The Demolition of Truth-Psychologists Examine 9/11

What happened?

It collapsed.

The top floors collapsed down.

We was in an explosion.

We was in the lobby and the third explosion

the whole lobby collapsed on us.

- What was it like, what was it like?

Horrible, horrible.

The whole building just collapsed on us

inside the lobby.

- Was that a secondary explosion?

Yes it was

It was like three explosions after that.

We came in after the fire, we came when the fire

was going on already.

We was in the staging area inside the building.

Waiting to go upstairs.

The whole lobby collapsed on the lobby inside.

- When the first of the towers actually started

falling down, I just said this can't happen.

It can't happen.

And then the other tower came down

and I said this violates the laws of physics.

It can't happen.

Those aircraft and those fires could not cause

those buildings to come down in that way.

- I am the highest ranking officer I believe

that has ever gone public

that whatever that story was, the official story

was not true.

When you look at the tower coming down,

what you see are at each floor,

successive puffs of smoke.

Puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, all the way down.

What are the puffs of smoke coming from?

Well, they claim they're from the collapsing floors.

Uh uh, uh uh, no no no.

Those puffs of smoke are controlled demolitions.

That's exactly what they are

because that's exactly how they work.

- The most obvious hypothesis for anyone looking

at the films and that was a lot of people,

is that the buildings came down because

there was very carefully controlled demolition

with high explosives that had been planted many

weeks if not months before.

- Nothing no more is worse than this.

You're in the building trying to help people

and it's exploding on you inside the building

So I don't think it could get any worse than this.

- Looking anew at 9/11 is a lot like watching

a great movie that at the end you find out a detail

that transforms the whole experience of the movie.

That the characters, the scenes, all have a different

meaning that need to be reprocessed.

Sometimes we go to see the movie again

to understand what was actually happening

that we didn't the first time.

Reprocessing 9/11 will inevitably stir up new hurts.

We've already been through the trauma,

but now realizing that there's a different meaning

cuts in a different way, and we have to be willing

to endure those pains, those hurts, and those fears

that are required there.

And in some way we have to relive 9/11 anew.

- I think we can all relate to the initial shock and awe

of the planes approaching the World Trade Center,

going into them, we were terrified, we thought

the country was under attack, and then we were given

an explanation within 24 to 48 hours

that this was forces from the Mid East, 19 Arabs,

and that flashbulb memory, that traumatic event

has stayed with us ever since.

It's been called shock and awe in another context

with Iraq, but there was a shock and awe definitely in that

case and the media theory says that the first story

is the one that sticks with you.

- September 11 the world experienced a shock

and especially the American people

and then we got disoriented in a state of what is called

cognitive dissonance where we had two different ideas

that did not go together.

For example, in America we thought we were safe.

And yet now we were not.

Where were those military airplanes

that are supposed to protect us?

We saw the airplanes flying into the towers

and then the towers collapsing.

The explanation was somewhere it was a structural failure.

Then later on we heard from architects and engineer

that it was not possible.

It did not follow the principle of physical laws.

- People continue to be either oblivious to the fact

that this information exists or completely resistant

to looking at this information.

So the question becomes why?

Why is it that people have so much trouble hearing

this information?

Now as we know the horrors of what happened on 9/11

were televised all over the world,

and they were televised in fact live so that millions

of people witnessed that, and millions of Americans

witnessed what was happening, we witnessed the deaths

of almost 3,000 of our fellow Americans.

We know this had a very severe and traumatic impact

on a large majority of the population.

I myself cried for weeks after September 11th.

So I think it's safe to say that collectively as a nation,

because of what happened on September 11th,

we experienced trauma.

Specifically, if we thought the world was a safe place,

after we've experienced or witnessed a trauma

we often think the world is not a very safe place anymore.

And so it very much changes our beliefs about the world,

it changes our ability to trust other people

and to trust other entities.

- Many people have rightly commented that 9/11

is a religious issue.

As a theologian I agree with that.

I accept the definition of religion given by Paul Tillich

many years ago saying that religion deals with

matters of ultimate concern.

Now theologian John Cobb has stated that

starting in the 15th and 16th century

we had a major shift in the understanding of

religious concern.

That prior to that time, people were Christians or Jews

and or some other religion, and that was their

primary identity, that was their ultimate concern.

But it shifted in the 15th century

to nationalism, and nationalism in various countries

became the new religion.

This is certainly true in the United States

where Americanism trumps Christianity for many Christians.

I gave a lecture a few years ago called

9/11 and Nationalist Faith.

And in that I argued that even though people who are

Christians or Jews and then if they're Christians

some particular type of Christianity like

the Presbyterian church or Methodist church

or the Catholic church that they actually tend to

subordinate that to their concern for America,

for their devotion to America.

I was interviewed by one of the well-known

talk show hosts on television and they came to the home

and interviewed me and it was going very well

from my point of view but the talk show host

got very upset and finally just blurted out,

"That's blasphemy!"

- 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--

- And blasphemy is a religious issue.

He was treating Bush and Cheney as if they were

religious figures, as if, frankly, they were

members of the Holy Trinity.

So that was another great revelation to me

that for many people their devotion to the country

or even the political representative of the country

are more important and of religious importance than

claims about what really happened on 9/11.

So I think people need to think seriously through their own

religious commitment, whether they're Christians or Jews

or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists, think about what it is

they are truly most ultimately concerned about

and if that is God, then they would say

truth is the most important thing.

So I need to be open to the possible truth

of the 9/11 truth movement, even if that is very

threatening to me

and to my commitment to my nation.

- A lens through which to understand the resistance

that we all have against hearing information

that contradicts our worldview, our information

about the official story of 9/11 is what social

psychologists call cognitive dissonance.

For example, with 9/11 we have one cognition

which is the official story of 9/11,

what our government told us, what our media

repeated to us over and over, that 19 Muslims

attacked us.

On the other hand we have what scientists, researchers,

architects, engineers are now beginning to tell us

which is that there is evidence that shows

that the official story cannot be true,

that 9/11 was most likely a false flag operation.

So now we've lost our sense of security.

We are starting to feel vulnerable.

Now we're confused.

Now we have a choice, and we all have this choice

and what some of us will tend to do is

deny the evidence that's coming our way

and stick to the original story, the official story,

and to try to regain our equilibrium in that way.

Another thing we can do is decide to look at the conflicting

evidence and be sincere and be open-minded and look at

both sides of the issue and then make up our own mind

about what reality is.

- One thing I would like people to know is that you don't