Dig Within

Here are slides from the presentation I gave at the University of Hartford on March 26, 2011.

Evolution of the fire-based theory for WTC 7

When I was fired by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for publicly questioning the company’s testing related to the World Trade Center (WTC), and its role in the WTC investigation being conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), UL claimed that there was “no evidence” that any company had tested the WTC steel components.

Of course, that was a lie.  The company had already admitted that it was responsible for the fire resistance testing related to the WTC buildings, in an April 2002 letter to the editor of the New York Times.  Below is that letter.  UL had also certified the fireproofing material and had consulted with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey throughout the life of the buildings.

The author of the letter to the editor, UL’s manager of its Fire Protection division, Tom Chapin, wrote in defense of ASTM E119, the standard test UL had used to ensure fire resistance of the buildings.  The NYC code, which UL’s CEO had confirmed to me was used to guide the testing, required two hours of fire resistance for the steel columns and 3 hours of fire resistance for floor assemblies.  One of the buildings fell in 56 minutes. 

Chapin also used this letter to the editor to suggest that the computer modeling techniques available at the time were not sufficient to determine the structural response of a building to fire.  This might be surprising in light of the fact that the NIST investigation, which began the same year, ultimately used computer simulations as the basis for its theories for destruction of the towers and WTC 7.  NIST had to use computer simulations because the physcial testing it and UL performed did not support the fire-based conclusions.

In August 2004, UL used ASTM E119 again to effectively disprove the long-standing “pancake theory” for the WTC destruction by testing floor models built exactly to WTC specifications, except with less fireproofing.  I was fired three months later for speaking out about it.    

UL’s involvement in NIST’s WTC investigation, including its testing of materials for that investigation and its role in promoting the fire-based (non-explosive) explanations for that investigation, was a giant conflict of interest.  That’s undoubtedly why NIST told us that it could not find the documents for the towers’ original fire resistance testing.  For WTC building 7, however, NIST made clear in its report that UL provided the fire resistance information for the building.  In what appears to be a flimsy attempt to downplay UL’s conflict of interest, the NIST report for WTC 7 does not list UL as a participant in the WTC 7 investigation as the NIST report for the towers did.   

Fire Test Is Sound
Published: April 15, 2002
The New York Times 
To the Editor:
 
Re ”Towers’ Collapse Raises New Doubts About Fire Tests” (front page, April 8): ASTM E-119 is a global fire testing standard that has protected the lives and property of millions of Americans for 80 years and continues to do so today. The standard and Underwriters Laboratories’ testing procedures and equipment are modern and up to date.
 
Understanding of fire dynamics has grown because of Underwriters Laboratories’ fire-testing work. U.L. uses computer modeling to further understand how fire affects entire buildings. But computer modeling is still under development and has its limitations. Until these models are refined, ASTM E-119 remains a proven safeguard.
 
The World Trade Center stood for almost an hour after withstanding conditions well beyond those experienced in any typical fire. In that time, thousands of people escaped with their lives. ASTM E-119 and U.L.’s testing  procedures helped make that possible.

 
J. THOMAS CHAPIN
General Mgr., Fire Protection Div.
Underwriters Laboratories
Northbrook, Ill., April 11, 2002

Learning about self-deception is important for all people today. That’s because many of our problems, both as individuals and as a society, are rooted in self-deception, and many of the ways in which others abuse us relate to our inherent tendency to self-deceive. We can overcome these problems, and have a decent chance at long-term survival as a species, only if we learn about such limitations, and strive to control them. One great way to rapidly learn about self-deception, and other forms of deception, is to learn about the events of September 11th.

In order to understand the extreme self-deception surrounding 9/11, we should first look at how people deceive themselves. There are quite a few ways, in fact, and a good book that describes some of them is Brain Fiction: Self Deception and the Riddle of Confabulation, by William Hirstein. In this well-referenced book, Hirstein describes a continuum of human conditions that relate to self-deception, spanning from clinical confabulation to clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). These conditions can be seen in terms of a gradual increase in “tension”, or amount of knowledge that a person has about the fact that he or she is making false claims. People who have these conditions are described as follows.

• Clinical confabulator

• Sociopath

• Self-deceived person without tension

• Normal confabulator

• Neutral normal person

• Self-deceived person with tension

• Lying person

• Obsessive-compulsive person

• Clinical OCD sufferer

Hirstein explains that normal thinking patterns involve the creation of multiple mental representations for any given situation, which can be either image-like or concept-like in nature. Those representations that are false, or that do not fit with our sense of reality, are culled out before being articulated, by a checking process. Sometimes these critical checking processes do not work, and the affected person can make false statements easily and with full belief that what he or she is stating is, in fact, true. In those cases, the person is said to be confabulating. But when the checking processes do work, and for whatever reasons false claims are still made, tension is created and the person is considered to be self-deceived.

Hirstein’s book details the fascinating research that supports this representation/checking theory of self-deception and confabulation. Through split-brain experiments, “mind-reading” experiments, and “don’t know” tests, we have learned that people deceive themselves, through physical damage to the brain, and also through other, more natural mechanisms.

At the extreme ends of the self-deception continuum are clinical confabulation, which involves essentially no tension, and clinical OCD, where tension is highest and the checking processes are out of control. Clinical confabulation is a condition in which people make completely false claims but have no idea that they are doing so because the checking processes that prevent such claims are not in place. This can happen through brain damage, to the orbitofrontal cortex specifically. It is in the orbitofrontal cortex that the checking process is thought to occur, although the right parietal cortex has also been implicated in the decision to initiate the checking process.

Sociopathy and a similar condition called disinhibition are also caused by damage to the orbitofrontal cortex, and also involve very little tension.

In any case, when the normal checking processes do work, and the validity of potential claims is checked, false claims are weeded out before being articulated. This is what we see when people are functioning in what the above list refers to as the “neutral normal” condition. But even people who are considered “normal” tend to make false claims without being aware of it. Apparently this is due to the checking processes being diminished not by physical damage, but by the emotional stress caused by the mental imagery involved.

For example, anosognosia refers to the denial of illness or physical disability. People with anosognosia will confabulate about the loss of an arm or a leg, pretending that the limb is still intact despite being given overwhelming evidence that this is not true. It is simply too emotionally disturbing, at least initially, for such people to admit their disability.

Our representation checking processes have been shown, through electroencephalograph (EEG) experiments, to involve an emotional evaluation first, followed later by a cognitive evaluation. That is, the limbic system is first actuated in response to a potential claim produced by our explanation-producing mechanisms. It is thought that the limbic system (emotional seat) can “distort or eliminate the conscious experience of an emotionally significant event” (Halgren & Marinkovic). In such cases, cognitive evaluation of mental representations is avoided altogether.

In other words, we tend to filter out information that would bring us great emotional pain. In doing so, we leave ourselves with alternative scenarios and stories that do not involve the filtered facts, and that consequently can be quite absurd with respect to reality.

It seems we can all agree that few public events in recent memory were more “emotionally significant” than 9/11. And we should also be able to agree that our emotional responses to this event have been manipulated and exploited by one of the two primary suspects in the crimes, the group of people who exploited the crimes to start the resulting wars.

We should consider that, regarding 9/11, where alternative theories do exist the difference between the official story and the alternative accounts boils down to one small but important question. Were government representatives involved in committing these crimes? Those upholding the official account, as given by the 9/11 Commission, are convinced that no government representatives from any nation or locality could possibly have been involved. On the other hand, those promoting the less well-defined alternative theories suggest that some form of government representatives would have had to be involved for the crimes to have succeeded.

This brings us to examples of the milder forms of self-deception in the continuum, and the most prevalent ways in which people self-deceive with regard to 9/11. How are “normal confabulation” and “self-deception with tension” reflected in the national discussion about 9/11? One widespread case of self-deception without tension, or normal confabulation, concerns the recent popular use of the word “conspiracy.”

We all understand the definition of a conspiracy to be a secret plan, among two or more people, to commit a crime. Yet many of us pretend that the definition of the word has changed dramatically since 9/11. It is certain that, unless you believe these crimes were committed by one person acting alone, you believe in a conspiracy about 9/11. But people today have been trained to use the word conspiracy to mean only a small subset of conspiracies enacted by powerful people, like government officials.

For those who make this redefinition, al Qaeda is not capable of a conspiracy, and moreover, belief in conspiracies committed by powerful people is not rational. We are therefore left with the notion that conspiracies are irrational altogether, despite the fact that our news and our laws are chock-full of conspiracy charges. Additionally, to accept this redefinition, we must close our eyes to the many instances of conspiracy involving powerful US government agencies, like Operation Northwoods, Operation Gladio and the Tonkin Gulf incident, all of which are now a matter of indisputable fact.

Another simple example of tension free self-deception regarding 9/11 concerns the “blowback” theory. This is the idea that certain people in the Middle East, who the US government has been bombing and blockading for many years, might gather up the means and organization to strike back with vengeful acts of otherwise irrational violence, by attacking symbols of western wealth and power. One reason this theory is so obviously confabulatory is that its proponents cling forcefully to it, but yet could never, under any circumstances, consider the “managed blowback” theory. That is, they would never allow the thought that powerful people might notice, and then manipulate, exploit and even promote, such vengeance.

One particularly interesting example of these two simple forms of confabulation, the redefinition of conspiracy and the “blowback but never managed blowback” theory, is found in the book: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein. This book is well written, apparently well researched, and very frightening.

In the The Shock Doctrine, Klein handles the idea of a conspiracy surrounding 9/11 in an interesting way. After going to great lengths to describe what can only be called a long-term conspiracy to economically exploit (and torture) a string of entire nations, she adds a small disclaimer section near the end of the book saying — “No conspiracies required.” This is a bit like reading the bible and struggling through a new section at the end claiming — “No deities required.”

In this disclaimer section, which might have been added simply to ensure the book got published and promoted, Klein goes on to suggest that “The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous [than the 9/11 conspiracy].” She struggles slightly in an effort to explain that –“wars waged for control over scarce resources…create terrorist blowback.” The ideas here are clearly meant to separate the book from any implication that certain powerful people, in the wars they have recently created to seize control of scarce resources, could ever have helped along (or managed) the events that were absolutely needed to initiate the whole process.

But again, to give Klein some credit, she does not resort to the larval stage of confabulation regarding 9/11. That is, she doesn’t suggest that those people who ruled and abused us so completely during the eight years of the Bush Administration were simply too stupid to have been involved in 9/11.  Instead, Klein observes that those engaging in economic shock and disaster capitalism are quite shrewd. She mentions Donald Rumsfeld as part of this clever group.

In any case, maintaining self-deception about 9/11 is not easy. It requires people to ignore the fact that the ever-changing official story of 9/11 was created (and repeatedly re-created) by representatives of the Bush Administration, who lied to us on many occasions. Additionally, continued self-deception about 9/11 involves ignoring a huge number of other startling facts. These include the fact that the US national air defenses shut down for nearly two hours only on that one morning, and insider trading occurred without any insiders, and three tall buildings fell through the path of most resistance, when no such things have ever occurred before or since.

We all confabulate and self-deceive and we do so regularly. In fact, some powerful people appear to work to exploit that fact of human nature. Our best chance at avoiding such exploitation is to notice the self-deceptive tendencies in ourselves, and prioritize education in relation to them. With 9/11, we have an opportunity to do just that, by witnessing the most glaring and widespread examples of self-deception in our time. That’s why 9/11 truth has such a powerful potential to effect real change in our society.

References:

Hirstein 2005, Brain Fiction: Self-Deception and the Riddle of Confabulation, MIT Press

Halgren & Marinkovic 1995, Neurophysicological networks integrating human emotions, The Cognitive Neurosciences, ed. M.S. Gazzaniga, MIT Press

Klein 2007, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Metropolitan Books

We will soon see the eighth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.  That anniversary should remind us that the Iraq war has claimed many lives and permanently damaged many more.   It is not clear when this war and occupation, or the war in Afghanistan, will ever end.  What is clear is that the Iraq War was built entirely on lies and that painful fact grows clearer with each passing year.  It is no longer possible for honest people to suggest that the false claims made to start this war were just a string of misunderstandings, which brings to mind an important question.

One of the two original justifications for invading Iraq was that Iraq was linked to al-Qaeda and the attacks of September 11.  Vice President Dick Cheney made such claims on several occasions.  But the truth was that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or 9/11 and he was distrustful of that elusive organization.  It was later reported by the US Senate Intelligence Committee that Hussein denied all requests to provide material or operational support to al-Qaeda, and that Cheney’s claims were all false.[1]

The second of the two original justifications for war with Iraq was that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) and was seeking to possess more WMDs.  These claims were driven by a faction within the Bush Administration called the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), led by Bush advisors Karl Rove and Karen Hughes.[2]   This group of war promoters systematically devised and implemented propaganda plans to ensure that the fear Americans were feeling as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was leveraged to produce war in Iraq.

In July, 2002, what is called the “Downing Street memo” was written.  This memo, publicly released in 2005, documented a meeting in which the highest levels of the British government discussed American plans to falsify intelligence for the purpose of supporting the invasion of Iraq.  The exact text of the memo stated that — “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”[3]

An example of the many lies told during this effort to “fix the facts around the policy” was provided when Dick Cheney spoke at the VFW National Convention in August, 2002.  Cheney, who obtained five draft deferments during the Vietnam War and never served in the military, told these veterans that — “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

On September 8, 2002, the NY Times published a “leaked story” in careful coordination with same day TV appearances by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and members of WHIG.  This story, which was later found to be completely false, said that Iraq had worked to purchase aluminum tubes for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons.[4]  The story was used by Cheney and WHIG to show that even the “liberal media” was in full agreement of the need to go to war with Iraq.

A fact repressed in our national memory is that the entire world was made aware, weeks before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that forged documents were used by the Bush Administration to justify the invasion.  On March 7, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, told the U.N. Security Council that – “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic.”[5]  The documents were so obviously fraudulent, in fact, that one western diplomat said –“There were more than 20 anomalies in the Niger documents — it is staggering any intelligence service could have believed they were genuine for a moment.“[6]

Recent admissions from the US intelligence source called “Curveball” have clarified that all the claims that critical source made, in the run-up to the Iraq War, were blatantly false.[7]  Those lies were used by Secretary of State Colin Powell in an address to the United Nations on February 5, 2003.  Based on Curveball as the source, Powell told the UN about Iraq having bio-weapons labs and clandestine factories by relating — “firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails … The source was an eyewitness who supervised one of these facilities“.  Powell’s speech, with his claims made based on Curveball’s information, was enough to swing the mainstream media and opposition Democratic politicians in favor of going to war against Iraq.[8]

It didn’t stop there, however.  Ten days after the invasion started, Donald Rumsfeld was still lying about the WMDs.  He said then, in an interview with ABC, “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”  But as we all know, the WMDs were not in any of those places and we have seen that the Bush Administration knew that these claims were false when they made them.  Over the years more evidence that the Bush Administration lied has come to light.  This includes admissions from former CIA officers who were directly involved in the process, one of whom said that — “The fact is there was nothing there, no threat. But Bush wanted to hear what he wanted to hear.”[9]

When the WMDs were not found at all, the justification for continuing the occupation of Iraq changed.   From late 2003 to 2005, the Bush Administration began justifying the war based on claims that the “insurgents” were led by foreign jihadists from neighboring countries, such as Syria and Saudi Arabia.  These claims were never proven and it was generally acknowledged that the insurgency was actually led by Iraqi citizens trying to save their own country from a foreign (US) invasion.  By 2006, we began to hear claims about “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” and Iranian sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq.[10]  All the while the truth appeared to be that the US government would make whatever excuse was needed to continue the war in Iraq because the war was making a lot of people rich, and many of them were associated with the people who lied to make it all happen.

There is no question that the Iraq War has been a criminal, immoral and depraved endeavor.  The human cost of this war built on lies has been staggering.  Civilian deaths in Iraq are estimated to range from 100,000 to over one million.[11]  Coalition soldiers who have died in the war number nearly 5,000, with the vast majority being Americans.[12]   Another 33,000 to 100,000 American soldiers have been wounded based on official and unofficial estimates respectively.  Iraqis who have been wounded or otherwise had their lives permanently disrupted are too numerous to count.

An obvious question that many people ask is:  Why is this war and occupation still going on when the world knows that it was based entirely on lies?  The unspoken answer is that it is good for business.  During the Obama Administration, 211 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Obama has no intention of stopping the war.  Obama has ramped up the war in Afghanistan and was rewarded for it with the Nobel Peace Prize.  Casualties in Afghanistan are growing, with 500 dead Americans in that war just last year.  And there are substantial business reasons for continuing the bloodshed.

The less obvious but perhaps more important question that should occur to people is:  When did the lying begin?  That is, if our political leaders were willing to tell and repeat unabashed lies despite the knowledge that those lies would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, what would they not do?  What similar lies have they told in the past to achieve their goals and would our own understanding change dramatically if we knew the truth?