Stefan's Open Letter to Michael Wolsey

Posted as a comment at 911blogger -- this guy has the patience of a saint. -- c455

Dear Michael,

After listening to your most recent podcast featuring Frank Legge I felt compelled to write to you to explain to you why I disagree with your take on the issue of the Pentagon attack. As you started your broadcast with a brief biographical anecdote on your history with the issue, so will I.

After I accepted that 9/11 was a false flag attack and before I discovered that there was a network of 9/11 activists in the UK, I very much fitted into the category of keyboard warrior. I spent an unhealthy amount of my free time (and I'm not proud to say a lot of my paid hours as well) debating the issue on a mainstream political forum. Despite being just one pro-9/11 Truth poster against a forum hostile to the idea, I destroyed the anti-9/11 truth contingent in debate on a daily basis for months on end and on every issue I managed to win someone over. Every issue except one. The one debate I can hold my hands up and admit I lost was on the issue of the Pentagon. I made the mistake of saying that it would be impossible for the damage to the Pentagon to be caused by a large Boeing and failed to conclusively demonstrate that to be true. Despite the extreme abnormality of both the damage to the building and the wreckage allegedly left from the plane there was no ‘smoking gun’ at my disposal. There was no “freefall speed” or “molten metal” or clear impossibility which you could force an opponent into a corner with. Eventually having failed to convince a single person that the damage was not caused by the plane I dropped the issue.

When I first turned up at a 9/11 Truth Campaign meeting I explained to the people there that I didn't think we should focus on the Pentagon as it was an argument we could potentially lose, while we could not lose the argument with WTC7 or the Twin Towers. It was an unpopular view to say the least but I stuck to my guns because I was right. With the evidence we had then there was no disproving that the plane hit the Pentagon, however much we suspected it did not.

Sadly, many people are not able to sit comfortably with a question mark hanging over their heads. When we know something is not right but do not know what it is some of us chose to indulge in guess work and speculative theories began to spring up. There were three of them, the first two were wild guesses and third read like the ranting of a mad man on a soap box:

1. A global hawk hit the Pentagon.
2. A missile hit the Pentagon
3. The powers that be are trying to make us think the plane didn't hit the Pentagon so they can then release a genuine video of the plane doing just that to make us look stupid for saying one didn't.

While the first two were supported by no evidence, they at least sought to deal with the source problem that lead us to question the Pentagon; that it appeared very unlikely for a Boeing to have caused the damage we saw. The third was and it still is a paranoid fantasy and an embarrassing example of the worst kind of “outrageous conspiracy-theorism” still rampant within the online 9/11 truth community. If you can imagine it; it could be true. If enough people are imagining it at the same time, it is worthy of basing our entire strategy around.

I’m sorry to be brash but wtf???

You can slap the label "the precautionary principle" on it if you like but please don’t expect us to accept that giving it a science-sounding name makes it anything other than a fairy tale. As far as I know the works of the brothers Grimm never underwent peer review and I doubt the "booby trap" theory is going to either.

These outrageous conspiracies, which I term to mean theories based on a speculative answer to an evidential anomaly, came because we didn't have the evidence to form plausible hypotheses at that point. My view at the time was not to support any theory of what happened at the Pentagon but to wait while others continued to research it in the hope that one day we would gather enough information to get a clearer picture. That is now happening but you appear to be stuck in 2006, or at least doggedly defending a position you took in 2006, unable to see the forest for the trees.

You turned back the hands of time near the beginning of the broadcast when you said you were going to put eye witness testimony aside, which of course wipes a huge body of post 2006 evidence away. As you didn't mention contradictions the various sets of data have with each other and with the official story and as you had also put aside the issues of velocity, g-force and the like (quite rightly in this case; neither of us have the knowledge to make judgements on that sort of thing as laymen) we were essentially back in 2006 wholesale. And there we sat for the rest of the show, you sharing photographs of the Pentagon with me I'd already seen and telling me something I already knew: That from these photographs alone we cannot disprove the plane hit the building. You appear to have convinced yourself over the years that it is actually a perfectly reasonable pattern of damage and debris to have come from the claimed collision, and I am accepting that it is remotely possible but more likely untrue, but we are essentially on the same page there.

But we aren't in 2006 anymore Michael and it is not these photographs alone that we have in our possession, so why is it we cannot move on into the present day? Why is it you feel we should “put aside” all the eye witness testimony? Why did we selectively remove all of the evidence which did not conform to your preferred conclusion before commencing to discuss the issue?

The reason you gave was that eye witness testimony is unreliable. Of course any one eye witness’s testimony is unreliable; in fact it is almost guaranteed that every eye witness account will get at least a detail if not several details incorrect. Where eye witness testimony is useful both the judicial process and to investigation is when you find in a diverse body of testimony key points that corroborate one another. Corroboration found in the body of eye witness testimony is not only something we cannot "put aside" it is responsible in many court cases for helping establishing a just outcome to a trial.

Corroborated eye witness testimony is evidence, and it cannot just be excluded if it causes a problem to our preferred theory. We need to look at this evidence openly and rationally and consider the conclusions it leads us to. We have no problem doing this with the cases in New York. Richard Gage continues to present corroborated testimony of molten metal found beneath the three buildings as evidence for its existence as of course he should. He also notes how many people attested to feeling and hearing explosions within the towers, another instance of a detail in an otherwise confusing body of testimony earning relevance through corroboration.

As you may know, there are 14 confirmed witnesses CIT have presented who presently place the plane to the North of what was then called the Citgo gas station. When we look for competing evidence for the south of Citgo flight path (which is absolutely vital to the conclusion that the plane hit the building) we find no such corroboration. Many of these witnesses confirm other details in each other’s testimony, such as a path from the south to north of Columbia Pike, from south to north over the Navy Annex building and a strong bank the plane was performing as it passed the Citgo station and headed towards the Pentagon. This banking of the plane (also fatal to the south of Citgo flight path which must be straight from the first light pole to the face of the Pentagon) is rampant throughout the media mined unconfirmed body of testimony as well as that of these confirmed witnesses. While no two proposed flight paths are identical, from the placement of the plane in relation to the local major landmarks, and in relation to the eye witness themselves, we see clear corroboration on a scale that cannot be ignored. It is pretty clear from looking properly into the entire body of eye witness testimony that within the reasonable margins of error expected of eye witnesses they are all describing the same flight path from different vantage points. I doubt a court in the land (yours or mine) would not conclude in favour a detail as broadly confirmed as the north of Citgo flight path.

It is impossible to rationally conclude that they in fact saw a plane on the flight path your theory requires, as it is absurd that they all independently got every important detail regarding its path wrong in exactly the same way so as to coincidentally corroborate one another.

Yet this is precisely the scenario you are asking me to accept. Can you understand why I and many others would have a problem doing so?

And Michael, I have “done my home work”.

I have read all of Arabesque's articles on the subject, as I am sure you have.

I have read all Jim Hoffmann has written on the topic as I am sure you have.

I have read what Frank Legge, Victoria Ashley and Frustrating Fraud have had to say, as I'm sure you have.

I have also watched all of CIT’s presentations and their written counter arguments to the above party’s criticisms. Can you honestly say you have?

I always look at every side of an argument before drawing an opinion. I always check the footnotes and links and fact-check the claims. When I read the “debunking” articles regarding CIT and followed their own footnotes and checked on their own sources I found them to be illogical, poorly researched and in some cases nakedly dishonest. When I looked at CIT’s own counter arguments they were detailed, comprehensive and the sources all checked out. When I look for the responses to those responses, which should be the next step in a rational debate I find nothing. I find a continual repeating of the same initial arguments and a refusal to recognise or respond to the answers CIT have provided. I also see a pattern of ad hominem and censorship meeting anyone who tries to point this out.

A lot of people seem desperate for me to look at Arabesque’s lists of media-mined witness “quotes” who say the plane hit the building or the light poles. And I have. But I came in for heavy criticism if rather than scan the lists and hastily agree with the conclusions I take the time to look into each account to see whether it is reliable.

Could they see the Pentagon from their vantage point (very few could, there are only a few very small pockets on all of the highways around the building which had a view of the “impact zone”)? Are they actually quotes (a large number are written in the third person)? Were they even there (several have been proven not to be, a fact Arabesque has repeatedly been made aware of yet they remain on his lists)? Are they actually describing seeing a plane hit a light pole or just saying it did because they’d heard it (as at least two people who appeared to be saying they saw the light poles clipped have admitted to)? None of these questions seem to be welcomed by the contingent who demands you reject CIT’s research and I find this worrying.

By “homework” do you mean for us to engage in research and analysis, or do you want us to simply accept what the people you admire have told you on face value and do away with even the most basic level of commitment to fact-checking? If you mean the former I can assure you I have done just that, if you mean the latter then I am afraid I must resolutely refuse.

Throughout all of this no one will answer my very simple question as to what the explanation there can be for the corroboration of the north of Citgo flight path. Are the witnesses all lying and “in on it” as Frustrating Fraud claims? Or do you really believe it is statistically possible for all of these people to have made the exact same mistakes? Is there another reasonable explanation?

I have been showered with plenty of unreasonable explanations and insulted and censored when I refused to cave in and agree with them. I have been asked to take mistakes in other parts of individual witnesses testimony as a justification for dismissing the corroborated details in the whole body of testimony, as though it were not completely expected for individual testimony to be wrong in places and as though it were not the whole point that it is only when these witnesses corroborate each other on a detail that it is worthy of submission. I have been told to consider that since 9/11 was several years ago their memories have faded, as though at some point between 9/11 and today every witness’s visual memories did a mirror-flip overnight and left became right. Or perhaps the claim is that their memories slowly “drifted” and if you were to speak to the exactly half way between when CIT spoke with them and 9/11 then they would all attest to the planes being directly above their heads? Both absurd notions are negated by the fact that many of these witnesses attested to exactly the same details weeks after 9/11 and CIT were simply verifying them. I have been told that the witnesses are in such a small minority that they might as well just be ignored indeed Jim Hoffmann claimed just this on your previous show, stating that far more witnesses testify to a south of Citgo path and you agreed. Yet there is no evidence to support this claim whatsoever and unless you can provide some it must be categorised as misinformation which you have unwittingly helped to spread.

People who oppose this research appear to think it adequate to simply state it is ‘weak’ or ‘debunked’ but are unable to make a coherent case as to why. The proponents of this view have clustered and insulated themselves from debate. If we surround ourselves only with people who share our views, our arguments become weak, our understanding of an issue diminishes until eventually we begin to sink into an intellectual swamp whereby “truth” becomes whatever your in-group says it is, and all those outside of that in-group are lazily designated as “the enemy” and disregarded a priori.

I am not your enemy Michael; I'm just another person looking for the truth. If you have an explanation for why I should dismiss CIT, then I will be more than happy to listen to it and discuss it with you. But I would ask that you approach the issue in the only intellectually valid fashion, with a mind open to the fact that you might just be wrong, and I promise to do the same. When I first came across 9/11 truth I argued against it, but when I researched the issue thoroughly I had to accept I was wrong. When I first encountered CIT I argued against them, but after honestly viewing their evidence I came to realise I had been in error and admitted so. I can assure you my track record backs up my claim that I am always open to changing my position on an issue if the evidence can be provided to justify doing so.

So where do we go from here? My advice is to embrace the journalistic principle of the right to reply. You have now run two consecutive shows lambasting CIT either explicitly or indirectly. The only decent thing to do is to have a representative of the group onto the show to present their response. The longer you continue to speak out against this work yet remain unwilling to allow your audiences to hear both sides of the story the weaker your position will appear to be. If you are certain, as you seem to be, that the research is “debunked”, that it is “weak evidence” and that if we do our “homework” it falls apart, surely you could demolish them in a debate and put an end to this once and for all?

I would look forward to hearing such a debate, as I am sure would many others.

Best regards,

Stefan S