A review of "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," by Dr. David Ray Griffin. Interlink Publishing, March 2008. 368 p. List

At last there is a book about 9/11 that politicians and journalists can openly discuss without fear of being labeled "conspiracy theorists".

9/11 Contradictions advances no theories. It simply exposes 25 astonishing internal contradictions that will haunt the public story of this unparalleled event for all time.

Until now, the persistent and disturbing questions about the day that changed the world have confused and alienated journalists and politicians, because:

1. However, Griffin’s new book requires no technical expertise from the reader, because each readable chapter revolves around one simple internal contradiction inherent in the public story. "If Jones says ‘P’ and Smith says ‘Not P’, we can all recognize that something must be wrong, because both statements cannot be true."

2. Many who have doubted the official story have offered alternative theories which have been dismissed as "conspiracy theories" by a press which must understandably place a high value on its credibility.

   However, this book offers no alternative theories to explain the contradictions within the public story. It simply presents the glaring contradictions that have never been probed by Congress or the media, and beseeches members of these institutions come to grips with the reality and lead the charge for a truly independent investigation.

3. The 9/11 issue is six years old, journalists are busy people, and the world has moved on.

Though six years have passed, this matter is by no means closed, nor is the trail cold. "The accepted story about 9/11 has been used to increase military spending, justify wars, restrict civil liberties, and exalt the executive branch of the government." Indeed, this reviewer notes, the public story has recently been challenged in foreign forums (Japan Parliament, January 10, 2008, and at the European Parliament building in Brussels, February 26, 2008). The 9/11 Commissioners themselves have cast doubt on the credibility of the Commission Report in their January 2, 2008 New York Times article, "Stonewalled by the CIA." (Ref. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html)

Let us now turn to the contradictions. But first, to quote Professor Griffin:

"Within the philosophy of science, there are two basic criteria for discriminating between good and bad theories. First, a theory should not be inconsistent with any of the relevant facts....Second, it must be self-consistent, devoid of any internal contradictions. If a theory contains an internal contradiction, it is an unacceptable theory."

Unacceptable, for example, is the following internal contradiction, quoted from the chapter summaries that have been helpfully provided at the end of the book interested investigative journalists and members of Congress:

With regard to the identity of the plane spotted over the White House around the time of the Pentagon strike: The military’s denial that it was a military plane is contradicted by CNN footage of the plane’s flight, which showed, as former military officers have agreed, that it was an Air Force E-4B.

[Reviewer’s note: "The E-4B serves as the National Airborne Operations Center for the president, secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff or JCS." Cited from a current US Air Force factsheet at http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=99.]

In his 2004 "The New Pearl Harbor", Griffin had already noted that the Standard Operating Procedures regarding flight interceptions had been inexplicably dropped on September 11^th. This reviewer deduces that because a complex network of defense systems could not have been fully disabled without coordination from a senior military level, it was logical for Dr. Griffin to open the current volume by asking questions that the 9/11 Commission failed to ask: what were President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and General Richard B. Myers, Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doing that morning? In each case, inexplicable contradictions emerged in the reports of their whereabouts, and the same applied to Vice President Dick Cheney. None of these public officials were questioned under oath, and now it is abundantly clear that the contradictions surrounding them must be laid to rest in by a thorough and rigorous investigation.

In Part II, Griffin carefully tracks the disparities in the reported times at which the military was notified about the erratic behaviors of Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93. In each case, the striking contradictions he unearths are shown to require a serious investigation into how this over-arching failure actually did happen, and---this reviewer suggests---what connection it may have had to the unprecedented military air drills that were progressing throughout the attacks.

In Part III, probing questions regarding the pre-9/11 tastes and habits of the alleged hijackers are closely pursued through early press reports, with the confounding revelation that they had taken up Western sexual and drinking practices, and could certainly not be characterized as devout Muslims ready to meet their maker. The contradictions revealed in the investigation of cell phone and airphone reports of their actions on the planes is nothing short of brilliant, negating the entire phenomenon of the aggregate onboard myth.

Finally, Part IV deals with the towers themselves, including advance knowledge of their collapses, and the extraordinary oral testimonies of dozens of firefighters who reported, for example, massive explosions in the sub-basements of the buildings: a 50-ton hydraulic press reduced to rubble; a 300-lb. steel door wrinkled up like a strip of aluminum foil.

It is interesting to note that Dr. Griffin has become a virtual one-man clearinghouse for the vast accumulation of research that has been done on this world-changing event. It now appears highly likely that his neutral approach to this impressive body of evidence will be the axe that finally splits the issue open. Each one of the 25 carefully researched contradictions represents a crumbling brick in the official facade that shields the world from the unknown underlying truth.

As a writer myself, and a retired professional librarian, it was an honour to critique and give bibliographic support for Dr. Griffin’s chapters, and for the extensive research supplied in the footnotes. Throughout the process, I was able to witness first-hand the precise, methodical, and ethical standards to which he works. One can only hope that the exceptional quality and responsibility evident in his work will inspire people in Congress and the media (and indeed in all walks of life) to rise to his challenge to investigate this pivotal international issue.