They're pretty good at what they do, and the sheeple are easily
duped....
http://www.projectcensored.org/assets-managed/pdf/DeconstructingDeceitOnlineEd.pdf
Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information
by Mickey S. Huff and Paul W. Rea
For the past eight years, American culture has seen an outburst of
media-driven mythmaking. Corporate mainstream media organizations,
the pundits they sponsor, and politicians from both major parties
have formed a new contextual chorus singing the same refrain: ?On
September 11th, 2001, everything changed." From cable TV to AM radio,
from the blogosphere to the town-hall meeting, Americans repeatedly
hear that "this is a post-9/11 world." Although there is some truth
to this platitude of pivotal change, independently minded citizens may
also wonder whether such mass media messages have become self-
fulfilling prophecies. This provides an interesting point of debate
about what has or has not changed in America since 9/11.
This chapter concerns itself with the ongoing phenomena of media
mythmaking and how, like many Americans surmised just after 9/11,
everything has not changed.1 Corporate mainstream media have
resurrected powerful myths from America?s past to shape public
perception in the present. Through the prism of 9/11, one can see
how the corporate mass media are in fact doing more mythmaking than
news reporting. Here, the authors will examine central historic
American myths the corporate media and even much of the alternative
independent media have extended into the post-9/11 era. This analysis
looks at how media mythmaking surrounding the events of 9/11,
exploiting the strong emotions these events aroused, has prevented
a dispassionate inquiry of its causes or of those responsible.
Telling Only the Official Story: An Act of Censorship
Both the corporate and independent media have typically not approached
the events of 9/11 with open inquiry. With very few exceptions, the
corporate mainstream media and their independent alternatives have
dismissed critical 9/11 questions as ?conspiratorial? or "unpatriotic."
Even the left press, including The Nation, In These Times, Mother Jones,
and The Progressive, among others, have repeatedly demonstrated
resistance, even hostility, to full and free inquiry into the attacks.
Perhaps some muckraking progressives have forgotten the words of one of
their own icons, American anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman, who aptly
remarked, "The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of
thought."
Like their mainstream corporate counterparts, journalists in the
independent press have often highlighted eccentric personalities
and extreme statements rather than focus on the troubling evidence
skeptics have brought forth. This practice institutionalizes acts of
self-censorship based upon America's historical mythology, which will
be discussed later in this article. Traditional American mythology was
used to exalt the official story of 9/11, a story that has become the
only story. New York University historian Tony Judt recently lamented
that today's discourse centers almost exclusively on "official accounts
as officially rendered and received." Nowhere is this truer than in the
case of 9/11. The mainstream corporate media and even the progressive
press have repeatedly endorsed the government-sponsored official story
formalized in the 9/11 Commission Report. This narrative tells us that
nineteen Islamic extremists conspired and outwitted the best-defended
country in the world. Because government agencies ignored the many
pre-warnings, these terrorists were able to catch American defenders
by surprise, hijack four airliners, and ram three of them into targets
symbolic of American economic and military might.
But is this the full and true story? Are there other narratives that
square better with the evidence? Are significant details being ignored?
These are not questions that the American news media have asked, or
encouraged the public to ask. Resistance from the news media, both
corporate and independent, has effectively prevented adequate reportage,
fact-based discussions, and in-depth analyses of 9/11. This paradoxical
suppression has made the full story of 9/11 a recurring concern in the
publications of Project Censored. In fact, some pundits have actively
attacked those who have challenged the official story of 9/11, as if
they were blasphemers, and continue to rely upon strong religious
overtones in defense of American mythology and government-endorsed
interpretations of 9/11. MSNBC's Tucker Carlson exemplified this
tendency during an interview with 9/11 scholar and theologian Dr.
David Ray Griffin. On the program, Carlson attacked the professor for
challenging the official narrative of 9/11. As soon as Griffin claimed
he rejected the government's explanation for the events of 9/11, Carlson
interrupted and attacked: ". . . it is wrong, blasphemous, and sinful
for you to suggest, imply, or help other people come to the conclusion
that the US government killed 3,000 of its own citizens because it
didn't." In this case, as in many others, the interviewer attacked even
the prospect of discussion concerning alternative ideas about 9/11
before it began, thus framing the rest of the interview and reinforcing
the official myths of 9/11.
Here we arrive at a crucial corollary: media mythmaking discourages
pluralistic perspectives on reality, and thus involves a form of
censorship.
Historical Precedents for Unofficial Alternative Interpretations
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
controls the past. ?George Orwell
Historical precedents can operate as counter narratives to national
myths. When looked at inclusively, they can be a great teacher.
Mainstream corporate media have largely excluded historical context of
the type that might generate critical inquiry surrounding the tragic
events of 9/11 and the War on Terror. The facts surrounding certain
important historical events have virtually been written out of history.
A walk down this ?memory hole lane? can be an antidote to another kind
of censorship, the sin of omission. One may find stunning the following
US foreign policy events, especially given that that they are
historically and factually based. Given this pattern of provocations,
pretexts, and false flag operations, the alternative hypotheses about
9/11 fit the pattern of government deception, while the standard mythic
narrative becomes the anomaly. While this does not prove anything
outright about 9/11, it should at least pave the way for open inquiry by
the media. Observe:
1846: The Mexican-American War: After annexing ?The Lone Star
Republic? of Texas, pushing the US border with Mexico southward,
President James
Polk turned his sights toward Mexico's vast lands. These included
California, which he had long wanted to "appropriate". To invade
Mexico, Polk needed a pretext, an incident enabling the US to invade a
far weaker country and seize much of its land. For this purpose, he sent
an army led by Gen. Zachery Taylor to build a fort below the Rio Grande.
This provocative incursion drew a predictable response: the Mexicans
tried to repel the American incursion, killing or capturing soldiers.
Although President Polk had initiated the provocation, he sent an
indignant message to Congress demanding a declaration of war. In
Congress, the war found ready supporters among Southerners fiercely
dedicated to expanding slavery. The war itself was short, but the gains
were huge. As a price for halting its drive southward, the US forced
Mexico to sign over a vast area, including all of what is now New
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, and part of Colorado. A
pattern of provocation had begun.
1898: The Spanish-American War began after an accidental explosion took
place on the USS Maine as it was moored in the Havana Harbor. Though the
Spanish attempted to avert war, major US news outlets, with the Hearst
papers taking the lead, claimed that Spain had attacked a US warship
despite a lack of evidence. Waving the bloody shirt, the "yellow" press
popularized a well-known battle cry: "Remember the Maine and to Hell
with Spain!" In the war that ensued, the US seized not only Cuba, but
also the other Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
1915: At the outset of World War I, other "trigger incidents" occurred.
Among the most well known was the sinking of the British luxury liner
Lusitania, which also served as a pretext, this time for entry into WWI.
Though the US government was aware that the liner would be secretly
carrying munitions, it did little to alert the public. The stowaway
munitions included shells and cartridges intended for English forces
fighting the Germans. When a German U-boat sank the great liner, 1195
passengers and crew perished. As public outrage in response to the
German atrocity mounted, and as propaganda efforts intensified,
President Woodrow Wilson brought the US into World War I.
1941: The alleged sneak attack at Pearl Harbor is one of the most
powerful mythic tales in US history, a cataclysmic event that has been
used as propaganda to manipulate public opinion to this day. While Pearl
Harbor was and has long since been billed as a sneak attack, evidence
amassed by historian Robert Stinnett shows that the event was in fact
provoked by the US government and allowed to happen in order to
manipulate public. America's mythical Day of Infamy, long enshrined in
the American psyche, strongly reinforces the idea that America only
attacks when attacked. Pearl Harbor provides another example in a long
line of deceptive events used to marshal public support for wars
throughout American history. Utilizing the power of the Pearl Harbor
myth, the neoconservative Project for a New American Century used this
historical analogy in its Rebuilding America?s Defenses, published in
2000. In it, they hypothesized what might be necessary to justify a
radical shift in US foreign policy. The authors stated that a
transformation in US policy promoting a projecting force would be
difficult, as ". . . the process of transformation, even if it brings
revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event ? like a new Pearl Harbor." The Bush
administration, along with the corporate press, used the events of 9/11
to revive the myth that America doesn?t strike first and fights only to
promote liberty.
1964: The Gulf of Tonkin "Incident" sparked mass escalation of the
Vietnam War. To ready a reluctant public for war, American planners
executed several raids along the North Vietnamese coast but became
frustrated when American ships took no return fire. President Lyndon
B. Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and other top officials
concluded that some flashpoint, some pretext would be needed to arouse
public outrage. If there was no attack, then one must be contrived.
The ?response? took the form of purported North Vietnamese torpedo-boat
attacks on two US destroyers. In August 1964, the first of these ships
was supposedly attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats.26 Two days
later, the news media announced that the North Vietnamese had attacked
a second American ship. Although the Pentagon insisted that its warships
frightened off the attackers, officers on the destroyers later revealed
that "our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets?there were no
PT boats there." Nevertheless, within days Congress passed the Tonkin
Gulf Resolution, based on events that did not happen, plunging the
United States into a disastrous "police action" that lasted for a
decade, killed over two million people, and disgraced the United
States.
Observations
Those in the media reporting on relevant matters in the present should
recount these historical examples. Instead, important events that
counter official American mythologies are often ignored, a trend that
was formalized in the early twentieth century. The advent of World War
I catapulted the new science of propaganda to the forefront of
government operations. President Woodrow Wilson established the first
official propaganda system, placing public relations wizard George Creel
in charge of the Committee on Public Information. The role of the CPI
was to selectively inform the public to a desired end. The program was a
success. With the help of Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and an
early proponent of propaganda, the government developed new ways to
persuade a pacifistic American public into "The War to End all Wars" and
"The War to make the World Safe for Democracy." In his 1928 classic,
Propaganda, Bernays observed that "The conscious and intelligent
manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an
important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this
unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is
the true ruling power of our country." As it analyzes the role of the
media in popularizing myths in the public mind, this chapter will
further deconstruct the denials and deceptions of the official narrative
of 9/11.
Instant Mythmaking on 9/11
I. Immediate Construction of an Official Narrative
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate,
contrived and dishonest, but the myth?persistent, persuasive and
unrealistic. ?John F. Kennedy
On September 11, 2001, government officials and media outlets began
to construct an official account with unprecedented dispatch. Even
before the attacks were over, the counterterrorism division of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was telling National Security
Advisor Richard Clarke it was al Qaeda operatives who had attacked the
World Trade Center. This account was adapted and amplified in the days,
weeks, and months following the attacks.30 On the one hand, top
officials were claiming that these were sneak attacks and that they were
caught completely off guard. Yet by 11 a. m. on 9/11, the FBI had
started releasing the names, nationalities, and photos of the nineteen
suspected hijackers. Before the smoke and dust settled, media mythmakers
were ready to supply instant meaning, relying heavily on traditional
mythology and popular history. But if the federal establishment knew so
little as to be taken completely by surprise, how could they so rapidly
come up with an exact list of those responsible? Had federal agencies
been keeping close watch on these al Qaeda operatives? Adding to the
contradictions, the accuracy of this roster proved suspect. In the weeks
immediately following the attacks, several news outlets, including the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), reported that individuals on the
FBI?s list were still alive. Those reports had to raise doubts about the
validity of the official story, which may be one reason why they
received scant media coverage in the US.
II. News Networks Lead 9/11 Mythmaking
History is the present. That?s why every generation writes it anew.
But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.
?E. L. Doctorow
If the rapidity of these initial identifications was amazing, the
instant involvements of the news media were even more so. Just two
hours after the Towers came down, Senator Orin Hatch (RUtah)
of the Senate Intelligence Committee implicated bin Laden in the
events of 9/11, even though few facts pointed to his involvement then
or later. Through media mythmaking, bin Laden became the ready-made,
chief suspect of the 9/11 attacks. The FBI would later drop him from
the Most Wanted list, citing lack of evidence. But, if these were
surprise attacks, then how, on the very day of the attacks, could
the government and some corporate media outlets have known who was
responsible? For example, CNN, at four o?clock in the afternoon on
9/11, blamed bin Laden "based on new and specific information developed
since the attacks." Corporate media and the federal government were
peering through the smoke of the day with amazing clarity, fashioning a
larger-than-life villain, foreshadowing future policy, and perhaps
generating a self-fulfilling prophesy in the ensuing War on Terror.
President Bush wrote in his diary the night of the attacks, "The Pearl
Harbor of the twenty-first century took place today. . . We think it?s
Osama bin Laden." The received myth about the Twin Towers also had its
genesis in the immediate aftermath. After the destruction of the Towers,
FOX News cut to a "man on the street," an eyewitness who foreshadowed
what would later become the official story born at Ground Zero.
FOX News interviewed the "passerby", who somehow explained, ". . . I
witness[ed] both Towers collapse, one first and then the second, mostly
due to structural failure because the fire was just too intense." This,
too, seems odd. In a state of near shock, using the jargon of structural
engineering, this man speculated on the cause of the catastrophe. In
doing so, he foreshadowed what later became the official view.
Alternative narratives were offered that first day and afterwards, but
were crowded out by this tale, born in the chaos of the street, which
would later become the official narrative of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Alternative Narratives: Suppression of First Responder Testimonies
Instead of simply interviewing a passerby, the news media might have
interviewed first responders about what might have brought down the
buildings. When news teams did interview first responders, however, they
typically focused on their accounts of heroism or the horror of their
experiences. Almost without exception, news coverage did not report the
vast number of first-responder testimonials about explosions before and
during the fall of the Towers. Anticipating the importance of their
eyewitness observations, some first responders made a tape of their
testimonials. On this tape, dozens of firefighters spoke of hearing
explosions, particularly ?boom, boom, boom? sounds just as the Towers
began to come down. In 2002, similar reports emerged in interviews with
firefighters. Firefighter Thomas Turilli recalled that it "sounded like
bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight, and then
just a huge wind gust just came and my officer just actually took all of
us and threw us down on the ground and kind of just jumped on top of us,
laid on top of us." This was only one of literally dozens of similar
first-responders testimonials, all of them speaking of explosions. Right
after the attacks, the City of New York impounded the firefighters? tape
and the Fire Department forbade anyone to discuss its contents because,
it claimed, the tape might later become evidence in court trials. This
suppression of evidence continued under mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael
Bloomberg. Only three years later, after ongoing pressure from the
families of victims and a suit by the New York Times, would the city
finally release the taped oral histories. Because of the way the
buildings disintegrated and dropped, other observers also suspected that
the Towers had not simply "collapsed." In fact, CBS news anchor Dan
Rather reported on 9/11 that the collapse was ?reminiscent of . . . when
a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock
it down." ABC News with Peter Jennings also pointed out this
resemblance. Since 9/11, however, no one in the corporate media has ever
made such a comparison again.
--
http://911research.wtc7.net
http://www.journalof911studies.com/
http://www.911truth.org
"The new America, born in sin and arrogance, delusional
in Manifest Destiny, bred in overabundant gluttony,
consumerist and materialist, fathered by George W. Bush,
Dick Cheney and the Cabal of Criminality, a country flocked
by sheeple, ignorant and conditioned, indifferent to a world
growing up around it, living delusions of empire and of
omnipotence, building hatred against it and its policies
throughout the planet, slowly dumbing down its citizens,
losing its edge in the sciences and arts, producing a nation
of acquiescent automatons brainwashed to never question
authority and always faithfully follow the crimes of governance."
- Manuel Valenzuela
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