9/11 according to the science and the facts

[Kathleen]

http://www.st911.org/

This is the new penultimate draft of a chapter that will appear in THE
9/11 CONSPIRACY (Chicago, IL: Catfeet Press/Open Court, forthcoming),
which I am editing. It differs from the version at
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/ in a few respects. Comments and
criticism are welcome. Email jfe...@d.umn.edu.

THINKING ABOUT "CONSPIRACY THEORIES": 9/11 and JFK

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

The phrase "conspiracy theory" harbors an ambiguity, since conspiracies
are widespread and theories about them need not be mere speculations.
The application of scientific reasoning in the form of inference to the
best explanation, applied to the relevant evidence, establishes that
the official account of the events of 9/11 cannot be sustained.
Likelihood measures of evidential support establish that the WTC was
brought down through the use of controlled demolition and that the
Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757. Since these hypotheses have high
likelihoods and the only alternatives have likelihoods that range from
zero to null (because they are not even physically possible), assuming
that sufficient evidence has become available and "settled down", these
conclusions not only provide better explanations for the data but are
proven beyond reasonable doubt.

1. "Conspiracy Theories"

We need to come to grips with conspiracies. Conspiracies are as
American as apple pie. All they require is that two or more persons
collaborate in actions to bring about illegal ends. When two guys
knock off a 7/11 store, they are engaged in a conspiracy. Most
conspiracies in our country are economic, such as Enron, WorldCom, and
now Halliburton as it exploits the opportunities for amassing profits
in Iraq. Insider trading is a simple example, since investors and
brokers collaborate to benefit from privileged information.
Ordinarily, however, the media does not describe them as
"conspiracies".1 The two most important conspiracies in our history
are surely those involving JFK and 9/11.

One fascinating aspect of 9/11 is that the official story involves
collaboration between some nineteen persons in order to bring about
illegal ends and thus obviously qualifies as a "conspiracy theory".
When critics of the government offer an alternative account that
implicates key figures of the government in 9/11, that obviously
qualifies as a "conspiracy theory", too. But what matters now is that
we are confronted by alternative accounts of what happened on 9/11,
both of which qualify as "conspiracy theories". It is therefore no
longer rational to dismiss one of them as a "conspiracy theory" in
favor of the other. The question becomes, Which of two "conspiracy
theories" is more defensible?

There is a certain ingenuity in combining "conspiracy" with "theory",
because the word "theory" can be used in the weak sense of a
speculation, conjecture, or guess to denigrate one account or another
for political or ideological reasons without acknowledging that
"theory" can also be used in the stronger sense of an empirically
testable, explanatory hypothesis. Consider Newton's theory of
gravitation or Einstein's theory of relativity as instances. The
psychological ploy is to speak as though all "theories" were guesses,
none of which ought to be taken seriously. Various different cases,
however, can present very different problems. Evidence can be scarce,
for example, or alternatives might be difficult to imagine.

Moreover, there are several reasons why different persons might arrive
at very different conclusions in a given case. These include that they
are not considering the same set of alternative explanations or that
they are not employing the same rules of reasoning. The objectivity of
science derives, not from transcending our human frailties, but from
its inter-subjectivity.2 Different scientists confronting the same
alternatives, the same evidence, and the same rules of reasoning should
arrive at all and only the same conclusions about which hypotheses are
acceptable, which are rejectable, and which should be held in suspense.
And, in the search for truth, scientific reasoning must be based upon
all the available relevant evidence, a condition called the requirement
of total evidence, and is otherwise fallacious.3

2. Scientific Reasoning

Scientific reasoning characterizes a systematic pattern of thought
involving four stages or steps, namely: puzzlement, speculation,
adaptation, and explanation.4 Something occurs that does not fit
comfortably into our background knowledge and expectations and thus
becomes a source of puzzlement. Alternative theories that might
possibly explain that occurrence are advanced for consideration. The
available relevant evidence is brought to bear upon those hypotheses
and their measures of evidential support are ascertained, where
additional evidence may be obtained on the basis of observation,
measurement, and experiment. The weight of the evidence is assessed,
where the hypothesis with the strongest support is the preferable
hypothesis. When sufficient evidence becomes available, the preferable
hypothesis also becomes acceptable in the tentative and fallible
fashion of science.5

Among the most important distinctions that need to be drawn in
reasoning about alternative scenarios for historical events of the kind
that matter here are those between different kinds of necessity,
possibility and impossibility.6 Our language imposes some constraints
upon the possible as functions of grammar and meaning. In ordinary
English, for example, a freshman is a student, necessarily, because to
be a freshman is to be a student in the first year of a four-year
curriculum. By the same token, it is impossible to be a freshman and
not be a student. The first is a logical necessity, the second a
logical impossibility. Since a conspiracy requires at least two
conspirators, if there were not at least two conspirators, it is not
logically possible that a conspiracy was involved; if there were, then
necessarily there was.

More interesting than logical necessities, possibilities and
impossibilities, however, are physical necessities, possibilities and
impossibilities.7 These are determined in relation to the laws of
nature, which, unlike laws of society, cannot be violated, cannot be
changed, and require no enforcement.8 If (pure) water freezes at 32°
F at sea level atmospheric pressure, for example, then it is physically
necessary for a sample of (pure) water to freeze when its temperature
falls below 32° F at that pressure. Analogously, under those same
conditions, that a sample of (pure) water would not freeze when its
temperature falls below 32° F is physically impossible. And when a
sample of (pure) water is not frozen at that pressure, it is
justifiable to infer that it is therefore not at a temperature below
its freezing point of 32° F.

Laws of nature are the core of science and provide the principles on
the basis of which the occurrence of events can be systematically
explained, predicted, and retrodicted.9 They therefore have an
important role to play in reasoning about specific cases in which those
principles make a difference. In legal reasoning, for example, the
phrase, "beyond a reasonable doubt", means a standard of proof that
requires subjective conviction that is equal to "moral certainty".10
In the context of scientific reasoning, the meaning of that same phrase
is better captured by the objective standard that an explanation is
"beyond a reasonable doubt" when no alternative is reasonable. Notice
that the falsity of hypotheses that describe the occurrence of events
that are physically impossible is beyond a reasonable doubt.11

3. Probabilities and Likelihoods

An appropriate measure of the weight of the evidence is provided by
likelihoods, where the likelihood of an hypothesis h, given evidence e,
is determined by the probability of evidence e, if that hypothesis were
true.12 Hypotheses should be tested in pairs, h1 and h2, where the
relationship between the hypotheses and the evidence may be regarded as
that between possible causes and effects. Thus, suppose in a game of
chance, you were confronted with a long series of outcomes that would
have been highly improbable if the coin were symmetrical (if the dice
were fair, or if the deck was normal). If such a run would be far more
probable if the coin were bent (if the dice were loaded, if the deck
was stacked), then the likelihood that the coin is bent (the dice are
loaded, the deck is stacked) is much higher than the likelihood the
coin is symmetrical (dice are fair, deck is normal).

A better grasp of probabilistic reasoning follows from distinguishing
between two kinds of probabilities as properties of the world. The
first is relative frequencies, which simply represent "how often"
things of one kind occur in relation to things of another kind. This
includes averages of many different varieties, such as the average
grade on a philosophy exam in a course on critical thinking. The
second is causal propensities, which reflect "how strong" the
tendencies are for outcomes of a certain kind to be brought about under
specific conditions.13 Frequencies are brought about by propensities,
which may differ from one case to another. When the class averages 85
on the first exam, that does not mean every student scored 85 on the
exam. It might even be the case that no student actually had that
score. But each students' own score was an effect of his propensity to
score on that exam.

It can be easy to confuse "how often" with "how strong", but some
examples help to bring their difference home. Canoeing on the Brule
River in Wisconsin is not a hazardous pastime, but a 76-year old woman
was killed on 15 July 1993 when a tree that had been gnawed by a beaver
fell and landed on her. The tree fell and hit the woman on the head,
as she and her daughter paddled past it.14 The tree was about 18
inches in diameter and 30 to 40 feet tall and stood about 10 to 20 feet
up the river bank. So while hundreds and hundreds of canoeists had
paddled down the Brule River before and escaped completely unscathed,
this woman had the misfortune to be killed during "a freak accident".
It was improbable in terms of its relative frequency of occurrence yet,
given those particular conditions, the causal propensity for death to
result as an effect of that specific event was great.

When the same causally relevant conditions are subject to replication,
then the relative frequencies that result tend to be reliable evidence
of the strength of the causal propensity that produced them. But when
those conditions can vary, how often an outcome occurs may not indicate
the strength of that tendency on any specific trial. We commonly
assume smoking diminishes life spans, which is usually true. But a
21-year old man was confronted by three thugs who, when he failed to
respond quickly enough, shot him. He might have been killed, but a
metal cigarette lighter deflected the .25-caliber bullet and he
lived.15 Once you appreciate the difference, three principles that
relate probabilities of these kinds become apparent, namely: that
propensities cause frequencies; that frequencies are evidence for
propensities; and that propensities can explain frequencies. But it
depends on the constancy of the relevant conditions from one trial to
another.16

4. The Case of JFK

Conspiracy theories have to be assessed using principles of scientific
reasoning. In the case of JFK, the difficulty has not been a dearth of
evidence but sorting through the superabundance of conflicting and even
contradictory physical, medical, witness, and photographic "evidence"
to ascertain which is authentic and which is not. Something qualifies
as evidence in relation to an hypothesis just in case its presence or
absence or its truth or falsity makes a difference to the truth or
falsity of that hypothesis. But "evidence" can be planted, faked, or
fabricated to provide a false foundation for reasoning.17 That has
proven to be true here. Once the task of sorting things out has been
performed, it becomes relatively simple to draw appropriate inferences
about the general character of the assassination on the basis of what
we have learned about the cover-up,

Early studies by Harold Weisberg, Mark Lane, and Sylvia Meagher, for
example, were instrumental in establishing that The Warren Report
(1964) could not be sustained on the basis of evidence available even
then (Weisberg 1965, Lane 1966, Meagher 1967). According to the
official account, a lone assassin fired three shots from the sixth
floor of the Texas School Book Depositor Building, scoring two hits.
One of those hits is supposed to have entered at the base of the
President's neck, passed through without hitting any bony structures
and exited just above his tie. It then entered the back of Governor
John Connally, who was seated in front of him, shattered a rib, exited
his chest and injured his right wrist before being deflected into his
left thigh. The bullet alleged to have followed this trajectory was
later "found" in virtually pristine condition.

This sequence of events appears so improbable that the missile that
caused all of this damage has come to be known as the "magic bullet".18
The jacket and the shirt JFK was wearing both have holes about 5 1/2
inches below the collar. An autopsy diagram verified by the
President's personal physician shows a wound at that same location. A
second diagram prepared by an FBI observer shows the wound to the back
below the wound to the throat. The death certificate executed by the
President's personal physician also places that wound at the level of
the third thoracic vertebra, about 5 1/2 inches below the collar. Even
photographs taken during re-enactments of the shooting show patches on
stand-ins for the President at that location.19

Although The Warren Report tries to imply that the "magic bullet"
theory is not indispensable to its conclusions, that is a gross
misrepresentation. No less an authority than Michael Baden, M.D., who
chaired the forensic panel that reviewed the medical evidence when the
case was reinvestigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations
in 1977-78, has remarked that, if the "magic bullet" theory is false,
then there had to have been at least six shots from three different
directions.20 An especially disturbing aspect of this situation is that
all the evidence described here was not only available to the HSCA in
1977-78 but had been discussed quite extensively in those early books
by Weisberg, Lane, and Meagher (Weisberg 1965, Lane 1966, Meagher
1967). The government has simply ignored their discoveries.21

5. Recent Scientific Studies

Since the release of Oliver Stone's film, "JFK", in 1992, research on
the assassination evidence (conducted by the best qualified persons who
have ever studied the case)22 has revealed that the autopsy X-rays
have been altered in several ways, that another brain was substituted
for that of JFK during its examination, and that the home movie
ostensibly taken by a spectator named Abraham Zapruder has not only
been extensively edited but actually recreated by reshooting each of
its frames (Fetzer 1998, 2002, 2003).23 The film was redone using
techniques of optical printing and special effects, which allow
combining any background with any foreground to create any impression
that one desires, which included removing series of frames that would
have given the plot away, such as that the driver pulled the limousine
to the left and stopped after shots began to be fired.24

The alterations of the medical evidence include "patching" a massive
defect in the back of the head caused by a shot from in front, in the
case of the lateral cranial X-ray, and adding a 6.5 mm metallic slice
to the anterior/posterior X-ray, in an evident attempt to implicate a
6.5 mm weapon in the assassination, which have been exposed by means
of optical density studies.25 Adapting a simple technique from
physics, David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., on the basis of objective
measurements and repeatable experiments, has been able to prove that
the JFK autopsy X-rays are not authentic. And, by even simpler
comparisons between descriptions from experienced and professional
physicians at Parkland Hospital describing extensive damage to the
brain of JFK, Robert Livingston, M.D., a world authority on the human
brain, has concluded that the diagrams and photographs of a brain that
are stored in the National Archives must be of a brain other than that
of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.26

The evidence establishing the recreation of the Zapruder film comes
from diverse sources, including that frame 232 was published in LIFE
with physically impossible features; that a mistake was made in
introducing the Stemmons Freeway sign into the recreated version; that
the "blob" and blood spray was added on to frame 313; that the driver's
head turns occur too rapidly to even be humanly possible; that the
Governor's left turn has been edited out of the film; that Erwin
Swartz, an associate of Abraham Zapruder, reported having observed
blood and brains blown out to the back and left when he viewed the
original film; that several Secret Service agents observed brains and
blood on the trunk of the limousine; that others have viewed another
and more complete version of the film; and that Homer McMahon, an
expert at the National Photographic Interpretation Center, studied a
very different film on that very night.27

Other evidence that has long been available to serious students of the
death of JFK includes multiple indications of Secret Service complicity
in setting him up for the hit.28 There was no welding of the manhole
covers; no coverage of open windows; the motorcycles were placed in a
non-protective formation; agents did not ride on the limousine; an
improper route, including a turn of more than 90°, was utilized; the
vehicles were in an improper sequence; the limousine slowed nearly to a
halt at Houston and Elm; the limousine was actually brought to a stop
after bullets began to be fired; the agents were non-responsive; brains
and blood were washed from the limousine at Parkland before the
President was even pronounced dead; the autopsy X-rays and photographs
were taken from the morgue; and the limousine was sent to Ford Motor
Company, stripped down and completely rebuilt, on 25 September 1963.29

6. Patterns of Reasoning

Records released by the ARRB have shown that Gerald Ford (R-MI), a
member of the commission, had the description of the wound changed from
"his uppermost back", which was already an exaggeration, to "the base
of the back of his neck" to make the "magic bullet" theory more
plausible (Fetzer 1998, p. 177). And Mantik has now proven that no
bullet could have taken the trajectory ascribed to the "magic bullet"
because cervical vertebrae intervene (Fetzer 2000, pp. 3-4). So the
vastly influential accounts of the death of JFK that take it for
granted as their foundation- The Warren Report, The House Select
Committee on Assassinations Report, and Gerald Posner's Case
Closed-are not only false but provably false and not even
anatomically possible.

The wound to his throat and the wounds to Connally have to be explained
on the basis of other shots and other shooters. We now know that JFK
was hit four times-in the throat from in front; in the back from
behind; and twice in the head: in the back of the head from behind and
then in the right temple from in front.30 We know Connally was hit at
least once and another shot missed and injured a bystander. It thus
turns out that Michael Baden, M.D., was correct when he observed that,
if the "magic bullet" theory is false, then there had to have been at
least six shots from at least three different directions. The theory
is not even anatomically possible and, with at least one to Connally
and one miss, there had to have been at least six shots.31

Anatomical impossibility, of course, is one kind of physical
impossibility, insofar as human are vertebrates with vertebrae,
including those of the cervical variety. The wound observations of the
attending physicians at Parkland and at Bethesda were cleverly
concealed by Arlen Specter, now a United States Senator from
Pennsylvania, but then a junior counsel to the Warren Commission.
Specter did not ask the doctors what they had observed or what they had
inferred from what they had observed, but instead posed a hypothetical
question: "If we assume that the bullet entered the base of the back
of the neck, traversed the neck without impacting any bony structures,
and came out just above the level of the tie", he asked, "would that be
consistent with describing the neck wound as a wound of exit?" In
response to this trivial question, they dutifully replied that it would
be, but Malcolm Perry, M.D., who had performed a tracheostomy through
the wound and had described it three times as a wound of entry during a
press conference, added that he was not in the position to vouch for or
to verify the assumptions he had been asked to make, which of course
was true.32

The discoveries about the X-rays, the brain, and the Zapruder film are
also powerful. What makes these discoveries so significant as evidence
is that none of these things could possibly have been done by Lee
Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, who was either incarcerated or
already dead. Other theories, moreover, can be rejected on similar
grounds. The Mafia, for example, could not have extended its reach into
the Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays under the control of agents
of the Secret Service, medical officers of the United States Navy, and
the President's personal physician. Neither pro nor anti-Castro Cubans
could have substituted one brain for another. Nor could the KGB, which
probably had the same ability as Hollywood and the CIA to fabricate
movies, have been able to gain possession of the Zapruder film to
subject it to alteration. Which raises the question, Who had the power
to make these things happen? Given what we know now, the answer is no
longer difficult to discern. It required involvement at the highest
levels of the American government.

Insofar as the "magic bullet" theory describes the occurrence of events
that are not only provably false but actually physically impossible,
that it cannot possibly be true is beyond reasonable doubt. Moreover,
the discovery that the autopsy X-rays have been altered, that another
brain has been substituted, and that the Zapruder film has been
recreated imply a very meticulous and carefully planned cover-up in
which the alleged assassin could not have been involved. The
identification of more than a dozen indications of Secret Service
complicity means that the evidence has "settled down".33 The
probability of the evidence on the lone-assassin hypothesis does not
even rise to zero, since it posits a physically impossible sequence,
whose value is better set at null.34 The probability of the evidence
on a conspiracy scenario, by comparison, is extremely high, depending
upon the competence and the power of those who carried it out. There
is in fact no reasonable alternative to a fairly large-scale conspiracy
in the death of our 35th President, which means that it has been
established beyond a reasonable doubt.35

7. The Case of 9/11

It has taken nearly 40 years for the deception to have been decisively
settled on the basis of objective scientific evidence. In the case of
9/11, however, we are vastly more fortunate. As a consequence of
inquiries by Nafeez Ahmed (2002), Thierry Meyssan (2002), Paul Thompson
(2004), Michael Ruppert (2004), and David Ray Griffin (2004, 2005),
among others, we already know that the official account of 9/11 cannot
possibly be correct. That account contends that 19 Arabs, with feeble
ability to pilot aircraft, hijacked four airliners and then executed
demanding maneuvers in order to impact the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon;36 that the damage created by their impact combined with the
heat from burning jet fuel brought down WTC1 and WTC2; that WTC7 was
the first building in history to be brought down by fire alone; and
that the Pentagon was struck by United Flight 77, which was a Boeing
757.37 The basic problem with this "conspiracy theory", as in the case
of JFK, is that its truth would violate laws of physics and engineering
that cannot be transgressed.

The extremely high melting point of structural steel (about 2,800° F)
is far above the maximum (around 1,700° F) that could have been
produced by jet fuel under optimal conditions. Underwriters
Laboratories had certified the steel used in the World Trade Center to
2,000° F for up to six hours.38 Even lower maximum temperatures
result after factoring in insulation, such as asbestos, and the
availability of oxygen.39 Since steel is a good conductor, any heat
applied to one part of the structure would have been dissipated to
other parts. WTC1, the North Tower, was hit first at 8:46 AM/ET and
collapsed at 10:29 AM/ET, whereas the South Tower, hit second at 9:03
AM/ET, collapsed at 9:59 AM/ET. They were exposed to fires for roughly
an hour and a half and an hour, respectively. Insofar as most of the
fuel was burned off in the gigantic fireballs that accompanied the
initial impacts, that these towers were brought down by fuel fires that
melted the steel is not just improbable but physically impossible.40

Most Americans may not realize that no steel-structure high-rise
building has ever collapsed from fire in the history of civil
engineering, either before or after 9/11. If we assume that those fires
have occurred in a wide variety of buildings under a broad range of
conditions, that evidence suggests that these buildings do not have a
propensity to collapse as an effect of fire. That makes an alternative
explanation, especially the use of powerful explosives in a controlled
demolition, an hypothesis that must be taken seriously. Indeed, there
appear to be at least ten features of the collapse of the Twin Towers
that are expectable effects of controlled demolitions but not from
fires following aircraft impacts.41 They include that the buildings
fell about the rate of free fall; that they both collapsed virtually
straight down (and into their own "footprints"); that almost all the
concrete was turned into very fine dust; that the collapses were
complete, leaving virtually no steel support columns standing; that
photographic records of their collapse show "demolition waves"
occurring just ahead of the collapsing floors; that most of the beams
and columns fell in sections of 30' to 40' in length; that firemen
reported hearing sequences of explosions as they took place; that
seismological events were recorded immediately prior to collapse; and
that pools of molten metal were observed in the subbasements for weeks
after.42

The situation here is analogous to what we encountered with multiple
indications of Secret Service complicity in setting up JFK for the hit.
Suppose, as before, we adopt a value of 1 time in 10 for any one of
these features to occur as a causal consequence of an aircraft impact
and ensuing fire. We know that is a fantastically high number, since
this has never occurred before or since. But, for the sake of
argument, let us assume it. Then if we treat these features as having
propensities that are independent and equal, for those ten features to
have occurred on any single event of this kind would have a propensity
equal to 1 over 1 followed by ten zeros, that is, 1/10,000,000,000,
which is one chance in ten billion! Of course, since there were two
such events-given TWC1 and TWC2-the probability that they would
both display these same ten features on the very same occasion is
equal to the product of one in ten billion times one in ten billion,
which is 1 over 1 followed by twenty zeros, or
1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is a very small number. And these
calculations assume values that are far too high.43

8. 9/11: The Pentagon

The Pentagon case should be the most accessible to study, since it only
depends upon observations and measurements, which are the most basic
elements available for any scientific investigation. Indeed, photos
taken prior to the collapse of the Pentagon's upper floors supply
evidence that, whatever hit the Pentagon, it cannot possibly have been
a Boeing 757.44 The plane was 155' long, with a wing span of 125' and
stood 36' high with its wheels retracted. The initial point of impact
(prior to the collapse of the floors above) was only about 10' high and
16-17' wide, about the size of the double-doors on a mansion. A
meticulous engineering study with careful measurements has been
conducted that offers powerful evidence that the official story cannot
possibly be correct. The damage done appears to have been inflicted by
a smaller aircraft, such as an F-16, or by the impact of a cruise
missile, as an alternative possibility.45 The amount of damage is
simply not consistent with what would have occurred had the building
been hit by a plane with the mass and the dimensions of a Boeing 757.

Unofficial variations on the official account include that the Boeing
757 first hit the ground and then bounced into the building, that the
plane's engines plowed across the lawn before it entered the building,
or that its right wing-tip hit and caused it to "cartwheel" into the
Pentagon.46 None of these accounts is remotely consistent with the
smooth, green, and unblemished lawn. It is all the more remarkable,
therefore, that the Secretary of Defense had the lawn resurfaced as
though it had been damaged during the attack. Photographs of the lawn
were taken immediately after the attack that demonstrate it was not
damaged at all.47 Anyone who only viewed the lawn after its
reconstruction, however, would be more likely to accept the official
account. And it is of more than passing interest that far more damage
could have been caused by less demanding maneuvers if the plane had
been crashed through the roof of the building as opposed to hitting a
newly reconstructed wing that was largely bereft of personnel and
records-as though the "terrorists" wanted to inflict minimal damage.

Had a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, it would have left massive debris
from the wings, the fuselage, the engines, the seats, the luggage, the
bodies, and the tail. Take a look at photographs taken shortly after
the impact before the upper floors fell, however, and you will observe
none of the above: no wings, no engines, no seats, no luggage, no
bodies, no tail. It does not require rocket science-or even the
calculation of any probabilities-to recognize that something that
large cannot possibly have fit through an opening that small and left
no remnants in the form of wings sheered off, debris scattered about,
and so on. One piece of fuselage alleged to have come from the plane
appears to have been planted evidence, which was moved around and
photographed in more than one location.48 But if massive debris from
the fuselage, wings, engines, seats, luggage, bodies, and tail were not
present at the scene, the scene cannot have been of the crash of a 757.
The argument involved is about as simple as they come.

The principle of logic involved is known as modus tollens, which states
that, if p then q, but not q, then not p. If q must be true when p is
true, but q is not true, then p is not true, either. This is an
elementary rule of deductive reasoning, employment of which is
fundamental to scientific investigations. If you want to test an
hypothesis, deduce what must be true if that hypothesis is true and
attempt to ascertain whether those consequences are true. If they are
not true, then the hypothesis is false. Q.E.D. If a Boeing 757 had
hit the Pentagon, as the government has alleged, it would have left
debris of specific kinds and quantities. Photographs and measurements
show no debris of those kinds and quantities. As long as these
photographs are authentic and those measurements are correct-which
concerns the quality of the evidence for not q and appears to be rather
difficult to dispute-then no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.49 Q.E.D.

9. What really happened?

The remnants of the single engine found inside offer clues as to what
actually hit the Pentagon. Boeing 757s are powered by two Pratt &
Whitney turbofan engines, with front-rotor elements about 42" in
diameter and high-pressure rear stages that are less than 21" in
diameter. The part found was less than 24" in diameter and, it turns
out, actually matches, not the turbofan engine, but the front-hub
assembly of the front compressor for the JT8D turbojet engine used in
the A-3 Sky Warrior jet fighter.50 Since cruise missiles have a 20"
diameter, moreover, they appear to be too small to accommodate this
component. It follows that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 or
by a cruise missile but, given this evidence, was probably struck by an
A-3 Sky Warrior instead. The available relevant evidence is not even
consistent with the government's official account, which deserves to be
rejected. Its likelihood given the evidence is actually null, while
the alternative A-3 hypothesis makes the relevant evidence highly
probable and has high likelihood as a clearly preferable explanation.

This conjecture, which the evidence suggests, receives additional
support from other sources. Two civilian defense contract employees,
for example, have reported that A-3 Sky Warriors were covertly
retrofitted with remote control systems and missile-firing systems at
the Ft. Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport, a small civilian airport in
Colorado, during the months prior to 9/11. According to information
they supplied, "separate military contractors-working independently
at different times-retrofitted Douglas A-3 Sky Warriors with updated
missiles, Raytheon's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote
control systems, new engines and fire control systems, transponders,
and radio-radar-navigation systems-a total makeover-seemingly for
an operation more important than their use as a simple missile testing
platform for defense contractor Hughes-Raytheon."51 These reports
substantiate the alternative.

If a small fighter jet rather than a Boeing 757 had hit the Pentagon,
that would tend to explain the small impact point, the lack of massive
external debris, and a hole in the inner ring of the building, which
the fragile nose of a Boeing 757 could not have created. It would also
suggest why parts of a plane were carried off by servicemen, since they
might have made the identification of the aircraft by type apparent and
falsified the official account.52 A small fighter also accommodates
the report from Danielle O'Brien, an air traffic controller, who said
of the aircraft that hit, "Its speed, maneuverability, the way that it
turned, we all thought in the radar room-all of us experienced air
traffic controllers-that it was a military plane".53 Nothing moves
or maneuvers more like a military plane, such as a jet fighter, than a
military plane or a jet fighter, which could also explain how it was
able to penetrate some of the most strongly defended air space in the
world-by emitting a friendly transponder signal.

Another line of argument suggests that the evidence has "settled down".
Confirming that the engine found at the Pentagon was indeed a JT8D, Jon
Carlson has proposed that the plane used in the attack must have been a
Boeing 737, which also uses them. 54 That contradicts the use of a
757, of course, but it would also be vulnerable to a parallel argument
about the absence of debris of the right kinds and quantities.
Interestingly, both are incompatible with the smooth and unblemished
landscape, which should have been massively disrupted by the wake
turbulence that would have been generated by any plane of those
dimensions at that low height, a phenomenon even known to rip tiles off
roofs at ordinary altitudes. 55 These and still other lines of argument
establish that, whatever hit the Pentagon, it cannot have been a Boeing
757 (or a 737). It may be that controversy over this specific point has
been so strenuous because it offers such a clear and obvious indication
of the government's complicity.

10. Preferability vs. Acceptability

New York events require only slightly more sophisticated analysis. We
know that the government's account posits a physically impossible
sequence of events whose probability is null. So a probability of zero
is merely a close approximation to null. If the buildings were brought
down by controlled demolition, by contrast, then the steel would not
have had to have melted or to be significantly weakened from heat, but
would have been blown apart by the precise placement of explosives. And
the propensity that the building would have collapsed at about the rate
of free fall and that there would have been enough energy to pulverize
concrete would have been very high. Since the buildings did fall at
approximately the rate of free fall and there was enough energy to
convert concrete into fine dust, the evidential support for this
alternative is very high. It would have been quite easily confirmed by
metallurgical study of what remained of the structural steel, but it
was rapidly removed and sent to China by an extremely efficient company
that's named "Controlled Demolition, Inc."

The measure of evidential support here can be captured more precisely
by the use of likelihoods. The likelihood of an hypothesis (h1), the
official account, on the basis of the available evidence e, is equal to
the probability of e, if that hypothesis were true. The probability of
the evidence as an effect of the official account of the cause, we have
found, is approximately zero. The likelihood of the alternative, (h2),
the demolition hypothesis, on the available evidence e, by contrast, is
extremely high. One hypothesis is preferable to another when the
likelihood of that hypothesis on the available evidence is higher than
the likelihood of its alternative. Insofar as the likelihood of (h1)
on e is very low, while the likelihood of (h2) on e is very high, the
demolition hypothesis (h2) is obviously preferable to alternative (h1),
based upon e.

A preferable hypothesis is not acceptable until sufficient evidence
becomes available, which occurs when the evidence "settles down" or
points in the same direction. Any concerns on this score are
resolvable by adding that there were vast pools of molten metal in the
sub-basements of WTC1 and WTC2 for weeks after their collapse.56 This
would be inexplicable on (h1) but highly probable on (h2). If any more
proof were necessary, we know that Larry Silverstein, who leased the
WTC, said that WTC7 was "pulled", which means it was brought down using
explosives.57 This occurred hours after the other buildings came down.
No plane ever hit WTC7 and its collapse was perfectly symmetrical and
again occurred at virtually free-fall speed. The building could not
have been "pulled" without prior placement of explosives. The
collapses of WTC1 and of WTC2 were very similar and equally suggestive
of controlled demolition.

A new documentary, "Loose Change", includes a photographic record that
offers very powerful substantiation of the controlled demolition of
WTC1 and WTC2 by providing additional evidence that explosives were
used to bring them down. The videotape includes eyewitness reports of
firemen and other first responders, who heard what they reported to be
the sounds of sequences of explosions in rapid sequence ("Boom! Boom!
Boom!").58 It displays the effects of massive explosions that occurred
at the subbasement level, moreover, which appear to have been captured
on seismological recordings from Columbia University, which reflected
concurrent earthquake-style events of magnitudes of 2.1 and 2.3 on the
Richter scale.59 And it also explores a remarkable, odd series of
"security related" interruptions of security cameras and other
safeguards, which involved vacating large portions of WTC1 and of WTC2
for intervals that would have allowed for the placement of explosives
to have occurred. This remarkable documentary dramatically contradicts
the government's account.

11. "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt"

A conclusion may be described as having been established "beyond a
reasonable doubt" when no alternative conclusion is reasonable. In
this case, hypothesis (h2), controlled demolition, can explain the
available evidence with high probability and consequently possesses a
corresponding high likelihood.60 But hypothesis (h1), the government's
account, can explain virtually none of the available evidence and has
an extremely low likelihood. Indeed, strictly speaking, given that it
even requires violations of laws of physics and engineering, the
likelihood of (h1) is actually null. When seismic, molten metal, and
eyewitness evidence-and especially the collapse of WTC7, which was
never hit by any plane-are taken into account, the evidence also
appears to have "settled down". Thus, a scientific analysis of the
alternatives on the basis of the available evidence demonstrates that
the government's account of the collapse due to heat from fires cannot
be sustained and that the alternative of a controlled demolition has
been objectively established beyond a reasonable doubt.

This conclusion receives support from other directions, moreover, since
the project manager who was responsible for supervising the
construction of these buildings has observed that they were constructed
to withstand the impact from the largest commercial airplanes then
available-namely, Boeing 707s-and that the structural design was so
sophisticated airplane crashes would have been analogous to sticking
pencils through mosquito netting.61 It's not as though the possibility
of events of this kind had never been given consideration in the
construction of 110 story buildings! This observation reinforces the
conclusion that the government's account is not just "less defensible"
than the alternative. The likelihood of the demolition hypothesis is
very high, while the likelihood of the government's account is actually
null, which is a value that is less than zero. This means that the
official story cannot possibly be true.

It follows that, when these "theories" are subject to the kinds of
systematic appraisal appropriate to empirically testable alternative
explanations, one of them turns out to be overwhelmingly preferable to
the other. Since they are both "conspiracy theories", however, we have
discovered that at least some "conspiracy theories" are subject to
empirical test and that, based upon likelihood measures of evidential
support, one of them is strongly confirmed while the other is
decisively disproven. Indeed, strictly speaking, the inconsistency of
the government's account with natural laws makes it physically
impossible, a nice example of the falsification of a theory on the
basis of its incompatibility with scientific knowledge. So some
"conspiracy theories" are not only subject to empirical test but have
actually been falsified by the available evidence.62

The fact that the government's "conspiracy theory" cannot be sustained
needs to be widely disseminated to the American people. Not all
"theories" are mere guesses and many of them are empirically testable.
In this case, elementary considerations have proven that one
"conspiracy theory" is false (indeed, as we have discovered, it cannot
possibly be true), while the alternative appears to be true (on the
basis of measures of probability and likelihood). Since the (h1)
alternative to (h2) is unreasonable and no other alternative appears
remotely plausible, the demolition hypothesis (h2) has actually been
established beyond a reasonable doubt. That, I believe, is something
that the American people need to understand. With only slight
exaggeration, this government makes a practice of lying to us all the
time. It has lied about tax cuts, minimized the threat of global
warming, offered a series of lies about the reasons for going to war in
Iraq, and on dozens of other major issues. Some lies are bigger than
others. This one-about the causes and the effects of 9/11-counts
as a monstrosity!

12. Who had the Power?

The observation that the government's official account cannot be
sustained and that the alternative has been established beyond a
reasonable doubt is not tantamount to an assertion of omniscience.
Scientific reasoning in the form of inference to the best explanation
applied to the available relevant evidence yields the result that, in
the case of JFK, the official account of Lee Harvey Oswald as a lone
assassin is not even physically possible, which means that it has null
probability. It cannot possibly be true. And, in the case of 9/11,
the same principles applied to the available relevant evidence yields
the result that the official account of the events of that day are not
even physically possible, which means that they have null
probabilities, too. These conclusions are objective discoveries that
anyone using the same rules of reasoning applied to the same evidence
and considering the same alternatives would reach.63

Conclusions in science are always tentative and fallible, which means
the discovery of new evidence or new alternatives may require
reconsideration of the inferential situation. The suggestion could be
made, for example, that the South Tower fell first because it was hit
on a lower floor and to one side of the building, where the lack of
symmetry caused it to fall. But that ignores the load-redistribution
capabilities built into the towers, which would have precluded that
outcome. The claim has also been advanced that the steel only had to
weaken, not melt. But the heat generated by the fuel fires never
reached temperatures that would weaken the steel and, if it had, the
buildings would have sagged asymmetrically, not completely collapsed
all at once, as in fact was the case. The buildings both fell
abruptly, completely, and symmetrically into their own footprints,
which is explicable on the controlled demolition hypothesis but not on
the official account. Similar considerations apply to the Pentagon
hit. Even if the wings had been shorn off, a Boeing 757-which weighed
100 tons!-cannot have entered the building through that tiny opening
and not have left massive debris. Both the government's "explanations"
violate laws of nature. They cannot possibly be true.

Which raises the question, Who had the power to make these things
happen and to cover it up? Once the evidence has been sorted out and
appropriately appraised, the answer is no longer very difficult to
find. Like the assassination of JFK, the events of 9/11 required
involvement at the highest levels of the American government. This
conclusion, moreover, receives confirmation from the conduct of our
highest elected officials, who took extraordinary steps to prevent any
formal investigation of 9/11 and, when it was forced upon them by
tremendous political pressure, especially from the survivors of victims
of these crimes, they did whatever they could to subvert them. There
are good reasons for viewing The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) as the
historical successor to and functional equivalent of The Warren Report
(1964).64

I therefore believe that those of us who care about the truth and the
restoration of responsible government in the United States have an
obligation to make use of every possible media venue from talk radio
and the internet to newspapers and television whenever possible. The
American people can act wisely only when they know the truth. So,
while the truth is said to "make us free", the truth only matters when
the American people are able to discover what is true. Obstacles here
that are posed by the government-dominated mass media, including the
use of stooge "reporters" and of prepackaged "news releases", only make
matters that much more difficult. As John Dean asks in Worse than
Watergate (2004), If there has ever been an administration more prone
to deceiving the American people in our history, which one could it be?

13. Ubiquitous Conspiracies

Moreover, we must overcome the inhibition to talk openly about
conspiracies. That the United States is now engaged in a conspiracy to
control the world's oil in relation to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and
Venezuela comes as no surprise.65 Read John Perkins' Confessions of an
Economic Hitman (2004) or Robert Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map
(2004) for modern extensions of the predominant attitudes of the recent
past elaborated by Peter Dale Scott in Deep Politics and the Death of
JFK (1993). But not all conspiracies are global in character and many
are more limited in scope, such as the effort to keep an Italian
journalist from returning to Italy from her captivity in Iraq, which
seems to have been deliberately contrived to contain information about
war crimes committed by American forces in Falluja.66

If anyone doubts the ubiquitous presence of conspiracies, let them take
a look at any newspaper of substance and evaluate the stories that are
reported there. During an appearance on Black Op Radio, for example, I
went through a single issue of The New York Times (Wednesday, 18 March
2005), which I chose as suitable for a case study. Multiple
conspiracies are addressed throughout, including the WorldCom scandal,
atrocities in Iraq and in Afghanistan (involving the murder of at least
twenty-six inmates), the assassination of Refik Hariri in Lebanon, the
use of counterfeit news by our own government, an SEC suit against
Qwest for fraud, the 125 bank accounts of Augusto Pinochet, on and
on.67

Efforts to promote the view that "conspiracy theories" must never be
taken seriously continue unabated. A recent example of my acquaintance
appears in the December 2004 issue of Scientific American Mind
(December 2004), its "premiere issue". This issue features an article,
"Secret Powers Everywhere", whose author is identified as Thomas Gruter
of the University of Munster in Germany. 68 Its theme is that, while
"most individuals who revel in tales of conspiracies are sane", they
tend to "border on delusion". This is a very unscientific article for
a publication that, like its sibling, Scientific American, focuses on
science. We have discovered that conspiracies are ubiquitous and
amenable to scientific investigation. This article thus appears to be
only the latest in an ongoing series of propagandistic assaults upon
our rationality.69

Although it ought to go without saying, no "conspiracy theory" should
be accepted or rejected without research. Each case of a possible
conspiracy has to be evaluated independently based on the principles of
logic and the available relevant evidence. Conspiracies flourish and
time is fleeting. We lack the resources to confront them all. But we
need the intelligence and the courage to promote truth in matters of
the highest importance to our country and to the world at large. We
must do whatever we can to uncover and publish the truth and to expose
the techniques so skillfully deployed to defeat us. History cannot be
understood-even remotely!-without grasping the prevalence of
conspiracies. And American history is no exception.

NOTES

1 The recent indictment of former Speaker of the House Tom DeLay for
money laundering and the investigation of Senate Majority Leader Bill
Frist for insider trading are even being referred to as "conspiracies".
See "Big money, big influence, big trouble", Duluth News Tribune (4
December 2005). See also Section 13 below.

2 Properties whose presence or absence depends upon and varies with
different observers or thinkers are said to be "subjective" (Fetzer and
Almeder 1993, p. 99). Beliefs are "rational" when they satisfy suitable
standards of evidential support with regard to acceptance, rejection,
and suspension (Fetzer and Almeder 1993, pp. 13-14).

3 Some relevant evidence may not be available and some available
evidence may not be relevant (Fetzer and Almeder 1993, p. 133). The
fallacy that results from picking and choosing your evidence (call it
"selection and elimination") is known as "special pleading", a common
practice by editorial writers, politicians, and used-car salesmen.

4 Some alternative models of science include Inductivism, Deductivism,
Hypothetico-Deductivism, Bayesianism (which comes in many different
variations), and Abductivism, whose alternative strengths and
weaknesses are assessed in Fetzer (1981), (1993), and (2002). The most
defensible appears to be Abductivism, which is adopted here.

5 Acceptance within scientific contexts is "tentative and fallible"
because new evidence or new hypotheses may require reconsideration of
inferential situations. Conclusions that were once accepted as true
may have to be rejected as false and conclusions once rejected as false
may have to be accepted as true, as the history of science progresses.

6 In philosophical discourse, differences like these are known as
"modal" distinctions.

7 And an event is historically possible (relative to time t) when its
occurrence does not violate the history of the world (relative to t).
Historical possibility implies both physical and logical, and physical
implies logical, but not conversely. See Fetzer and Almeder (1993).
For a detailed technical elaboration, see Fetzer (1981), pp. 54-55.

8 Some natural laws are causal and others are non-causal, while causal
laws can be deterministic or indeterministic (or probabilistic). On
the differences between kinds of laws, see Fetzer (1981), (1993), and
(2002). Laws of society, such as speed limits on highways, of course,
can be violated, can be changed, and require enforcement.

9 Scientific explanations of specific events explain why those events
occur through their subsumption by means of covering laws. Predictions
and retrodictions offer a basis for inferring that an event will occur
or has occurred but, depending upon their specific form, may or may not
explain why. See Fetzer (1981), (1993), and (2002).

10 The term "proof" sometimes simply refers to specific evidence or an
illustration of a principle or theorem, as in the case of a laboratory
experiment. For a discussion of the meaning of "proof" in legal
contexts, abstract contexts, and scientific contexts, see James H.
Fetzer, "Assassination Science and the Language of Proof", in Fetzer
(1998).

11 Thus, the stage of adaptation (of hypotheses to evidence) entails
the exclusion of hypotheses that are inconsistent with the evidence.
Like acceptance, rejection in science is also tentative and fallible,
since the discovery of new alternatives or new evidence may require
rejecting previously accepted alternatives, and conversely.

12 Formally, L(h/e) = P(e/h), that is, the likelihood of h, given e,
is equal to the probability of e, given h. For propensities as opposed
to frequencies, the formula may be expressed as NL(h/e) = NP(e/h),
that is, the nomic likelihood of h, given e, equals the nomic
probability of e, given h. See Fetzer (1981), (1993), and (2002).

13 Strictly speaking, relative frequencies are collective properties
that do not belong to its individual members, while propensities are
distributive properties that belong to each of its members, but may not
be the same for every member in the collective. Under constant
conditions, relative frequencies are evidence for causal propensities.

14 "Woman canoeing Brule River is killed in freak accident", Duluth
News Tribune (16 July 1993), p. 1A. If those same unusual conditions
were to be replicated over and over, of course, the relative frequency
for death while canoeing would become extremely high. Enthusiasm for
paddling the Brule River would no doubt diminish.

15 "Cigarette lighter saves man from a bullet", National Enquirer (6
July 1993), p. 21. In another case, a man who walked away unharmed
after his truck hit a utility pole was killed as he left the crash
scene, stepped on two downed power lines, and was electrocuted. His
luck had run out. Duluth News Tribune (11 October 1993), p. 2D.

16 The sequences of cases that make up collectives are properly
envisioned as sets of single cases, where the cause of each single case
is the propensity that was present on that occasion. Laws of nature
describe what would happen for any single case of the kind to which it
applies up to the values of its propensities (Fetzer 1982, 1991, 2002).

17 The discovery that the autopsy X-rays have been altered, that
someone else's brain was substituted for that of JFK, and that the
Zapruder film has been recreated thus afford striking examples of the
tentative and fallible status of scientific knowledge, where
conclusions previously regarded as true must be rejected as false. See
below.

18 Rather like the beaver on the Brule River, it seems to have been
responsible for what would otherwise have appeared to have been a most
improbable outcome. The difference, however, is that the Brule River
incident actually occurred, while the "magic bullet" phenomenon cannot
have occurred. It is not physically possible.

19 Warren Commission drawings of the alleged path of the "magic bullet"
along with photographs of the holes in the jacket and shirt, the
autopsy diagram, the death certificate, and some re-enactment
photographs may be found in Galanor (1998), which presents available
and relevant evidence contradicting The Warren Report.

20 Baden no doubt meant to imply that, since it would be absurd to
suppose there had been as many as six shots from three directions, the
"magic bullet" theory must be true. Recent scientific research has not
only established that the "magic bullet" theory is physically
impossible but that there had to have been at least six shots.

21 When the available relevant evidence proves that The Warren Report,
which is the official government account of the assassination of JFK,
the 35th President of United States, is false, yet the government
refuses to revise its phony "explanation" of the cause of his death, it
is abusive to demean the serious investigators as "buffs".

22 These include Robert B. Livingston, M.D., a world authority on the
human brain, who was also an expert on wound ballistics; David W.
Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., a Ph.D. in physics who is also an M.D. and
board-certified in radiation oncology; and John P. Costella, Ph.D., an
expert in electromagnetism and the physics of moving objects.

23 The authenticity of the Zapruder film has dedicated proponents,
such as Josiah Thompson, the author of an early study (Thompson 1967),
and David Wrone, the author of a recent study (Wrone 2003). For a
critique of the critics' arguments, go to "The Great Zapruder Film Hoax
Debate", http://www.assassinationscience.com. Some of their arguments
were already refuted by the "Preface" to Fetzer (2003).

24 The witnesses to the limousine stop range from Roy Truly, Oswald's
supervisor in the Texas School Book Depository, to Richard DellaRosa,
who has viewed another and more complete film that includes the limo
stop. See, for example, David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., "How the Film of
the Century was Edited", in Fetzer (1998), pp. 274-275; Vince Palamara,
"59 Witnesses: Delay on Elm Street", in Fetzer (2000), pp. 119-128;
and Richard DellaRosa, "The DellaRosa Report", in Fetzer (2003),
Appendix E. This was such an obvious indication of Secret Service
complicity that it had to be taken out.

25 With respect to the medical evidence, see David W. Mantik, M.D.,
Ph.D., "The JFK Assassination: Cause for Doubt", with its "Postscript:
The President John F. Kennedy Skull X-Rays", in Fetzer (1998), pp.
93-139; and Robert Livingston, M.D., "Statement 18 November 1993", in
Fetzer (1998), pp. 161-166. See also Fetzer (2000), (2003). Blunders
were committed along the way. For example, while the 6.5 mm metallic
slice was intended to implicate an obscure 6.5 mm weapon, the weapon
itself only has a muzzle velocity of 2,000 fps and is not a
high-velocity weapon. So if JFK was killed by the impact of
high-velocity bullets, as his death certificates, the Warren Commission
and the HSCA supposed, then he was not killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. See
Weisberg (1965), Model and Groden (1976), and Groden and Livingstone
(1989).

26 Livingston's conclusion has now been reinforced by the recent
discovery that two supplemental brain examinations were conducted, one
with the real brain, the other with the substitute. See Douglas Horne,
"Evidence of a Government Cover-Up: Two Different Brain Specimens in
President Kennedy's Autopsy", Fetzer (2000), pp. 299-310.

27 A summary of evidence for alteration may be found in James H.
Fetzer, "Fraud and Fabrication in the Death of JFK", in Fetzer (2003),
pp. 1-28. See especially John P. Costella, Ph.D., "A Scientist's
Verdict: The Film is a Fabrication", in Fetzer (2003), pp. 145-238.
It had to be recreated by reshooting the frames for technical reasons
related to sprocket hole images that have the effect of linking one
frame to another. That the cinematic techniques for recreating the
film were available in 1963 has been established by David Healy,
"Technical Aspects of Film Alteration", in Fetzer (2003), pp. 113-144.
The Disney film, "Mary Poppins", for example, with its elaborate
special effects, was completed in 1963 and released in 1964. For easy
access to the evidence, see John P. Costella, "The JFK Assassination
Film Hoax: An Introduction", at http://www.assassinationscience.com.

28 See, for example, Vincent Palamara, "Secret Service Agents who
believed there was a conspiracy",
http://www.geocities.com/zzzmail/palamara.htm?20054; Vincent Palamara,
"The Secret Service: On the Job in Dallas", in Fetzer (2000); and
Vincent Palamara, Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure
to Protect the President (1995); Lifton (1980); Marrs (1989);
Livingstone (1992); and Fetzer (1998, 2003).

29 When the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB),­­­­ which
was established by Congress to declassify documents and records held by
the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other agencies in the wake of the surge
of interest generated by Oliver Stone's "JFK", was drafting requests
for copies of its presidential protection reports for some of his trips
during 1963, the Secret Service destroyed them. See Fetzer (2000), pp.
12-13.

30 Even the mortician observed that the deceased had a massive defect
to the back of his head, a small entry wound to the right temple,
several small puncture wounds to the face, and a wound to the back
about five to six inches below the collar. (See, for example, Fetzer
(2003), pp. 8-9.) This information should have been easily available.
Even The Warren Report describes the holes in the shirt and jacket he
was wearing as "5 3/8 inches below the top of the collar" in the jacket
and as "5 3/4 inches below the top of the collar" in the shirt,
contradicting its own declared conclusions (Warren 1964, p. 92). David
W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., believes that the small puncture wounds were
caused by shards of glass when the bullet that hit his throat passed
through the windshield.

31 There appear to have been eight, nine, or ten shots from six
locations. See, for example, Richard F. Sprague, "The Assassination
of President John F. Kennedy", Computers and Automation (May 1970),
pp. 29-60; James H. Fetzer, "Assassination Science and the Language of
Proof", in Fetzer (1998), pp. 349-372; and David W. Mantik, M.D.,
Ph.D., "Paradoxes of the JFK Assassination: The Medical Evidence
Decoded", in Fetzer (2000), pp. 219-297.

32 Lane already noticed this deceptive performance (Lane 1966, "The
Hypothetical Medical Questions", Appendix II). Perry, who had
performed the tracheostomy, was not in the position to vouch for or to
verify the assumptions that he had been asked to make, because he knew
they were false! The press conference transcript, where he described
the wound three times as a wound of entry, was not provided to the
Warren Commission, but has been published in Fetzer (1998) as Appendix
C.

33 There were others, including that the crowd was allowed to spill
into the street, the 112th Military Intelligence Group was ordered to
"stand down", and a flatbed truck that would normally precede the limo
for camermen to film was cancelled. Even on the unreasonable assumption
that, say, one time in ten, the Secret Service "forgets" to weld the
manhole covers, to cover the open windows, and such, then the
probability that there would be a dozen independent events of this kind
is equal to 1 over 1 followed by a dozen zeros, 1/1,000,000,000,000, or
one in a trillion. Even if we arbitrarily discount half of them, the
probability that there would be a half-dozen independent events of this
kind is equal to 1 over 1 followed by a half-dozen zeros, 1/1,000,000,
or one in a million. Since hypotheses in science are rejected when
they have improbabilities of 1 in twenty or more, these alternatives
must be rejected.

34 The difference is that between events that, while extremely rare,
can in fact occur and those that are impossible because their
occurrence would violate laws of nature. The accidental death of the
woman canoeing on the Brule River had a probability of zero, but it was
not physically impossible or it could never have occurred. The prime
numbers occur with diminishing relative frequency among the natural
numbers and have a limiting frequency of zero, but there are infinitely
many of them, nonetheless. It is therefore important, as a point of
logic, to distinguish between "zero" and "null".

35 Those who make a last-ditch stand on behalf of the government's
position often insist that, if there had a been a large-scale
conspiracy, then some of those involved would have talked-and no one
has talked! Proof that they don't know what they are talking about may
be found in many places, including Noel Twyman's Bloody Treason (1997),
where on a single page he lists eight prominent figures who talked
(page 285)! None of this inhibits late night MSNBC-show hosts from
fawning over Gerald Posners.

36 The identity of the alleged hijackers remains very much in doubt.
Nila Sagadevan, "9/11-The Real Report" (forthcoming), has observed
that none of the names of the Arabs who are supposed to have committed
these crimes are included in the flight manifests for any of the
planes. Others, such as Griffin (2004, 2005), have observed that not
only were fifteen of the nineteen from Saudi Arabia and none from Iraq,
where at least six of those alleged to have been involved have turned
up alive and well and living in Saudi Arabia. The FBI has not bothered
to revise its list, but it should be apparent that the probability that
they died in the crash, yet are still alive, is null.

37 A French human-rights activist and an investigative journalist,
Thierry Meyssan, was among the first to observe that the government's
account of the attack upon the Pentagon did not comport with the
evidence. He published two of the earliest books on 9/11, Pentagate
(2002a) and 9/11: The Big Lie (2002b). Meyssan has been the target of
many attacks, including by James S. Robbins, "9/11 Denial" (2002),
whose rebuttal consists of two assertions, "I was there. I saw it."
Whatever he may have thought he saw does not affect the evidence
Meyssan emphasizes. See, for example, the web site
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentaone/erreurs_en.htm.

38 Notice that the magnitude of the differences that are involved here
is very large (http://reopen911.org/Core.htm). The melting point of
iron is 2795° F, but steel as a mixture has a melting point dependent
upon its composition. Thus, typical structural steel has a melting
point of about 2,750° F. The maximum temperature of air-aspirated,
hydrocarbon fires without pre-heating or pressurization is about
1,700° F. Even if the temperatures of those fires had reached as high
as 1,700-2,000° F, as FEMA suggests, there was not enough time for
sufficient heat to have been produced to have caused the steel to melt
(Hufschmid 2002, pp. 32-40). Underwriters Laboratories had in fact
certified that the steel used in construction could withstand
temperatures of 2,000° F several hours before even any significant
softening would have occurred.
(http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104.easilywithstood.htm)

39 It certainly would not have melted at the lower temperatures of
around 500° F to which, UL estimated, they were exposed, given the
conditions present in the towers.
(http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104.easilywithstood.htm)
Nor would they have melted at temperatures as high as 1,200° or
1,300° F, as other estimates suggest (Griffin 2004, p. 13). The
hottest temperatures measured in the South Tower was about 1,375° F,
far too low to cause the steel to melt, even if the exposure time had
been much longer than 56 minutes. (See below.)

40 In the case of 9/11, as in the case of JFK, physical impossibilities
lie at the core of the cover-up. What is impossible cannot happen, but
many people are able to believe impossible things, especially when they
are unaware of the laws that are involved and the specific conditions
that were present. Gullibility tends to be a function of ignorance.

41 Griffin (2004), pp. 26-27. Griffin's latest study, "The Destruction
of the World Trade Center: A Christian Theologian's Analysis"
(forthcoming), adds even more. As Frank A. DeMartini, who was project
manager for the construction of World Trade Center 1, during an
interview recorded in January 2001, explained, "The building was
designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it-that was the
largest plane at the time. I believe that the building could probably
sustain multiple impacts of jet liners because this structure is like
mosquito netting on your screen door-this intense grid-and the
plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does
nothing to the screen netting"
(http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104designedtotake.htm).
Three other engineers involved in the project-Lee Robertson, Aaron
Swirski, and Hyman Brown-offered similar opinions
(http://www.rense.com/ general17/eyewitnessreportspersist.htm).
DeMartini died at the towers on 9/11.

42 Peter Tully, President of Tully Construction, who was involved in
the process of clearing the site, reported seeing pools of "molten
steel", an observation that was confirmed by Mark Loizeaux, President
of Controlled Demolition, Inc., who said they had been found at the
subbasement level as low as seven levels down. Moreover, those pools
remained "three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being
removed"
(http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seis-mic_.html).
These extreme temperatures would not result from either burning fuel
or collapse due to the "pancake effect", which would have propensities
of zero or null, but would be expectable effects of the use of powerful
explosives to bring them down.

43 Indeed, most of these features would have a null propensity on the
official account. Suppose, for example, that the collapse was brought
about by a "pancake" effect, with one floor falling and overwhelming
the capacity of the lower floor to support it. Suppose, further, that
the collapse of one floor onto another occurred at an average speed of
1/2 second per floor. (Try dropping a set of keys from various heights
and measure the time!) Even if the initial collapse occurred more
slowly and increased with the increase in falling mass, an assumption
that is not unreasonable, for all 110 floors to collapse-using
averages, it would not matter which collapsed first or where the planes
hit!-would have taken about 55 seconds. The buildings actually fell
in about 10 seconds, as even The 9/11 Report itself concedes (Zelikow
2004, p. 305). That, however, is about the speed of free fall through
air for objects encountering no resistance at all. If these assumptions
are even remotely correct, then that the buildings should have
collapsed so much faster than 55 seconds would appear to be physically
impossible on a "pancake" account. Eric Hufschmid, "Painful Deceptions"
(2003), a video he produced, has shown that seismic data has confirmed
that towers came down in about 10 seconds.

44 See, for example,
http://www.assassinationscience.com/911links.html. This site includes
many important studies of the Pentagon crash, such as a set of
PowerPoint studies by Jack White. It also includes the links to many
of the reports cited in this chapter, including "Hunt the Boeing!",
which presents Meyssan's analysis in a series of photographs. I have
found that links to evidence that tends to contradict the government's
account do not always work normally, however, and sometimes just simply
disappear. Similar photographs are found in Meyssan (2002a), color
photo section, pp. VI-VII. The same conclusion is drawn by Eric
Hufschmid (Hufschmid 2002).

45 A photograph is archived at
http://www.assassinationscience.com/911links.html. The opening
appears to be about 10 feet high and roughly 16 or 17 feet wide, or not
much larger than the double-doors on a mansion. Another photograph
suggests that the width may even be considerably less than 16-17 feet,
perhaps much closer to 10 feet, but it appears to be of two windows
that were blown out of the second floor instead
(http://www.serendipity.li/wot/crash_site.htm). Notice several unbroken
windows in the impact area and the lack of collateral damage.
According to A. K. Dewdney and G. W. Longspaugh, the maximum diameter
of the fuselage is about 12 feet, 4 inches, with a wingspan of 125 feet
(http://www.physics911.net/missingwings.htm). They found, "The initial
(pre-collapse) hole made by the alleged impact on the ground floor of
Wedge One of the building is too small to admit an entire Boeing 757""
and "Wings that should have been sheered off by the impact are entirely
absent. There is also substantial debris from a much smaller
jet-powered aircraft inside the building." They conclude with a "high
degree" of certainty that no Boeing 757 struck the Pentagon and with a
"substantial degree" of certainty that it was struck by a small jet,
like an F-16.

46 Bloggers observed the proliferation of inconsistent stories about
what happened at the Pentagon, where some were saying that the wing hit
the grass and it "cartwheeled" into the Pentagon, others saying that it
"nose dived" into the Pentagon, others saying that it flew "straight
into" the Pentagon, others saying that it hit the helicopter pad and
the wreckage flew into the Pentagon: "Why so many different stories?
Are these people seeing different things?"
(http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread71124/pg11). The Pentagon
said the crew of a C-130 had watched the attack take place while
circling Washington, D.C.
(http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/C130sawF772P.html).

47 Go to
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm for a
photograph of the construction. Compare it with other photographs of
the lawn, which can be found at
http://www.assassinationscience.com/911links.html, including in the
PowerPoint studies of Jack White. The lawn seems to be as smooth as a
putting green.

48 Slide 20 of Jack White's PowerPoint studies displays two
photographs of the same piece of "aircraft debris" with two different
backgrounds (http://www.assassination-science.com/911links.html).
Another study supporting the impossibility of a Boeing 757 having
passed through that entry point includes photos not only of the same
piece of alleged debris but others showing two men in suits carrying
what appears to be the same or similar pieces and, interestingly, an
enormous box being carried from the site by six or eight servicemen,
who have covered it up completely by using blue and white plastic tarps
(http://www.geocities.com/s911surprise3b/american_airlines_flight_77/).

49 Hufschmid (Hufschmid 2002, Chapter 9), concludes that the building
may have been hit by a Predator drone, which could have been painted to
resemble an American Airlines aircraft. Most arguments for the
official government account tend to emphasize eyewitnesses who said
that they saw a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. (See note 37 above.) But
the physical evidence overwhelmingly outweighs the contrary eyewitness
evidence, since it is not physically possible that an aircraft of those
dimensions hit the building at that location and left no evidence.
Think of driving a car through your front door for a comparison. The
air controller's report, by contrast, was a group response by
professional experts.

50 See http://www.simmeringfrogs.com/articles/jt8d.html, which
includes photos of a JT8D turbojet engine and the remnant found at the
crash site. A similar conclusion is drawn by
http://www.physics911.net/missingwings.htm., which concludes that this
part cannot have come from a Boeing 757 but was probably from a small
fighter jet, such as an F-16. The F-16 and the A-3 Sky Warrior are
both small fighter jets. Both pages are also accessible from
http://www.assassinationscience.com/911links.html.

51 The workers' reports about these activities may be read at "Secret
Global Hawk Refit for Sky Warrior!"
(http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/05/318250.shtml).

52 See
http://www.geocities.com/s911surprise3b/american_airlines_flight_77/.

53 She is quoted by Meyssan (2002a) on p. I and on pp. 96-97. The
original source is
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/2020/2020_011014_atc.feature.htm.

54 Jon Carlson, "FBI Hides 85 Pentagon Videos and 9/11 Truth", http://

www.rense.com/general69/91185.htm. This article also relates that "the
Power Hour has found that Pentagon 9/11 'witnesses' were given prepared
written statements to say that a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon."

A link, http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/39024.htm,

offered in support does not work. Why am I not surprised? As a former
Marine Corps officer, I can confirm that it would have been effortless
to acquire the testimony of any number of enlisted that they personally
observed Bruce Wayne drive the Batmobile into the Pentagon that
morning. I wonder how many of us could tell the difference between a
767, a 757, or a 737, for example, especially when whatever hit was
only observable for a brief span of time? AA Flight 77 left the radar
screen in the vicinity of the Kentucky/Ohio border. One possible
explanation for what became of it is that it went down there and the
bodies were transported back to a make-shift morgue in Washington,
D.C., an hypothesis that may merit further investigation.

55 Wake turbulence occurs as an unavoidable effect of aircraft
operation and "is generated when the difference in air pressure above
and below the wings of an aircraft causes the air to spiral at the
aircraft's wing tips." It dissipates rapidly in windy conditions, but
in still conditions, "the spirals sink toward the ground and degrade
slowly" (http://www.aeru.com/au/pages/page189.asp). Pilots are offered
instructions for avoiding the problem (see "FAA Advisory Circular,
AC-90-23E: CAUTION WAKE TURBULANCE",
http://www.fcitraining.com/article14_fci_training_jul04.htm). The
effects can be substantial, which gives rise to the following dilemma:
if a 757 was flying low enough to impact the hit point on the ground
floor with the official trajectory, then it should have massively
disrupted the grass and lawn; but the grass and law were not massively
disrupted. And if it was not flying low enough to massively disrupt the
grass and lawn, then it was not flying low enough on that trajectory to
hit that point on the ground floor. Indeed, at heights low enough to
impact the ground floor, the engines or even fuselage would have been
expected to plow the ground, which clearly did not occur.

56 See note 42 above and the discussion of this important point that
may be found at
http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seis-mic_.html.

57 During a PBS documentary, "America Rebuilds", broadcast 10
September 2002, Larry Silverstein remarks, "I remember getting a call
from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not
sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've
had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull
it.' They made that decision to pull and we watched the building
collapse." (http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/pullit.html).
That, however, could not have occurred unless the building contained
prepositioned explosives. If WTC7 had prepositioned explosives, that
strongly suggests WTC1 and WTC2 had them as well.

58 In this respect, "Loose Change" corroborates earlier reports from
eyewitnesses to explosions, such as
http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029 and
http://www.resne.com/general17/eyewitnessreortspersist.htm. See also
note 21.

59 See, for example,
http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC
_/new_seismic_.html and http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DC
ForumID43/5189.html, which include the seismic record of Columbia's
observatory.

60 For additional discussion, including many more links, see, for
example, http://.
www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/july2005/060705controlleddemolition.htm.

61 See note 41. The properties of Boeing 707s and Boeing 767s are
very similar.

62 United Flight 93, which went down in Pennsylvania, may be an easy
case. Persons living in the area at the time have contacted me and
told me they heard an explosion before the plane crashed, but the FBI
would not record it. Others told me that they had been taken to an
area far larger than the official crash scene to search for debris and
body parts, but the Sheriff who accompanied them told them that, if
they were to repeat this, he would deny he had said that. A former
Inspector General who used to supervise air crashes for the Air Force
told me that, if the plane had crashed as it was officially described,
it should have occupied an area about the size of a city block; but the
debris is actually scattered over an area of some eight square miles.
There is also a report the plane was shot down by a "Happy Hooligans"
Air National Guard officer, one Major Rick Gibney, at
http://www.letsroll911.org/articles/flight93shotdown.html.

63 On the objectivity of scientific reasoning, see Fetzer (1981),
(1993), and (2002).

64 For more discussion and evidence, see Ahmed (2002), Meyssan (2002),
Griffin (2004), Thompson (2004), Ruppert (2004), and Griffin (2005) and
(forthcoming).

65 See "Mission Accomplished: Big Oil's Occupation of Iraq",
BUZZFLASH.COM (2 December 2005),
http;//www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/12/con05464.html.

66 See "Hostage's shooting 'no accident'"
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/fr/-/2/hi/ europe/4323361.stm) and "Dead
Messengers: How the U.S. Military Threatens Journalists"
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030605.shtml). The New York Times
has recently lost one of its own, "Reporter Working for Times Abducted
and Slain in Iraq", The New York Times (20 September 2005), although
The Times has not suggested that he was deliberately targeted by the
American military. See, for example, "The Twilight World of the Iraqi
News Stringer", The New York Times (25 September 2005). For another
troubling report, see "US forces 'out of control', says Reuters chief",
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1580244,00.html.

67 The discussion is archived at http://www.blackopradio.com/. Go to
"archived shows 2005" and scroll down to Part 2, Archived Show #213.
Other examples of probable conspiracies making their way into the
national media include financing propaganda in Iraqi ("U.S. Is Said to
Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers", The New York Times, 1 December
2005) and the DeLay-inspired G.O.P. redistricting of Texas ("Lawyer's
Voting Rights Memo Overruled", The New York Times, 3 December

2005).

68 I have received an email from "Dr. med. Thomas Gruter" (25
January 2005) in which he advises me that he has not been a member of
the faculty at Munster for nearly 20 years and never was a professor.
He is a medical doctor and journalist writing on scientific subjects.
He asked Scientific American Mind to correct this, but it never did.
He faulted the magazine's translation of his German, which, he wrote,
should have said, "Most conspiracy believers are certainly sane, even
if the dividing line to a delusional disorder of thinking may be
ill-defined (or fluent)." So the problem could have arisen from an
editor's decision to publish an English translation without
verification from the author.

69 A distinction must be drawn between rationality of belief and
rationality of action. Rationality of belief involves accepting,
rejecting, and holding beliefs in suspense on the basis of the
available relevant evidence and appropriate principles of reasoning.
Rationality of action involves adopting means that are efficient,
effective, or reliable to attain your aims, objective, or goals. Lying
about tax cuts (global warming, Iraq) can be a rational act if it is an
efficient, effective, or reliable means to attaining goals, which may
be political, economic, or personal. And they can attain their aims
even if they are ultimately discovered. Assessments of comparative
rationality with respect to belief must take into account that persons
are rational in their beliefs when they incorporate the principles that
define it. Since the "community of scientists" can be

littered with phonys, charlatans, and frauds, "scientists" are those
who adhere to the principles of science. Analogously, "rational
persons" are those who adhere to the principles of rationality. They
tend to converge. See Fetzer (1981), (1993), (2002).

BOOK REFERENCES

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Twenty- first Century (New York, NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2004).

Dean, J. (2004), Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George
W. Bush (New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company, 2004).

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and Corroboration (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1981).

Fetzer, J. H. (1993), Philosophy of Science (New York, NY: Paragon
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Fetzer, J. H. (2002), "Propensities and Frequencies: Inference to the
Best Explanation", Synthese 132/1-2 (July/August 2002), pp. 27-61.

Fetzer, J. H., ed. (1998), Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on
the Death of JFK (Chicago, IL: Catfeet Press/Open Court, 1998).

Fetzer, J. H., ed. (2000), Murder in Dealey Plaza: What we Know Now
that We Didn't Know Then (Chicago, IL: Catfeet Press/Open Court,
2000).

Fetzer, J. H., ed. (2003), The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and
Deception in the Death of JFK (Chicago, IL: Catfeet Press/Open Court,
2003).

Fetzer, J. H. and R. F. Almeder (1993), Glossary of
Epistemology/Philosophy of Science (New York: Paragon House, 1993).

Galanor, S. (1998), Cover-Up (New York, NY: Kestrel Books, 1998).

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Griffin, D. R. (2005), The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005).

Groden, R. and H. Livingstone (1989), High Treason: The Assassination
of President Kennedy and the New Evidence of Conspiracy (Boothywyn, PA:
The Conservatory Press, 1989).

Hacking, I. (1965), Logic of Statistical Inference (Cambridge, UK:
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Hufschmid, E. (2002), Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September
11th Attack (Goleta, CA: Endpoint Software, 2002).

Lane, M. (1966), Rush to Judgment (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, &
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Palamara, V. (1995), Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the
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Robbins, J. S. (2002), "9/11 Denial", The National Review On-Line (9
April 2002), http://nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins040902.asp.

Ruppert, M. (2004), Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American
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Scott, P. D. (1993), Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley, CA:
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Thompson, J. (1967), Six Seconds in Dallas (New York, NY: Bernard
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Minute by Minute (New York, NY: Regan Books, 2004).

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CA: Laurel Publishing, 1997).

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Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (New York, NY: St. Martin's
Press, 1964).

Weisberg, H. (1965), Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (New
York, NY: Dell Publishing, 1965).

Wrone, D. (2003), The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination
(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2003).

Zelikow, P., et al. (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
(New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2004).

JAMES H. FETZER, McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Minnesota, teaches on its Duluth campus. He has authored
or edited more than twenty books in the philosophy of science and on
the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial
intelligence, cognitive science, and the evolution of mentality. He
has also published widely on the death of JFK. Fetzer has received
many honors and awards for distinguished research in the philosophy of
science.

James H. Fetzer

McKnight Professor

University of Minnesota

Duluth, MN 5581

(218) 726-7269 (office)

(218) 724-2706 (home)

(218) 726-7119 (fax)

http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/

(c) 2005 James H. Fetzer

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