill I thought I would take some time to lay out in both general and some specific terms why this is so.

As anyone familiar with WTCD and specifically my personal take on 9/11 and the truth movement knows, I place a great deal of emphasis on analysis of what I call the “fake truth movement.” This is true of my blogging on this site, which I have never intended as a resource for newcomers to the movement. In online forums outside the truth movement and in my “street activism” I have focused exclusively on the demolition of the WTC. The reason for this is that, as Mr. Chandler points out in his interview with John Bursill, the subject of the WTC provides us with the most airtight case for the falsity of the official account, and that is without question our best strategy for reaching the public that equates 9/11 truth with run of the mill conspiracy theory.

In fact, my inspiration for registering the domain wtcdemolition.com was precisely the fact that I felt the truth movement should make the destruction of the WTC its primary focus. This idea was ridiculed by some, who, led by 911Blogger's Jon Gold, began referring to my site as “the church of controlled demolition” and repeating the mantra “this is NOT the controlled demolition movement.” Mr. Gold believed that the movement's focus should instead be on what he considered evidence that the Bush administration had done nothing to stop the conspiracy before and up to the day of 9/11, thus in his words “earning the title of suspect” in the crimes. His approach was therefore almost indistinguishable from that promoted by early “truth” sites GNN and oilempire.us and individuals like Michael Ruppert and John Judge, who warned that claims that explosives had been placed in the towers were red herrings that were damaging to the cause. It was a peculiar stance to say the least given the strength of the evidence. After months of persisting in challenging Gold and others on this very basic point resulted in my account at 911Blogger (I am user #86) being suspended I decided not to appeal the decision (as was suggested to me) but instead to devote my energy to my own blog. While my view of the truth movement is the culmination of a longer history of interaction with many of its principals (a history I will recount in a subsequent essay,) this particular experience had the most effect on determining the aggressive approach I ended up taking.

I am well aware that my approach rubs many people the wrong way, and that not all of those people fall under the category of “fake truthers”. It is said, with some validity, that my approach is divisive. This is true – some division/discernment is good and necessary, as I will explain. Others say that it is an example of what activists term “snitchjacketing”, and that I am therefore acting (in effect if not intent) in a manner indistinguishable from a disruptor and/or agent.

The relatively recent discovery by the truth movement at large of the work of Cass Sunstein advocating what he calls “cognitive infiltration” has led to a kind of formal identification of a problem that had before simply been accepted informally as a fact: the truth movement has always included individuals with dubious intentions. It is important, if not imperative, to at least personally (if not always publicly) identify those individuals and take appropriate precautions in dealing with them and/or with their claims, analysis, information, suggestions, etc. That this fact and the climate of suspicion that inevitably follows are impediments to effective organizing by the truth movement is another reality accepted by most. Sunstein's advocacy of the practice of infiltration was therefore no great revelation—9/11 skeptics have always needed only look around them to see it at work, and in fact cautionary comparisons have long been made in the movement to the U.S. Government's past COINTELPRO activities. It bears pointing out that the very act of warning people about this infiltration serves one of the very purposes of that infiltration—to sow mistrust. Call it a pickle, or a catch-22—my goal in this essay is not to solve that problem, but to describe its scope as I see it.

Since few would argue that the truth movement has always suffered from something akin to cognitive infiltration, two questions naturally follow: who exactly are the infiltrators, and what is their agenda? Setting aside the question of the infiltrators' identities for the time being, what can we say about their agenda? If their goal is to prevent knowledge of the truth about 9/11 from becoming widely known, then we can expect that they will employ any number of means to that end.

Options like killing anyone who speaks against the official narrative doesn't seem to be on the table, thankfully. That doesn't mean that individuals with damaging knowledge haven't been targeted for assassination, just that the direct tactic of disappearing people en masse has not been implemented. Historically, mass disappearings only seem to happen in totalitarian societies where the perpetrators are confident of acting with impunity. If the 9/11 perpetrators felt such confidence we would probably not be having these discussions, at least in public.

With more direct means of suppression apparently not desirable, cognitive infiltration has evidently come to play the primary role in suppression of 9/11 truth in the form of a controlled opposition—the fake truth movement. The notion of a controlled opposition should be clear to most readers but I will say that to me it involves, in essence, the creation of an apparently spontaneous movement involving organizations and individuals whose purpose is to lure people into fruitless activity lest they become involved in genuine ventures that are more likely to succeed.

Most people involved in the truth movement would take most of what I have said about infiltration for granted, however those who dismiss the truth movement as conspiracy mongering would certainly take issue with my claims so far. They would likely cite them as evidence of paranoia on my part—a hallmark of the conspiracist. One argument they would (and do) use, to great effect, is to point out just how many people would have to be involved in this conspiracy. Not only are there those who directly commit the crimes alleged, but the countless others involved in the cover-up. The media have to be “silenced”, groups have to be formed, funding secured, etc. and all the while no one (“not one person!” they say) comes forward to spill the beans and reveal the great deception.

The very same arguments used to dismiss the truth movement generally are used within the truth movement to dismiss claims that there is a well-organized faction of well-known truthers who have succeeded to some extent at controlling the movement, and who will continue to attempt to control it so long as they have the credibility required to do so. To the extent that such speculation is “allowed” (in the sense that engaging in does not lead to accusations of sowing division) it has been used to great effect to marginalize people and factions like Nico Haupt and the “video fakery/no planes at the WTC” faction; Jim Fetzer, Judy Wood and the Directed Energy Weapons faction; Eric Hufschmid, Christopher Bollyn, Prothink, and the rest of the anti-semitic “the Jews did it” faction, Rick Siegel and the “mini-nukes” faction, etc. [Note that while it isn't necessarily true, it does make some sense that the methods employed to cover-up the original crimes would be employed to cover up the cover-up itself!]

The aforementioned examples are hardly controversial if at all among honest 9/11 skeptics. There are at least two examples of efforts at sussing out disinformation that are much more controversial and have caused much more serious divisions and acrimony in the truth movement, including the loss of credibility by one or another important figure in the movement (depending of course on which side of the divide you fall.) One, that I alluded to earlier in recounting my own experience, has been the attempt to marginalize the LIHOP faction that seeks to preserve the myth of an Islamofascist menace (often portrayed as the mere handmaiden of the “Bush crime family”). Another is the recent campaign to marginalize the Citizen Investigation Team (though in reality it is the campaign to discredit the idea that a large jet did not crash into the Pentagon.)

While I disagree with Mr. Chandler that (as he seems to believe) the evidence is strong for a large Boeing jet (whether or not it was AA77) having been the cause of the destruction at the Pentagon, I am sympathetic to his assessment of CIT and their supporters as, to put it bluntly, troublemakers. I am in total agreement, moreover, with his judgment that we should be focusing our attention and energy primarily on outreach to the public with regard to the clear evidence that explosives were used to destroy the WTC. What troubles me about his recent statement is that it seems to put undue stock in the official account of what happened at the Pentagon. It is one thing to caution the movement to refrain from making claims based on an absence of evidence, it is a totally different thing to leave people with the impression that the evidence for even part of the official account is at all convincing—none of it is, in fact. The scene could have been staged, and the eyewitnesses aren't nearly as credible on the whole (as they must be taken lest one be guilty of cherry-picking) as Mr. Chandler seems to think.

I am willing to overlook my disagreement with Mr. Chandler on this subject because it is clear to me that he holds his views honestly and because his work on the WTC demolitions has been exemplary and deserves to be disseminated widely, which I am doing and will continue to do. What does concern me is that while Mr. Chandler has become, or been made, aware of the harm allegedly done to the movement by CIT, he does not seem to be similarly aware of the harm caused by those who now embrace him. In particular I am puzzled by his willingness to become an admin on Jeff “Shure” Hill's Facebook site called The Truth Movement. As has already been pointed out elsewhere, Hill was for years a promoter of Nico Haupt, Killtown, “the Webfairy”, Jim Fetzer, and Judy Wood—all failry obvious disinformation specialists. However much he may claim to be “reformed”, and to be taken at his word by the users at 911Blogger and elsewhere, he is at least as problematic a figure as CIT. What's more, Hill seems now to be embracing LIHOPpers like John Judge, who has been outspoken in his opposition to “crazy theories” like controlled demolition. Hill's Facebook site also has prominent links to Truthaction, which has long been a haunt of LIHOPper Jon Gold and which has tolerated the posting of obviously fabricated and libelous claims about me and my family. Strange company for someone of Mr. Chandler's apparent integrity.

It is my hope therefore that all honest people interested in exposing the lies we've been told about 9/11 reflect on their role in the movement and be mindful of the fact that those who would derail us are not always easy to identify as "cognitive infiltrators." To believe that the powers that perpetrated and have to this day succeeded in concealing their role in 9/11 would depend on such obvious frauds as Nico Haupt is akin to believing they would have let the success of their black operation depend on the piloting skills of a handful of flight school rejects.