official nine eleven myth and has written or edited dozens of others in his long and distinguished career since two thousand and four dr griffin has been known as the dean of nine eleven studies and the conscience of the nine eleven truth movement he is a courageous and tenacious fighter for truth justice and reason for his talk tonight nine eleven why do bill moyers and robert perry believe in miracles please welcome me now welcome back to seattle dr david ray griffin has now been almost ten years since the nine eleven attacks a few people from the beginning started saying that the official like out of the attacks according to which they were carried out by foreign muslims in other countries was faults and that nine eleven was an inside job carried out by people in agencies in our own government and emerging movement to make this case came to be called the nine eleven truth movement this movement argued from the beginning that nine eleven was a false flag attack designed to allow the bush cheney administration and its pentagon to attack afghanistan and then iraq but most of the traditional anti war journalists such as noam chomsky george monbiot norman solomon and matt along with the riders that counterpunch in these times the nation mother jones the progressive and democracy now did not endorse the nine eleven truth movement most of them in fact attacked in the first years to be sure we did not have a very impressive membership and their movement had few professionals in the relevant disciplines such as physics architects architecture and engineering but in two thousand and five physics professor stephen jones started explaining why the world trade center buildings could not have come down without explosives due to some books and coverage by c span professional organizations began to form including architects and engineers for nine eleven truth by now we have a dozen professional organization including firefighters for nine eleven truth intelligence officers for nine eleven truth journalists eleven truth medical professionals for nine eleven truth military officers for nine eleven truth political leaders for nine eleven t religious leaders for nine eleven truth scientists for nine eleven truth and veterans for nine eleven truth the nine eleven truth movement is now very impressive in both science and professional membership progressive journalists in general have not availed themselves of the evidence provided by the nine eleven truth movement to argue against the legitimacy of the so called war on terror if any major journalist could have been expected to do so it would have been bill moyers his two thousand and seven programme on the secret government exposed the ways in which presidents have deceived the people to promote war and another two thousand and seven program buying the war showed that the media instead of exposing truths that could have prevented the war and iraq served as cheerleaders however while driving home the fact that the media failed to expose saddam hussein's lack of weapons of mass destruction maurier's failed to expose osama bin laden's lack of responsibility for the nine eleven attacks and then in two thousand and eleven he attacked the nine eleven truth movement after criticizing rush limbaugh and fox news for providing dissent from asian that undermines the truth needed for democratic self government more years added this information is not unique to the right like other journalists i have been the object of malevolent assaults from the nine eleven truth hers for not reporting their airtight case proving that the bush administration conspired to bring about the attacks on the world trade center and speaking about this airtight case moyers was of course using sarcasm considering this case anything but airtight in fact he said that the truth having no real evidence simply cherry picked a few supposed anomalies to build an inside job story line in criticizing this case maurier's was paraphrasing independent journalist robert perry who said lacking any real evidence to the truth is have built their case on alleged anomalies in the collapse of the buildings and drawing on perry maurier's appeal to one of the best of the end append journalists given perry's commitment to truthful journalism combined with his awareness that the october surprise became relegated to the status of bogus conspiracy theory only because of lying politicians and careless and dishonest journalist we would have expected him to engage in meticulous reporting about the nine eleven truth movement to dissent from the official story about the nine eleven attacks we would expected him to be suspicious of the official like out because it was provided by the bush cheney administration which is now known to have lied about iraq and we would have expected perry to be even more suspicious about the official story of nine eleven because the chief of the lying politicians in the october surprise case lee hamilton served as the democratic co chair of the nine eleven commission moreover perry could have learned in a book on the commission by new york times writer philip shenon that hamilton is duplicitous ways continued in his new role hamilton together with republican co chair thomas kane appointed philip zelikow to be the commission's executive director even  a member of the bush white house hamilton also with cain concealed from the staff the fact that cal had written a detailed outline of the commission's final report complete with chapter headings headings and headings before the staff even had its first meeting for all of these reasons we would expected perry as well as more years to have done good reporting about the nine eleven attacks but instead used bad reporting to attack the nine eleven truth movement claims that nine eleven was an inside job both moyers and kerry as we saw earlier said that truth had rejected the official account of nine eleven on the basis of alleged or supposed anomaly anomalies coming from the word normals refers to occurrences that are exceptions to the norms rules or regularities in saying that the nine eleven truth movement speaks of supposed or alleged anomalies in the collapse of the world trade center moyers and perry were saying that the official account according to which the buildings were brought down by the airliners and the resulting fires contained no real anomalies no exceptions to the regularities of physics and chemistry no miracles in truth the official account of the destruction of the world trade center contains many anomalies and some of them are so obviously and violently contrary to the laws of science that they must be called miracles and so far as moyers and piri in doors the official account of the destruction of the world trade center they accept all of these miracles i will point out six of them first when people talk about the world trade center they usually have in mind the twin towers but a third building came down that day a forty seven story building two blocks from the twin towers world trade center seven which came down at five twenty one in the afternoon many people have not even known that building seven came down because it was seldom if ever shown on television after that first day and it was not even mentioned in the nine eleven commission's report why this silence on the one hand scientists working for the government needed to say in accord with the claim that the nine eleven attacks were engine ired by but the world trade center was not destroyed by explosives but was entirely destroyed by the airliner crash and the resulting fire on the one hand it was hard for the government scientist to give this explanation for building seven because it was not hit by a plane it seemed that the building must have been brought down by a fire alone but fire had never brought down a building of this type new york times reporter james glanz calling the collapse of building seven mystery said experts said no building like that a modern steel reinforced high rise had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire worse yet for the if official account the fact that building seven was not hit by a plane meant that there was no jet fuel to ignite big fires throughout the building there were not many fires and the one what they were were not very big trying to make building similar to the twin towers defenders of the official account suggested that flaming debris from the collapse of the north tower ignited diesel fuel stored in the building turning buildings  into a towering infernal so hot that its steel beams and columns were weakened fema which wrote the first official report about the world trade center called this it's it's but fema at it this hypothesis had only a low probability of occurrence which of course is scientific speak for there's no way that could have happened popular mechanics nevertheless promoted this hypothesis telling its readers that the official report by nest the national institute of standards and technology would say that building seven's diesel fuel had fed the fires for up to seven hours and its second effort to make building seven's collapse similar to that of the twin towers popular mechanic although this building was not hit by a plane it was far more compromised by falling debris than the fema report indicated popular mechanics thereby intended to refute the nine eleven truth movement to claim that the official account is implausible by virtue of pre trained building seven as the only steel framed high rise to have come down because of fire alone so they are saying it wasn't just from fire alone it was from this enormous destruction of the much of the building however when ist finally released its building seven report in two thousand and eight it had rejected popular mechanics two fold explanation in terms of diesel fuel and structural damage said fuel oil fires did not play a role in the collapse of world trade center seven nist also said other than initiating the fires in world trade center seven the damage from the debris from the north tower had little effect building seven said nist report was the first known instance to fire causing the total collapse of the tall building there buying said exactly what popular mechanics had assured its readers nist would not say so therefore if world trade center seven was brought down by fire without the aid of explosives being an almost perfectly horizontal roof line in order for this metrical collapse to occur all eighty two of the steel columns supporting the building had to fail simultaneously it is difficult to imagine how this symmetry could have resulted without explosives perhaps people may think that if the building had been entirely engulfed by fire so that the fire with the metrical all eighty two of its columns might have failed simultaneously producing a symmetrical collapse history teaches however that it is impossible for fire to cause a steel framed building to collapse it would have been even more obviously impossible for the fires of building seven being on only a few floors to have produced a symmetrical collapse to believe these asymmetrical fires produced a symmetrical collapse would be to believe in a miracle the fire also could not explain the sudden onset of buildings collapse even if we believe that the fire could have caused the steel to lose strength the fire would have weakened the steel gradually causing it to start sagging but they did not one moment the building was perfectly immobile the next moment as videos show it was coming down at full speed as australian scientist frank a leg had observed there is no sign of a slow start that would be expected if collapse was caused by the gradual softening of the steel these two characteristics of buildings collapse the symmetrical pattern and the sudden onset or characteristics of a controlled implosion in which incendiaries and explosives are used to slice the building steel support columns so as to cause the building to cause straight down the reason to implode a building rather than simply causing it to fall over sideways is to avoid damaging nearby buildings engineering an implosion in the words of a controlled demolition website is by far the trickiest type of explosive project which only a handful of blasting companies in the world possess experience to perform old the president of controlled demolition incorporated has explained why to bring a building down so no other structure is harmed the demolition must be completely planned using the right explosives and the right pattern of laying the charges if moyers and piri hold that building seven came down without the aid of explosives then they are stuck with the conclusion that scattered fires in this building produced a collapse that perfectly imitated the kind of controlled implosion that could be performed by only a few companies in the world they are stuck in other words with american three a third feature of building seven is collapse would need to be classified as a miracle if we accept the view building was brought down by fire this is the fact that the building came down in absolute freefall for over two seconds although the nine eleven truth movement has long been pointing out that this building descended at the same rate as a free falling object at least virtually so nist had long denied this as late as august two thousand and eight when nist issue its report on building seven in the form of a draft for public comment it claimed that the time it took for the floors to come down was approximately forty percent than the computed freefall time this nist added was consistent with physical principles meaning consistent with the laws of physics as this statement implied any assertion that the building did come down in freefall would not be consistent with basic laws of physics assuming of course that explosives were not used who is in charge of nearest world trade center reports explained why the fact the building seven came down much slower than freefall under sad is not at all unusual because there was structural resistance that was provided and you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place everything was not instantaneous claim was challenged by physicist david chandler sunders forty percent longer claim chandler said contradicted publicly visible easily measurable quantity chandler then provided a video on the internet showing that by measuring this publicly visible quantity anyone understanding elementary physics could see that for about two and a half sack at the excel aeration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall given its usual behavior we might have expected it simply to ignore chandler's challenge but in its final report nist admitted freefall dividing the building's descent into three stages nearest described the second phase as three fold the sand over approximately eight stories that gravitational acceleration for approximately two point two five seconds two and a quarter seconds mistery by accepted chandler's position except for stating that the time in which the building was in free fall was only two point resistance to the motion the top floor of building seven would have encountered tremendous resistance from the steel structure of the lower forty six floors and less that structure object would be one that has no structural components below it to offer resistance but in november nist stated and it final report exactly what sunder had explained to be impossible while continuing to insist that no explosives were used nist now stated that building seven came down in freefall for over two seconds and in making that change nist no longer used the language and this is consistent with physical principles that phrase they had used repeatedly in the preliminary report they canceled every one of those so they didn't they didn't explicitly assert that what they were saying was consistent with physics so they expire implicitly admitted that what they're now saying is inconsistent that freefall without explosives is inconsistent with physics so therefore nist implicitly declared that a miracle had happened before miracles are also implied by the official account of the destruction of the twin towers according to this account they came down because of three and only three causes the airplane impacts which ca structural damage the ensuing fires which were initially fed and spread by jet fuel and gravity one of the miracles implicit in this account is that although each building had two hundred eighty seven steels the port columns two hundred forty perimeter columns and forty seven massive core columns and although explosives were not used to remove the columns each building came down as nist put it essential e in freefall nist tried to explain this by saying that each airliner took out several perimeter and core columns out its area of impact and also created huge fires which began weakening the steel after a period of time fifty seven fifty six minutes for the south tower and one hundred  minutes for the north tower the massive top section of each building at and above the fire in impact floors fell down on the lower section which could not resist a tremendous energy released by the downward movement so you had the plane going in and knocking out a hole in the building and so then you divide the building into the top part and the lower part and the argument was then and pretty soon the top part fell down on the lower part and that's what caused the whole building to collapse the lower section is claimed was unable to stop or even slow the falling mass i sometimes use the analogy you're  flying you're driving down the freeway in your little sports car and you don't notice there's a semi stopped in the freeway ahead of you and so going ninety at eighty miles an hour you run into the back of the semi well of course you know what would happen if you start pushing the semi down the freeway at eighty miles an hour that's exactly what they're arguing happened here this theory as jim hofmann has said requires us to believe that the massive steel frames of the lower structure of the towers provided no more resistance to falling rubble than would air a letter to nist by scientists stated basic principles of engineering would dictate  for example that conservation of momentum principle would dictate that the damage steel structure be low the collapse initiation zone would at the very least resist and slow there is indeed a good chance they continued but the structural strength of the steel work below would a rest that is stop the downward movement of the stories above all together in claiming therefore that each of the twin towers came down essential ie in freefall without the aid of explosives nist implied enormous violations of the conservation of momentum the descent of each of the twin towers in close to freefall was there for america five each of the twin towers produce still another miracle but collapse of each tower began with a massive explosion near the top during which huge sections of perimeter columns were rejected five hundred to six hundred feet some of these sections of steel implanted themselves in neighboring buildings as can be seen in videos and photographs enormous force would have been needed to eat jacked huge sections of steel that far out what could have produced this horse according to nist as we have seen there were only three causal factors the airplane impacts the fires and gravity the airplane impacts could not have produced the objections because those impacts had occurred an hour or more earlier the horizontal ejections could not have been produced by gravity because gravity pulls things straight down so the objections must have been produced by fire and certainly fire could produce horizontally jackson's by causing jet fuel to explode but the judge fuel as nist itself pointed out had burned up within a few minutes so what could have happened an hour or not contribute to the destruction of the twin towers these horizontally jackson's therefore must be regarded as constituting yet another miracle s probably did not think of the fires in the world trade center as having miraculous powers but knew that count implies they did three professors  stir polytechnic institute issued a report about a piece of steel recovered from buildings and debris stating that it had undergone inter melting and expanded version of this report which contained a description of a similarly a road it piece of steel from one of the twin towers was included as an appendix to the first official report on the destruction of the world trade center which was issued by fema in two thousand and two a new york times story noting that parts of those pieces of steel had melted away even though no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright this story said that these discoveries constituted perhaps the greatest mystery uncovered in the investigation an article and were magazine entitled the deep mystery of melted steel said steel which has a melting point twenty eight hundred degrees fahrenheit may weaken and banned but does not melt during an ordinary office fire yet a one inch column was reduced to half fans thickness its edges which are curled up like a paper scroll have been thin to zero most razor sharp missed gaping holes some larger than a silver dollar lets light shine through a formally solid steel flange this swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire wise professors who expected to see distortion and binning but not holes one of these professors said that the steel appeared to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures but the steel had actually evaporated not merely melted was also reported by a university of california professor speaking of a horizontal i beam from building seven he said parts of the flat top of the i once f eighths of an inch thick had they just the melting point of steel is twenty eight hundred degrees fahrenheit and the boiling point is approximately five thousand degrees fahrenheit but new said that the fires were ordinary hydrocarbon based building fires the maximum temperature of which would be eighteen hundred degrees farenheit if morrison perry accept the official story about the world trade center buildings they must believe that these fires had miraculous powers further evidence of these miraculous powers was found by the r j league group a scientific research organization that was hired by a bank to prove for insurance purposes that the dust contaminating its buildings after nine eleven had resulted from the destruction of the world trade center the r j lead group showed that the dust in the bank shared the unique chemical signature of the  world trade center dust in general part of which was spirital iron particles the existence of these particles r j lee said prove that iron had melted during the world trade center event and yet the melting point of iron is as we've seen twenty eight hundred degrees fahrenheit whereas ordinary building fires could not have exceeded eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit the u s geological survey so here we have a government agency made an even more astounding discovery that mollett dean of the melting point of which is four thousand seven hundred and fifty three degrees fahrenheit had also melted  more is in kerry have not of course explicitly endorsed miracles in fact they would surely deny the destruction of the world trade center involved in any miracles but in so far as they accept the official account their views of the six phenomena i have discussed violate principles of physics so these phenomena would have to be classified as miracles why accept the official account even though it implies miracles one answer might be that they like many other journalists have accepted the official view out of fear for their reputations but have repeatedly shown the fe have the courage to stand up for truth as they see it regardless of the consequences and that's the point of a large large part of the point of the stories i was telling you about them so why did perry who was wrongly charged with making baseless accusations about the october about the claims that the twin towers and building seven were brought down by means of explosives perry claims that scientists and engineers have provided plausible explanations for the official view but only a handful of scientists and engineers have stated in print that they see nothing wrong with the official view and most of them have been depended upon the government remember here upton sinclair's famous dictum it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it by contrast thousands of professionals including architects engineers firefighters intelligence officers military officers and scientists have publicly stated that the official view cannot be true i mentioned firefighters one hundred eighteen of the five hundred members of the new york fire department were asked to give oral histories to to give their reports of what they experienced that day they were not asked question who just told to tell us what you experienced that day no leading questions one hundred eighteen of them volunteered the information and they experienced what seemed to be explosives and in the buildings perry has unfairly been called a nut because of his persistence in laying out the evidence for the october surprise why did he on the basis of an adequate study turn around and say to label the truth or a version of the nine eleven events nobody would seen an understatement maurier's has done equally poor reporting about nine eleven observing that america seems more and more able to deal with reality more is rightly said in his two hundred and eleven lecture that many people inhabit a closed belief system on whose door they have hung the do not disturb sign but more is own belief system has evidently made him unable to deal with the reality revealed by the nine eleven truth movement more is biased against nine eleven truth movement was manifested three years before his two thousand and eleven statement on feb one two thousand and eight in preparation for the presidential election the bill moyers journal asked viewers what one book do you want your next president to read the next week moyers named the three books receiving the most votes while adding we detected only one organized campaign against a certain book and we disqualified it as a result the book in question viewers learned the following week with my two thousand and seven book debunking nine eleven the bunk which was the book that actually received the most votes by far was the alleged organized campaign the real reason why this book was disqualified it would seem not for three reasons first more years had not in explaining the contest said anything about disallowing organized campaigns in the second place the so called organized campaign consisted entirely of one person writing a statement on nine eleven blogger saying that he suspected most members of the nine eleven truth movement would be recommending one of griffin's books he suggested that they agree on one of them and he suggested the most recent book debunking nine eleven debunking i myself played no role in this campaign indeed i did not even know about the contest until it was long over in the third place one of the book authors cam michaels organized a campaign on behalf of his own book the art of war on his website he wrote bill moyers is asking viewers to recommend the one book that the next president of the united states should take to the white house if you feel so inclined please recommend the art of non war as a result michael's book came in third in the  voting fact that was just used by the publisher to promote the book however the bill moyers journal did not eliminate michael's book from the competition in spite of his self organized campaign and justifying the exclusion of my book because of signs of an orchestrated campaign more years said i wouldn't call that a conspiracy but i wouldn't call it fair either but if unfairness was the reason why my book was excluded the michael's book the campaign for which could have easily been detected should have been excluded it would seem therefore that my book was excluded because bill moyers did not want to announce that his program had recommended my book with its claim that nine eleven was an inside job by taking more years treatment of my book in two thousand and eight together with his two thousand and eleven attack on truth others we can see that he like perry has made charges against the nine eleven truth movement that are not justified by the empirical evidence i have yet another question for more years and perry given their negative characterization of people they call truth  more your statement that they employ sophos story and perry's charge that they have preponderous notions one would assume that none of their steamed friends would have anything good to say about such people but one of more years most esteemed france was william sloane coffin who after leaving the cia became famous as a preacher and anti vietnam war activist a leader of the civil rights movement more years interviewed coffin in two thousand and four and then spoke at his funeral in two thousand and six shortly before his death coffin wrote all americans who love their country enough to dig into the facts of these critical times will be well rewarded by examining professor griffin's books nine eleven truth is a very important issue with the power to bring lasting change to our country another moyers a steamed friends whom interviewed is joseph huff who at the time was the president of union theological seminary analyst prepared the president's daily brief for three presidents and more recently founded veteran intelligent professionals for sanity mcgovern wrote endorsements for two of my nine eleven books saying about one of them that he hoped to readers did not prefer the comfort of acquiescing to the official version of nine eleven and the imperial wars that but can we at least understand why more years and piri develop such hostility to the nine eleven truth movement might the explanation be that the spin machine has been slow effective in presenting the nine eleven truth perry simply accepted this view and never seriously looked at the best evidence i suspect that this is part of the evidence although perry charged truth or as with being guilty of anti empiricism it is piri and more years who have violated the need for empiricism about nine eleven for which i called incidentally in the lecture i gave in seattle in two thousand and seven nine eleven let's get pyrrhic however whereas more years and piri anti empiricism about nine eleven is probably due in part to the spin machine this surely cannot be the whole answer period moyer's both know how effective the spin machine can be with regard to any charge that would put the government in a bad light so they would know the need to get behind the spin by examining the best evidence for the issue at hand so why did they not do this with regard to nine eleven for many journalists and other people the answer would be what i have called nationalist faith the mythical belief that the american government would never deliberately do anything terribly evil but in his discussion of the big lie and which he said ordinary people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie since they themselves often tell small lives in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large scale falsehoods it would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal  perry have been more than willing than most american journalists to expose ugly truths about american political and military leaders they drew the line at nine eleven for american political leaders to have planned nine eleven they felt would have been so evil and the resulting loss i would have been so colossal that they could not believe that any american politicians even bush and cheney would have done it the very idea that nine eleven could have been an inside job kerry said is preposterous any right thinking person their claim that explosives brought down the twin towers and buildings that one does not need to know why the buildings came down to know that they were not brought down by explosives because explosives would mean that it was an inside job and this idea is preposterous the truth or is are so obviously wrong from their point of view that it is not necessary to study their writing the truth about nine eleven is provided by the nist reports and the popular mechanics books both of which perry recommended perhaps david ray griffin wrote a book criticizing popular mechanics and the n report on the twin towers and another entire book on building seven more years and perry could know without reading them that these books could be safely ignored perhaps more years and piri are now aware that the nine eleven truth movement contains hundreds of architects engineers lawyers and scientists but the very fact that these people have become truth show that something must be wrong with their thought processes this is my answer to the question why do bill moyers and robert perry endorse the official story about nine eleven even though this story implies that math the miracles occurred on nine eleven  for the big lie whereas they would usually as norman solomon said about perry follow the trail of truth wherever it leads more than perry did not follow the trail of truth laid down by the nine eleven truth movement whereas perry said that journalists should not accept pain lee reasoning he in moyers accepted miss peyton lee absurd claims about the twin towers and building seven perry said that time spent on nine eleven means that real crimes get neglected but nine eleven is the biggest crime in american history perry said consortium news dot com he started it because he feared that the decline of the u press corps foreshadowed disasters that would come when journalists failed to alert the public about impending dangers but perry has not used consortium news to inform the public about the dangers that will continue to grow every year that the truth about nine eleven is not exposed perry rightly said that the fight for honest information is a battle for the future of american democracy and moyer said that he and bill kaufman agreed a few years ago that democracy read reached a fork in the road one fork it is which leads to an america where military power serves in pyar rather than freedom but nothing has promoted american imperialism and distorted american democracy more than the big lie about nine eleven an example of this big lie at work i have suggested is that even bill moyers and robert perry two of our best journalists fell for it one of the next steps for the nine eleven truth movement i propose is to focus on the relatively small number of journalists who are both in this country who are both honest and courageous trying to help them starting with more years and perrie themselves to see that the nine eleven big law is indeed a law i thank you very much