This
article was posted last year but is still pertinent, so I am re-posting it.
Tuesday,
September 11, 2001, was a non-teaching day for me. I was home when the
phone rang at 9 A.M. It was my daughter, who was on a week’s vacation
with her future husband. “Turn on the TV,” she said. “Why?” I
asked. “Haven’t you heard? A plane hit the World Trade Tower.”
I
turned the TV on and watched a plane crash into the Tower. I said, “They
just showed a replay.” She quickly corrected me, “No, that’s another
plane.” And we talked as we watched in horror, learning that it was the
South Tower this time. Sitting next to my daughter was my future
son-in-law; he had not had a day off from work in a year. He had finally
taken a week’s vacation so they could go to Cape Cod. He worked on the
100th floor of the South Tower. By chance, he had escaped
the death that claimed 176 of his co-workers.
That
was my introduction to the attacks. Seventeen years have disappeared
behind us, yet it seems like yesterday. And yet again, it seems like
long, long ago.
Over the next few days, as the government
and the media accused Osama bin Laden and 19 Arabs of being responsible for the
attacks, I told a friend that what I was hearing wasn’t believable; the
official story was full of holes. I am a born and bred New Yorker with a long
family history rooted in the NYC Fire and Police Departments, one grandfather
having been the Deputy Chief of the Fire Department, the highest ranking uniformed
firefighter, and the other a NYPD cop; a niece and her husband were NYPD
detectives deeply involved in the response to that day’s attacks. Hearing the
absurd official explanations and the deaths of so many innocent people,
including many hundreds of firefighters, cops, and emergency workers, I felt a suspicious rage. It was a reaction that I
couldn’t fully explain, but it set me on a search for the truth. I
proceeded in fits and starts, but by the fall of 2004, with the help of the
extraordinary work of David Ray Griffin, Michael Ruppert, and other early
skeptics, I could articulate the reasons for my initial intuition. I set
about creating and teaching a college course on what had come to be called
9/11.
But I no longer refer to the events of
that day by those numbers. Let me explain why.
By
2004 I had enough solid evidence to convince me that the U.S. government’s
claims (and The 9/11 Commission Report) were fictitious. They
seemed so blatantly false that I concluded the attacks were a deep-state
intelligence operation whose purpose was to initiate a national state of
emergency to justify wars of aggression, known euphemistically as “the war on
terror.” The sophistication of the attacks, and the lack of any proffered
evidence for the government’s claims, suggested that a great deal of planning
had been involved.
Yet I was chagrined and amazed by so many
people’s insouciant lack of interest in questioning and researching the most
important world event since the assassination of President Kennedy. I
understood the various psychological dimensions of this denial, the fear,
cognitive dissonance, etc., but I sensed something else as well. For so
many people their minds seemed to have been “made up” from the start. I
found that many young people were the exceptions, while most of their elders
dared not question the official narrative. These included many prominent leftist critics of American
foreign policy, such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Alexander Cockburn, and
others, whose defenses of the official government and media explanations (when
they even made such defenses; often they just trashed skeptics as “9/11
conspiracy nuts,” to quote Cockburn) totally lacked any scientific or logical
rigor or even knowledge of the facts. Now that seventeen years have
elapsed, this seems truer than ever. There is a long list of leftists who
refuse to examine matter to this very day. And most interestingly, they
also do the same with the assassination of JFK, the other key seminal event of
recent American history.
I kept thinking of the ongoing language
and logic used to describe what had happened that terrible day in 2001 and in
the weeks to follow. It all seemed so clichéd and surreal, as if set
phrases had it been extracted from some secret manual, phrases that rung with
an historical resonance that cast a spell on the public, as if mass hypnosis
were involved. People seemed mesmerized as they spoke of the events in
the official language that had been presented to them.
So
with the promptings of people like Graeme MacQueen, Lance deHaven-Smith, T.H.
Meyer, et al., and much study and research, I have concluded that my initial
intuitive skepticism was correct and that a process of linguistic mind-control
was in place before, during, and after the attacks. As with all good
propaganda, the language had to be insinuated over time and introduced through
intermediaries. It had to seem “natural” and to flow out of events, not
to precede them. And it had to be repeated over and over again.
In
summary form, I will list the language I believe “made up the minds” of those
who have refused to examine the government’s claims about the September 11
attacks and the subsequent anthrax attacks.
1. Pearl Harbor. As pointed out by
David Ray Griffin and others, this term was used in September 2000 in The
Project for the New American Century’s (PNAC) report, “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses” (p.51). Its neo-con authors argued that the U.S. wouldn’t be
able to attack Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. “absent some catastrophic event –
like a new Pearl Harbor.” Then on January 11, 2001, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld’s “Space Commission” warned that the U.S. could face a “space
Pearl Harbor” if it weren’t careful and didn’t increase space security.
Rumsfeld urged support for the proposed U.S. national missile defense system
opposed by Russia and China and massive funding for the increased weaponization
of space. At the same time he went around handing out and
recommending Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (1962) by
Roberta Wohlstetter, who had spent almost two decades working for The Rand
Corporation and who claimed that Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack that
shocked U.S. leaders. Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor – those words
and images dominated public consciousness for many months before 11 September
2001, and of course after. The film Pearl Harbor, made with
Pentagon assistance and a massive budget, was released on May 25, 2001 and was
a box office hit. It was in the theatres throughout the
summer. The thought of the attack on Pearl Harbor (not a surprise to the
U.S. government, but presented as such) was in the news all summer despite the
fact that the 60th anniversary of that attack was not until December 7, 2001,
a more likely release date. So why was it released so early? Once the
September 11 attacks occurred, the Pearl Harbor analogy was “plucked out” of
the social atmosphere and used constantly, beginning immediately. Another “Day
of Infamy,” another surprise attack blared the media and government officials.
A New Pearl Harbor! George W. Bush was widely reported to have had
the time that night, after a busy day of flying hither and yon to avoid the
terrorists who for some reason had forgotten he was in a classroom in Florida,
to allegedly use it in his diary, writing that “the Pearl Harbor of the
twenty-first century took place today. We think it is Osama bin
Laden.” Shortly after the 50th anniversary of
Pearl Harbor on December 7th, Bush then formerly announced, referencing
the attacks of September 11, that the U. S. would withdraw from the ABM Treaty.
The examples of this Pearl Harbor/ September 11 analogy are manifold, but I am
summarizing, so I will skip giving them. Any casual researcher can
confirm this.
2.
3. Homeland. This strange
un-American term, another WW II word associated with another enemy – Nazi
Germany – was also used many times by the neo-con authors of “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses.” I doubt any average American referred to this
country by that term before. Of course it became the moniker for The
Department of Homeland Security, marrying home with security to form a
comforting name that simultaneously and unconsciously suggests a defense
against Hitler-like evil coming from the outside. Not coincidentally,
Hitler introduced it into the Nazi propaganda vernacular at the 1934 Nuremberg
rally. Both usages conjured up images of a home besieged by alien forces intent
on its destruction; thus preemptive action was in order. Now the
Department of Homeland Security with its massive budget is lodged permanently
in popular consciousness.
4.
5. Ground Zero. This is a third WWII
(“the Good War”) term first used at 11:55 A.M. on September 11 by Mark Walsh
(aka “the Harley Guy” because he was wearing a Harley-Davidson tee shirt) in an
interview on the street by a Fox News reporter, Rick Leventhal. Identified as a
Fox free-lancer, Walsh also explained the Twin Towers collapse in a precise,
well-rehearsed manner that would be the same illogical and anti-scientific
explanation later given by the government: “mostly due to structural failure
because the fire was too intense.” Ground zero – a nuclear bomb term first used
by U.S. scientists to refer to the spot where they exploded the first nuclear
bomb in New Mexico in 1945 – became another meme adopted by the media that
suggested a nuclear attack had occurred or might in the future if the U.S.
didn’t act. The nuclear scare was raised again and again by George W. Bush and
U.S. officials in the days and months following the attacks, although nuclear
weapons were beside the point in terms of the 11 September attacks, but surely
not as a scare tactic and as part of the plan to withdraw from the ABM treaty
that would be announced in December. But the conjoining of “nuclear” with
“ground zero” served to raise the fear factor dramatically. Ironically,
the project to develop the nuclear bomb was called the Manhattan Project and
was headquartered at 270 Broadway, NYC, a few short blocks north of the World
Trade Center.
6.
7. The Unthinkable. This is another
nuclear term whose usage as linguistic mind control and propaganda is brilliantly
analyzed by Graeme MacQueen in the penultimate chapter of his very important
book, The 2001 Anthrax
Deception. He notes the patterned use of this term before
and after September 11, while saying “the pattern may not signify a grand plan
…. It deserves investigation and contemplation.” He then presents a
convincing case that the use of this term couldn’t be accidental. He
notes how George W. Bush, in a major foreign policy speech on May 1, 2001,
“gave informal public notice that the United States intended to withdraw
unilaterally from the ABM Treaty”; Bush said the U.S. must be willing to
“rethink the unthinkable.” This was necessary because of terrorism and
rogue states with “weapons of mass destruction.” PNAC also argued that
the U.S. should withdraw from the treaty. A signatory to the treaty could
only withdraw after giving six months notice and because of “extraordinary
events” that “jeopardized its supreme interests.” Once the September 11 attacks
occurred, Bush rethought the unthinkable and officially gave formal notice on
December 13 to withdraw the U.S. from the ABM Treaty, as previously
noted. MacQueen specifies the many times different media used the term
“unthinkable” in October 2001 in reference to the anthrax attacks. He
explicates its usage in one of the anthrax letters – “The Unthinkabel” [sic].
He explains how the media that used the term so often were at the time
unaware of its usage in the anthrax letter since that letter’s content had not
yet been revealed, and how the letter writer had mailed the letter before the
media started using the word. He makes a rock solid case showing the U.S.
government’s complicity in the anthrax attacks and therefore in the Sept 11
attacks. While calling the use of the term “unthinkable” in all its
iterations “problematic,” he writes, “The truth is that the employment of ‘the
unthinkable’ in this letter, when weight is given both to the meaning of this
term in U.S. strategic circles and to the other relevant uses of the term in
2001, points us in the direction of the U.S. military and intelligence
communities.” I am reminded of Orwell’s point in 1984: “a
heretical thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc
– should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is
dependent on words.” Thus the government and media’s use of “unthinkable”
becomes a classic case of “doublethink.” The unthinkable is unthinkable.
8.
9. 9/11. This is the key usage
that has reverberated down the years around which the others revolve. It is an
anomalous numerical designation applied to an historical event, and obviously
also the emergency telephone number. Try to think of another numerical
appellation for an important event in American history. It’s
impossible. But if you have a good historical sense, you will remember
that the cornerstone for the Pentagon was lain on September 11, 1941, three
months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and that the CIA engineered a coup
against the Allende government in Chile on Sept 11, 1973. Just strange
coincidences? The future editor of The New York Times and
Iraq war promoter, Bill Keller, introduced the emergency phone connection on
the morning of September 12th in a NY Times op-ed piece,
“America’s Emergency Line: 911.” The linkage of the attacks to a
permanent national emergency was thus subliminally introduced, as Keller mentioned
Israel nine times and seven times compared the U.S. situation to that of Israel
as a target for terrorists. His first sentence reads: “An Israeli
response to America’s aptly dated wake-up call might well be, ‘Now you
know.’” By referring to September 11 as 9/11, an endless national
emergency fear became wedded to an endless war on terror aimed at preventing
Hitler-like terrorists from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could
create another ground zero or holocaust. Mentioning Israel (“America is
proud to be Israel’s closest ally and best friend in the world,” George W. Bush
would tell the Israeli Knesset) so many times, Keller was not very subtly
performing an act of legerdemain with multiple meanings. By comparing the
victims of the 11 September attacks to Israeli “victims,” he was implying,
among other things, that the Israelis are innocent victims who are not involved
in terrorism, but are terrorized by Palestinians, as Americans are terrorized
by fanatical Muslims. Palestinians/Al-Qaeda. Israel/U.S.
Explicit and implicit parallels of the guilty and the innocent. Keller
tells us who the real killers are. His use of the term 9/11 is a term
that pushes all the right buttons, evoking unending social fear and anxiety.
It is language as sorcery. It is propaganda at its best. Even
well-respected critics of the U.S. government’s explanation use the term that
has become a fixture of public consciousness through endless
repetition. As George W. Bush would later put it, as he connected
Saddam Hussein to “9/11” and pushed for the Iraq war, “We don’t want the
smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” All the ingredients for a linguistic
mind-control smoothie had been blended.
I
have concluded – and this is impossible to prove definitively because of the
nature of such propagandistic techniques – that the use of all these
words/numbers is part of a highly sophisticated linguistic mind-control
campaign waged to create a narrative that has lodged in the minds of hundreds
of millions of people and is very hard to dislodge.
It
is why I don’t speak of “9/11” any more. I refer to those events as the attacks
of September 11, 2001, which is a mouth-full and not easily digested in the age
of Twitter and texting. But I am not sure how to be more succinct or how
to undo the damage, except by writing what I have written here.
Lance
deHaven-Smith puts it well in Conspiracy Theory in America.
The rapidity with which the new
language of the war on terror appeared and took hold; the synergy between terms
and their mutual connections to WW II nomenclatures; and above all the
connections between many terms and the emergency motif of “9/11” and “9-1-1” –
any one of these factors alone, but certainly all of them together – raise the
possibility that work on this linguistic construct began long before 9/11….It
turns out that elite political crime, even treason, may actually be official
policy.
Needless
to say, his use of the words “possibility” and “may” are in order when one
sticks to strict empiricism. However, when one reads his full text, it is
apparent to me that he considers these “coincidences” part of a
conspiracy. I have also reached that conclusion. As Thoreau put in
his underappreciated humorous way, “Some circumstantial evidence is very
strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
The evidence for linguistic mind
control, while the subject of this essay, does not stand alone, of
course. It underpins the actual attacks of September 11 and the
subsequent anthrax attacks that are linked. The official explanations for
these events by themselves do not stand up to elementary logic and are patently
false, as proven by thousands of well-respected professional researchers from
all walks of life – i.e. engineers, pilots, scientists, architects, and
scholars from many disciplines (see the upcoming 9/11 Unmasked: An
International Review Panel Investigation by David Ray Griffin and
Elizabeth Woodworth, to be released September 11, 2018). To paraphrase
the prescient Vince Salandria, who said it long ago concerning the government’s
assassination of President Kennedy, the attacks of 2001 are “a false mystery
concealing state crimes.” If one objectively studies the 2001 attacks
together with the language adopted to explain and preserve them in social
memory, the “mystery” emerges from the realm of the unthinkable and becomes
utterable. “There is no mystery.” The truth becomes obvious.
How to communicate this when the
corporate mainstream media serve the function of the government’s mockingbird
(as in Operation Mockingbird), repeating and repeating and repeating the same
narrative in the same language; that is the difficult task we are faced with,
but there are signs today that breakthroughs are occurring, as growing numbers
of international academic scholars are pushing to incorporate the analysis of
the official propaganda surrounding 11 September 2001 into their work within
the academy, a turnabout from years of general silence. And more and more
people are coming to realize that the official lies about 11 September are the
biggest example of fake news in this century. Fake news used to justify
endless wars and the slaughter of so many innocents around the world.
Words have a power to enchant and
mesmerize. Linguistic mind-control, especially when linked to traumatic
events such as the September 11 and the anthrax attacks, can strike people dumb
and blind. It often makes some subjects “unthinkable” and “unspeakable”
(to quote Jim Douglass quoting Thomas Merton in JFK and the Unspeakable:
the unspeakable “is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even
before the words are said.”).
We need a new vocabulary to speak of
these terrible things. Let us learn, as Chief Joseph said, to speak with
a straight tongue, and in language that doesn’t do the enemies work of mind
control, but snaps the world awake to the truth of the mass murders of
September 11, 2001 that have been used to massacre millions across the world.
