Hopsicker on the "controlled demolition" theorists

In a couple of previous posts, in the comments section, I once more confronted the ne'er-say-die advocates of the "controlled demolition" theory of the World Trade Center disaster. I make no secret of my hostility toward such theorists. If you're new here, turn to the third column and scroll down to the little cartoon featuring my dog; those two panels should explain my stance. (But please understand that, in reality, the pooch eats like royalty, even on days when I'm doing PB&J.)

Daniel Hopsicker -- who, for some years now, has done the best investigative work on 9/11-related issues -- sent me a letter containing his own response to the CD proponents. With his permission, I will here reprint his words. A word of warning: If you think I have a fearsome snarl, wait 'til you see this guy's fangs...!

I can understand his anger, since he has devoted his energies to an area of investigation where bad theories, bad science, and some outright lies threaten to overwhelm good research.

Daniel's words will come after the jump. (He asked me to edit, not knowing that I'm a notoriously heavy editor.)

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

I recently got to witness first-hand why one researcher suggested the 9/11 "Truth Movement" might more accurately be called the 9/11 UFO Cult, due to the presence of an absurdly-large contingent of people with truly bizarre belief systems.

One such individual, in an email bristling with hostility, recently demanded I admit that explosives had been placed in the World Trade Center before the attack. Otherwise, I must perforce immediately explain to him how terrorists could possibly have made WTC Building 7 fall.

I'm sure you've met the same fate. And I'm afraid I was rather, um, intemperate in the use of capital letters in my response:

I UNCOVER MORE FACTS -- NOT OPINIONS OR SPECULATION -- ABOUT 9/11 EVERY MONTH THAN THE ENTIRE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT HAS DURING THE ENTIRE COURSE OF ITS KHASHOGGI-FUNDED HISTORY.

You say they knew the attack was coming and they didn't do a thing to stop it. If you believe that, FIND THE FUCKING EVIDENCE AND I'LL BE THE FIRST TO CONGRATULATE YOU. It's NOT altogether inconceivable that you're right, and that they let it happen.

But the MOST that can be said about that bit of speculation is that it remains to be seen. And that is a far cry from you 9/11 truth goons, who uniformly find it difficult to conceive of 19 Arab men hating us enough to blow themselves up. If there weren't hundreds, no THOUSANDS of Arab suicide bombers, there might be a rationale for questioning the motives of the 19 hijackers. But there isn't.

The reason the govt is covering up, based on evidence I uncovered, and not on bullshit speculation, is that during the SAME month that Atta arrived to attend his flight school, the OWNER of the flight school had his Lear jet confiscated by DEA agents with submachine guns, who found 43 pounds of heroin on board. That's not speculation. That's fact. And it is to OBSCURE that fact that Adnan Khashoggi's minions started spreading money around to scumbags and refugees from Benny Hinn revivals, who pretend to be looking for the truth.

I have laid out the evidence in black and white about the flight school owner's heroin bust. Yet who among you sorry-ass creeps has publicized it or attempted to learn more by actually investigating? Don't waste your time looking. The answer is NO-ONE.

Not realizing he had been beaten by the superior force of my, um, rapier wit, my interrogator next tried the snide approach:

"Is this really Daniel Hopsicker, about whom I read with interest in the book "Fleshing Out Skull and Bones" by Kris Millegan, or some snot-nosed 9 year old who has hijacked his computer? It looks like you didn't get invited back to the Conspiracy Con in 2006. I wonder why?"

Snot-nosed? Now I was steamed.

So before replying a second time, I did a quick search and discovered that my interrogator is clearly outside what the mainstream might call "ordinary consensual reality."

For example, according to his website, the most important threat facing the world today is that of "alien locusts" infesting our planet. As if this frightening news weren't enough, he wants also to alert us to this piece of breaking news:

"PASTOR JOHN STOCKER OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO ENDORSES EARTHQUAKE RESURRECTION."

Earthquake resurrection is a new one on me, and I thought I had heard it all. So I wrote him back, alluding heavily, as you might expect, to his research into alien locusts. In his response he delivered the funniest line I've read in recent memory:

"I agree that 'alien locust attack' may sound funny to someone who hasn't researched the UFO and alien abduction phenomena with a biblical worldview as a foundation."

When I stopped laughing, I realized that he was right. In my cursory ruminations about alien abduction, I have never once taken the biblical worldview. So I might have mentioned this in my final retort:

"Dude, I knew I was gonna lose the alien locust community when I told you what an idiot you are. If you thought you were emailing someone who suffers fools gladly, think again. I'm a serious writer and researcher. You're a millennialist clown."

"You really should join the Shriners; at least then you'd be able to ride around in those little cars and wear a fez. Get psychiatric help. Try to resist the idea that you're needed on the front lines of the fight against the alien locusts. Say a prayer. Smell some flowers. And please, remember to take your meds."

Two days later, someone called "citizen spook" decided I was the CIA's answer to everything ailing our great Republic, which is no doubt just a coincidence.

Here's the seriously scary part: People opposing the Bush Administration's official story about 9/11 usually have anything but a "biblical foundation as a worldview." Right? In fact, that's what most of us find so creepy about Bush. But the 9/11 Truth Movement is stocked with true believers in everything from Jesus to Urantia.

Even the leading light of the movement, David Griffin, is a divinity professor, of all things, whose books have been touted endlessly in email from well-organized 9/11 truth spammers.

And yet they apparently hate Bush so much they think he's responsible for the attack.

Something here does not, um, parse…

Dr. Griffin, we have learned, recently gave an address entitled "9/11 and Demonic Consciousness."

"My thesis is that the attacks of 9/11 were products of demonic consciousness, with 'the demonic' understood as an emergent reality that is diametrically opposed to the creative power of the universe and strong enough to threaten its purposes."

People spouting off about "demonic consciousness" usually get sent to the nearest emergency room.

And then there's Brigham Young University physicist Steven Jones, prominent in Scholars for 9/11 Truth. He believes an incendiary substance, Thermite, was bolstered by sulfur to generate the exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse.

Sulfur has traditionally been associated with the demonic. To his credit, Prof. Jones refrains from reminding us of this fact.

Jones is, however, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and has published a scientific paper called "Behold My Hands: Evidence for Christ's Visit in Ancient America." This paper details the archeological clues he has found supporting the belief that Jesus Christ visited Latin America after his resurrection, as chronicled in the Book of Mormon.

Anyone who can find Jesus in South America 2000 years ago is capable, clearly, of finding pretty much anything he wants to, anytime at all.

The bottom line is that this debate would be pretty funny if there weren't 3000 people dead.

Instead, the situation is Orwellian. Disinfo writ large. And it didn't happen by accident.

The Army's got a 1200-man psyops unit. I'll bet they aren't all tasked overseas.

-- Daniel Hopsicker

My response to all of the above:

First, I think one should shun any gathering called "Conspiracy Con," and one should avoid the sort of people who attend such events. Conspiracism is a subculture -- emphasis on the sub. The larger culture is what matters.

That said, we must admit that the sloppiest conspiracy researchers often have a surprisingly wide impact on society. On several occasions, I've overheard people on L.A. buses discuss various controlled demolition theories of 9/11. The things I've heard were pretty silly, even by CD standards. "You can see the building explode before the plane hits it!" Things like that.

And yet this kind of nonsense reaches people who will never know (for example) that Atta had a close relationship with a spooky fellow like Wolfgang Bohringer.

I've been following politics, parapolitics, and "fringe" theories since the 1970s. Starting in the mid-1980s, my interest became quite serious. Early on, I noted that a sort of "Law of Inverse Importance" comes into play whenever one takes an interest in any topic reeking of espionage or underhanded politics. Piffle overwhelms the serious, and bad research drowns out the worthwhile stuff.

In the mid 1990s, paranoid chic took hold; The X-Files was on the air and in the air. I became frustrated and infuriated with the suddenly-popular conspiracy buffs. They kept regaling me with the same canards:

JFK was shot by his driver. The Holocaust never happened. A UFO landed at Roswell. Project Monarch creates hypnotized sex slaves. The Illuminati controls the world. All your personal information is fed into a computer in Belgium nicknamed 'The Beast.' Nathan Meyer Rothschild said "Give me control over a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws."

Conspiracy junkies became so desperate for a new fix that they no longer derived any satisfaction from the merely real. The antics of actual spooks, crooks, weapons dealers and corrupt politicians seemed dull when compared to all those juicy tales of underground alien bases and devil-worshiping Freemasons.

Paranoid chic pretty much played itself out after the Clinton impeachment. Now, however, I see signs that the dismal mind-set of the mid-1990s may be returning.

More people will see Loose Change than will watch 9/11: Press for Truth. Nonsensical assertions about (say) the collapse of World Trade Center 7 receive a wide audience, while few know that the United States military allowed plane-loads of Al Qaeda operatives to escape from Afghanistan.

The truth of any historical controversy is usually squeezed between the Official Story and the Semi-Official Alternative Story. On one hand, you have the W-approved version of reality. On the other, you have the Fantasyland vision of missiles plowing into the Pentagon.

One or the other. No Option Three.

But there are other avenues of investigation, and those roads, I feel, will get us closer to the truth.

Now, I know that many of you will want to fill the comments section with the Gospel of the Controlled Demolition. Some have accused me of censorship because I usually do not allow the preaching of that Gospel in these pages, just as I do not lot allow the preaching of fundamentalist Christianity on my doorstep.

Let me explain my hard-line stance. In my view, sites such as Daily Kos or Democratic Underground are public spaces. But a blog such as this one does not belong to the public. This is my home. You are visitors. Guests. And you are all quite welcome, as long as you do not insult your host or go out of your way to annoy him.

That doesn't mean that you have to agree with your host. If you were at my table sharing a bowl of chili, you would be encouraged to debate and argue.

But if your host signals that he does not want to hear for the zillionth time a recitation that annoyed him on the first dozen hearings, then for God's sake, take the hint and shut up. Act civilized. Agree to disagree. Do not pursue the matter beyond the boundaries of politeness. You have plenty of other places to say your catechism.

Back in the late 1960s, a friend of my Mom's put a sign on her front door: "DIG OR SPLIT." A sound policy, that. If you dig not, then stay not. Understood?

Now, in just this one instance, I will allow any CD zealot who wants to comment on this post to say whatever he or she feels like saying. Don't expect me to read or to respond to your comments, but feel free to recite all of those "facts" that you seem to think I've never encountered before. 'Tis the season of The Nutcracker, so a little nuttiness might prove appropos.