Berlet, Chip

See
Response by David Ray Griffin

The New Pearl Harbor
Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11
by David Ray Griffin

Review by Chip Berlet

This book by David Ray Griffin is largely a compilation and restatement
of materials from a variety of print and electronic sources, as
the author points out in his Introduction and Acknowledgments.
Griffin’s book reflects a relentless disregard of substantial evidence
from multiple sources that contradict the claims he is making.
Griffin repeatedly uses classic Fallacies of Logic in
his presentation rendering whole sections of the book refutable
on this basis alone. In this review, examples of fallacies of logic
are highlighted with the phrase "{Logical
Fallacy}," and linked to a more detailed discussion
of the specific fallacies of logic at the bottom of the web page.

Griffin makes a number of claims suggesting a widespread conspiracy
to create and carry out the attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon. This conspiracy, as outlined in Griffin's book, would
involve numerous U.S. government elected officials as well as multiple
state level, commercial, and media conspirators. To accomplish
this vast conspiracy would necessarily involve hundeeds--if not
thousands--of individuals. Griffin never explains how this conspiracy
would actually function, claiming that is not his goal. Nor does
Griffin summarize his many claims in one place. Here are some of
his more alarming claims:

• The U.S. government caused or deliberately
  allowed the attacks of 09/11/01 to
  take place.{Logical
  Fallacy}
• The collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade
  Center was caused by a controlled demolition (bombs
  planted in the buildings prior to the planes striking the buildings).{Logical
  Fallacy}
• The Pentagon was not struck by American Airlines
  flight 77 or any commercial jet, but was hit by a guided
  missile.{Logical
  Fallacy}
• The commercial jet that crashed in
  Pennsylvania was hit by a heat-seeking guided
  missile launched by the government to silence
  the hijackers who could have exposed government complicity. {Logical
  Fallacy}
• Bush knew in advance that the attacks would
  take place because after the attacks began he
  stayed talking to children in a classroom.{Logical
  Fallacy}

Griffin is constantly stating that he does not know what actually
happened, but that he is just analyzing possible scenarios that
need to be investigated. This is disingenuous at best. While Griffin
repeatedly refers to the “claims” of “critics” of the “official” account
of the events of 9-11-01, he is clearly endorsing these views.
In a number of cases Griffin becomes an apologist for authors (such
as Thierry Meyssan or Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel) whose assertions
have been thoroughly demolished by an armada of writers across
the political spectrum. Griffin accomplishes this by selectively
highlighting certain aspects of their work while sidestepping their
most lurid and outlandish conclusions in which they claim the functioning
of vast conspiracies on the flimsiest of evidence. Griffin is far
more straightforward and candid about what he really believes in
an interview he gave to the Santa Barbara Independent,
("Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts: Theologian Charges White House
Complicity in 9/11 Attack," by Nick Welsh). [Read
article here].

Griffin: "It is very difficult for Americans
to face the possibility that their own government may have caused
or deliberately allowed such a heinous event." {Logical
Fallacy}

Welsh: Let’s say there has been this
complicity. To what end?

Griffin: There were several benefits that could have
been anticipated from 9/11. One was the so-called Patriot Act. It did
appear that the Patriot Act, given how fast it was rushed into Congress,
voting had already been prepared. The Patriot Act is so large that it’s
inconceivable it could have been written after 9/11. Rushing it through
Congress when most members had not even read a small portion of it was
clearly one benefit, giving the government increased powers. {Logical
Fallacy}

This is a good example of how Griffin uses fallacies of logic
to make his case. In this case the Fallacy of Logic is called the "Post
Hoc" fallacy. This is also sometimes called the "Sequence
Implies Causation" fallacy (because mere sequence does not imply
causation). Griffin has leapt to the conclusion that there is evidence
of a conspiracy to authorize or allow the 9/11 attacks as a way
for the Bush Administration to pass the Patriot Act (or control
oil in the Middle East, or to justify invading Afghanistan or to
justify invading Iraq). In the realm of all possible explanations
in the universe is this even a remote possibility? Yes. In the
realm of logic and evidence is it likely? No. Is there a simpler
explanation (Occum's Razor)? Yes. Is there
a more logical explanation available when all the evidence is considered?
Yes.

Let's examine Griffin's claim about the Patriot Act. It is indeed
true of the Patriot Act that, as Griffin asserts, it is "inconceivable
it could have been written after 9/11." Griffin is correct
that most of the elements of the Patriot Act had been written well
before 09/11/01. Does this provide evidence that the 9/11 attacks
were part of a conspiracy designed to create or allow a "heinous
event" to facilitate passage of the Patriot Act? No. Ask anyone
who has organized against government intelligence abuse since the
1970s and they will tell you that conservatives have been circulating
many of the elements incorporated into the Patriot Act since the
Carter Administration "Levi Guidelines" were issued to
restrict the well-documented abuses by federal intelligence agencies
exposed by activists, the media, and Congress after exposure of
the illegal FBI COINTELPRO operations and Watergate.

Griffin chides progressive political analyst Rahul Mahajan because
Mahajan has argued that the Bush administration reacted quickly
to the events of 09/11/01 in an opportunistic way that did not
require a conspiracy in advance (pp. xvi-xvii, xxiii). Ultimately
Griffin does not provide a progressive analysis such as that provided
by Mahajan. Griffin provides a centrist or right-wing populist
explanation that if deconstructed suggests that an otherwise acceptable
political and economic system has been distorted by a conspiracy
of secret elites. There is not structural, systemic, or institutional
analysis. The basic premise articulated by Griffin is that there
is a nefarious plot by Republicans, government intelligence agencies,
the neoconservatives and their Project for a New American Century,
and the Christian Right. But this is hardly a secret conspiracy...all
of these named groups are public players in a system where they
are seeking unfair power and privilege.

Many of Griffin's cites track back to unsubstantiated claims.
For example, Griffin cites a claim from the book by Nafeez Mosaddeq
Ahmed, The War on Freedom, where Ahmed is quoting Michael
C. Ruppert (From the Wilderness / Cop
v CIA), from an article "Suppressed Details of Criminal
Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA's Highest Ranks" (p.
191, n. 33). When you track the Griffin cite to the original Ruppert
article, you discover that the claims are simply not substantiated,
and never have been. A major Griffin source, Michel Chossudovsky,
has departed from a history of serious left critique to making
unsubstantiated claims based on right-wing conspiracists such as Jeffrey
Steinberg, a well-know top aide to neofascist Lyndon LaRouche,
and John
Whitley, who sees world affairs shaped by secret plots. Chossudovsky's
website also cites and praises material from the American
Patriot Friends Network, a site notorious for peddling unsubstantiated
right-wing anti-government conspiracist theories similar to those
circulated in the militia movement ( 1, 2 ).

Among the sources cited by Griffin is Christopher Bollyn writing
in the American Free Press, a right-wing publication with
a long history of dubious conspiracist tales of sinister intrique
with a subtext of antisemitism (p. 179, n. 75). This particular
article on the World Trade Center is picked up from the < rense.com > website,
which also features discussions of UFOs. Griffin cites materal
from several other right-wing sources with a long history of conspiracist
allegation: World Net Daily, Judicial Watch, The
New American (of the John Birch Society), and Accuracy in
Media (notes on pp. 194-195). None of these groups should be cited
uncritically--not because they are right wing, but because they
have a history of circulating unsubstantiated right-wing conspiracy
theories. The
problem of progressive researchers laundering right-wing conspiracy
theories into the left simply
because they carry anti-government claims has been growing for
many years.

The Pentagon

Griffin spends a chapter discussing the claim that the Pentagon was
not struck by American Airlines flight 77, a large commercial Boeing
757 airliner. This is the chapter I have chosen to examine more closely
to illustrate the
larger problems with the Griffin book.

In his "Introduction," Griffin writes that while many
dismiss Meyssan's claims as far-fetched: “Nevertheless, after I
got Meyssan’s books and read them for myself, I saw that his case,
as absurd as it had seemed at first glance, is quite strong. I
eventually became convinced, in fact, that it is with regard to
the strike on the Pentagon that—assuming Meyssan’s description
of the evidence to be accurate—the official account seems most
obviously false.” p. xx.

Griffin for the most part simple takes the claims of Meyssan as
substantial, and dismisses the critics of Meyssan. Why would any
serious author simply assume that Meyssan’s description of the
evidence is accurate without at least discussing in detail the
voluminous evidence that contradicts Meyssan?

An elegant overview refuting Meyssan’s (and Griffin’s) claims
is available online at Snopes.com, the website that exposes Internet
hoaxes and urban legends.

http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/pentagon.htm

Griffin, relying on Meyssan, suggests that whatever hit the Pentagon
was not American Airlines flight 77.

This assertion contains two sub-arguments.

1. If it was a commercial jet that hit the Pentagon,
   it was not American Airlines flight 77.
2. If it was not a commercial jet that hit the Pentagon,
   it was a guided missile.

   Griffin:

   "Were the Sources for the Identification Credible?"
   " Meysann, in addition to noting the identification between AA Flight 77 and
   the aircraft that struck the Pentagon was made only gradually, argues that the
   original sources for this identification are dubious. In particular, he suggests,
   all but one of the statements on which this identification was based came from
   military personnel." p. 27

If we believe the claim that the hijacked 757 jet, flight 77, did
not hit the Pentagon, how do we explain what happened to the passengers
who were seen boarding American Airlines flight 77? What about the
many interviews with family members whose relatives have vanished
that have appeared in regional and local newspapers? Where is Theodore
Olson's wife? Were the passengers all murdered by agents of the CIA
and the plane cut into small pieces at some secret airbase? Are all
the passengers complicit in the vast conspiracy and living out a
life of luxury on some remote island?

After a brief discussion, Griffin admits that there are problems
with the idea that Ted Olson—who spoke with his wife Barbara Olson
while she was a passenger on the ill-fated hijacked flight—was
part of a conspiracy in which she would disappear. If she did not
die when Flight 77 hit the Pentagon what happened? According to
Griffin: "Any of the alternative scenarios …would need to explain,
of course, what became of Barbara Olson, and also whether it is
plausible that Ted Olson would have participated in a plan with
that outcome." p. 28.

Yet in the next section, Griffin engages in “pyramiding,” a process
used by conspiracists whereby an unproven allegation in a prior
section is converted into a factual basis to introduce a following
section. According to Griffin:

"Physical Evidence That the Pentagon Was Not Hit by a Boeing
757"
" In addition to the argument that all the information originally connecting
Flight 77 with the aircraft that struck the Pentagon evidently came from dubious
sources, a second argument, provided by Meyssan, consists of physical evidence
that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757, which is what AA Flight 77 was." p.
28

In "addition" to what? The first premise has not been
demonstrated as true--much less plausible.

Several sources cited by Griffin dismiss eyewitness accounts of
a commercial jet hitting the Pentagon as vague or from military
personnel. Yet almost from the beginning there were eyewitness
accounts that were not vague and not from military personnel. In
a clear case of omitting conflicting eyewitness testimony, Griffin
quotes one air traffic controller and three eyewitnesses who describe
something that does not resemble a Boeing 757 commercial jetliner
heading towards the Pentagon, implying that it was a missile. But
there are scores of eyewitness reports who describe a commercial
jetliner flying almost on the ground toward the Pentagon, and dozens
of eyewitnesses who actually saw the jetliner strike the Pentagon
itself.

Here are two from news media staff who are not connected to the
government or the military:

From the transcript of an early 9-11-01 CNN story:

"I saw the tail of a large airliner. ... It plowed right into
the Pentagon," said an Associated Press Radio reporter. "There
is billowing black smoke."

This was Dave Winslow, an AP Radio reporter...not a government
employee or agent.

A year later, Winslow told the Washingtonian magazine:

"I heard this enormous sound of turbulence. . .As I turned
to my right, I saw a jumbo tail go by me along Route 395. It
was like the rear end of the fuselage was riding on 395. I
just saw the tail go whoosh right past me. In a split second,
you heard this boom. A combination of a crack and a thud. It
rattled my windows. I thought they were going to blow out.
Then came an enormous fireball."

Or consider this first-person commentary by a reporter for USA
Today:

'Tomorrow always belongs to us'
By Vin Narayanan, USATODAY.com
09/17/2001 - Updated 02:43 PM ET

"At 9:35 a.m., I pulled alongside the Pentagon. With traffic
at a standstill, my eyes wandered around the road, looking
for the cause of the traffic jam. Then I looked up to my left
and saw an American Airlines jet flying right at me. The jet
roared over my head, clearing my car by about 25 feet. The
tail of the plane clipped the overhanging exit sign above me
as it headed straight at the Pentagon. The windows were dark
on American Airlines Flight 77 as it streaked toward its target,
only 50 yards away. The hijacked jet slammed into the Pentagon
at a ferocious speed. But the Pentagon's wall held up like
a champ. It barely budged as the nose of the plane curled upwards
and crumpled before exploding into a massive fireball."

Even if we discard Narayanan's assumption that the plane he saw
was American Airlines Flight 77, he still saw a large American
Airlines commercial jet, not a guided missile.

Some of the sources relied on by Griffin claim to have debunked
ten or twenty eyewitness accounts they found on the internet; but
there were, in fact, hundreds of eyewitnesses to the commercial
jet hitting the Pentagon. Scores gave their accounts to reporters
and investigators. Some of their statements can be found at:

http://www.geocities.com/someguyyoudontknow33/witnesses.htm
http://www.criticalthrash.com/terror/identification.html

This is discussed in more detail in the table below.

While some eyewitness accounts are contradictory, this is always
the case with eyewitness accounts. Most accounts support the claim
that an American Airlines 757 jet slammed into the Pentagon. Most
of the detailed accounts are simply discarded by Griffin because
they are from people with some connection to the government, especially
the military. There are dozens of eyewitnesses who are government
employees from a variety of agencies who we are told to ignore
because they are what? We are supposed to find credible the claim
that all these eyewitnesses are active agents of the vast conspiracy
by the Bush administration to send a missile slamming into the
side of the Pentagon in order to have an excuse to invade Afghanistan
and Iraq. Alternatively, they all were mesmerized by the "official" story
that it was an American Airlines passenger jet that struck the
Pentagon. Yet many of these eyewitness accounts were given to reporters
before there was an "official" story.

Another claim is that no one saw pieces of an airplane after the
impact. This is refuted by several eyewitnesses who described seeing
pieces of the plane, and there is even a photograph of a piece
of wreckage that appears to be from an aircraft lying on the grass
outside the Pentagon. See the photo about halfway down the page
at:
http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/pentagon.htm.
This is discussed in more detail in the table below.

I am frankly puzzled and saddened that Richard Falk, Howard Zinn,
and Rosemary Radford Reuther—persons for whom I have tremendous
respect—have lent their names to this seriously flawed book.

Below is a detailed examination of Griffin's claims about the
attack on the Pentagon. It is designed to illustrate how Griffin
has uncritically accepted the claim of conspiracists while ignoring
the ample evidence that refutes their claims. It also lists the
Fallacies of Logic utilized by Meyssan and Griffin.

Discussion of Specific Claims Regarding the Pentagon

Note: In a preliminary exchange of e-mails,
David Ray Griffin pointed out that one of my criticisms of logic
was listed incorrectly,
and another was convoluted. Corrections have been made, and I am
very grateful to Dr. Griffin for his gracious forbearance. Read
his full response here.

Fallacies of Logic

When an argument employs one of the many Fallacies of Logic, it
is not valid on its face.

= = = = = = =

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy

Logical fallacy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A logical fallacy is an error in logical argument or reasoning
which is independent of the truth of the premises. It is a
mistake in the way that the propositions or statements in an
argument are logically related. When there is a fallacy in
an argument it is said to be invalid. That is, the conclusion
does not logically follow from the premises provided to support
it. This sort of mistake does not mean that the statements
made or the conclusion reached are necessarily true or false.
Both conclusion and premises may actually be true, but the
argument is still invalid because the conclusion does not follow
from the premises presented.

Arguments intended to persuade may be convincing to many listeners
despite fallacious reasoning. The truth of the premises may
even significantly increase the probability of the truth of
the conclusion. But such arguments are nonetheless flawed.
Recognizing fallacies is often difficult, but it is important
to be able to do so. A tempting conclusion is not more likely
to be true because it is supported by a fallacious argument.
Detecting and avoiding fallacious reasoning will at least prevent
adoption of some erroneous conclusions.

= = = = = = =

The following are a few of the fallacies of logic employed by
Griffin and Meyssan, with initial descriptions of each fallacy
provided by Stephen Downes (Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies
- http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/).

Fallacies of Distraction:

False Dilemma: two choices are given when in fact there are three options.

Example in Griffin: it is asserted that the evidence suggests
Bush either caused the attacks on 09/11/01 or knew about them
in advance and did nothing to stop them. One option not given
(or repeatedly dismissed) is that Bush should have known that
an attack was imminent, but failed to take the proper measures
to stop them.

[Clarification: Some readers have written to suggest my meaning here was not clear. This
language is better:

3) Various government agencies had enough pieces of information that (if
they had been properly collected, analyzed, and acted upon) it should
have been obvious that an attack was imminent; but for a variety of
reasons this information was not provided to or taken seriously by top
Bush Administration officials, and Bush therefore failed to take the
proper measures to prevent the attacks.]

From Ignorance: because something is not known to be true, it is assumed to
be false.

Example in Griffin: A superficial search of the web by Griffin
source Holmgren fails to discover evidence that AP Radio reporter
Dave Winslow exists, therefore Holmgren asserts that Winslow's
quotes are false, and that Winslow may not exist at all.

Inductive Fallacies:

Hasty Generalization: the sample is too small to support an inductive generalization
about a population.

Example in Griffin: Finding only 19 witnesses quoted on the
web who claim they saw a commercial jet hit the Pentagon, and
then finding reasons to dismiss their claims, and then concluding
the witness evidence does not support the claim that a commercial
jet hit the Pentagon. In fact, there are many more than 19 persons
who claim they saw a commercial jet hit the Pentagon, but since
they were not found in a superficial web search, they are not
counted as part of the sample.

Unrepresentative Sample: the sample is unrepresentative of the sample as a
whole.

Example in Griffin: Highlighting the handful of people who
say they saw or heard a missile heading toward or striking the
Pentagon, when most people describe a commercial passenger jet.

Fallacy of Exclusion: evidence which would change the outcome of an inductive
argument is excluded from consideration.

Example in Griffin: Meyssan and Griffin claim that the explosion
at the Pentagon cannot be explained by the burning of Jet aviation
fuel, therefore a missile strike is a likely explanation. There
is abundant evidence (not mentioned) that Jet aviation fuel actually
can explode when vaporized and create an extremely high temperature.

Example in Griffin: The World Trade Center towers would only
have collapsed if bombs had been placed inside the buildings.
This claim is refuted by numerous structural engineers and forensic
engineers.   [Read
example 1]  [Read
example 2]  [Read
example 3]

Non Sequitur:

Affirming the Consequent: any argument of the form: If A then B, B, therefore
A

Example in Griffin: If a heat-seeking missile hit United Flight
93 over Pennsylvania, it would have knocked off the jet engine.
A jet engine from the aircraft was found miles from the main
crash wreckage, therefore this is evidence that a heat-seeking
missile hit United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania.

Example in Griffin: If Bush knew about the 09/11/01 attacks
in advance, he would remain in a classroom talking with children,
(and the Secret Service would not whisk him away to safety).
Bush stayed talking with children, therefore this is evidence
that Bush knew about the 09/11/01 attacks in advance.

Causal Fallacies:

Post Hoc: because one thing follows another, it is held to cause the other.

Example in Griffin: Bush wanted to pass legislation expanding
the powers of intelligence agencies; invade Afghanistan, and
invade Iraq. The passage of the Patriot Act, the invasion of
Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq are evidence that Bush
caused the attacks on 09/11/01 or allowed them to happen.

Fallacies of Explanation:

Non-support: Evidence for the phenomenon being explained is biased:

Example in Meyssan and Griffin: The fireballs of the commercial
jets that struck the World Trade Center towers are different
from the fireball at the Pentagon, therefore the fireball at
the Pentagon was not caused by a commercial jet airliner. The
fireballs are indeed different. The fireballs at the World Trade
Center towers are in mid-air and can attain a rounded shape against
the walls of the building and the holes in the walls. The fireball
at the Pentagon is shaped by the wall of the building, the hole
in the wall of the building, and the ground, therefore the blast
is shaped differently and is forced upwards in a distinctive
shape.

Changing the Subject:

Appeal to Authority: the authority is not an expert in the field.

Example in Griffin: Meyssan is cited by Griffin where Meyssan
is making conclusions about scientific, military, and engineering
matters when he has no expertise in any of these fields, much
less expertise in the forensic analysis of phenomena related
to these fields.

Example in Griffin: "the most obvious
problem is that since the aircraft penetrated only the first
three rings of the Pentagon, only the nose of
a Boeing 757 would have gone inside.... The rest of the airplane
would have remained outside." p. 29.

Fallacies of Ambiguity:

Equivocation: the same term is used with two different meanings.

Example in Griffin and Meyssan: Throughout their discussion
of the "nose" of flight 77, and the attack on the Pentagon,
they and the people they quote refer to the "nose" of
the airplane, but it is clear that sometimes people are describing
the small fragile nose cover that protects electronic equipment
at the tip of the aircraft, and sometimes they are talking about
the entire front part of the aircraft.