Debunking Popular Mechanics' 9/11 Lies

Debunking Popular Mechanics'
9/11 Lies


Nepotism, bias, shoddy research and agenda-driven
politics

Paul Joseph
Watson/Prison Planet.com August 10 2006

Popular Mechanics has re-entered the media
circus in an attempt to continue its 9/11 debunking campaign that began
in March of last year. A new book claims to expose the myths of the 9/11
truth movement, yet it is Popular Mechanics who have been exposed as promulgating
falsehoods while engaging in nepotism, shoddy research and agenda-driven
politics.

It comes as no surprise that Popular Mechanics
is owned by Hearst Corporation. As fictionalized in Orson Welles' acclaimed
film Citizen Kane, William Randolph Hearst wrote the book on cronyism and
yellow journalism and Popular Mechanics hasn't bucked that tradition.

The magazine is a cheerleader for the
sophistication of advanced weaponry and new technology used by police in
areas such as crowd control and 'anti-terror' operation. A hefty chunk of
its advertising revenue relies on the military and defense contractors.
Since the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and in the future Iran all cite
9/11 as a pretext, what motivation does the magazine have to conduct a balanced
investigation and risk upsetting its most coveted clientele?

Popular Mechanics' March 2005 front cover
story was entitled 'Debunking
9/11 Lies' and has since become the bellwether reference point
for all proponents of the official 9/11 fairytale.

Following the publication of the article
and its exaltation by the mainstream media as the final nail in the coffin
for 9/11 conspiracy theories, it was revealed that senior researcher on
the piece Benjamin Chertoff is the cousin of Michael Chertoff, Secretary
of the Department of Homeland Security.

This means that Benjamin Chertoff was
hired to write an article that would receive nationwide attention, about
the veracity of the government's explanation of an event that led directly
to the creation of Homeland Security, a body that his own cousin now heads.

This is unparalleled nepotism and completely
dissolves the credibility of the article before one has even turned the
first page.

The arguments presented in the article
have been widely debunked by the 9/11 truth community as an example of a
straw man hatchet job - whereby false arguments are erected, attributed
to 9/11 skeptics, and then shot down.

One of the most glaring errors in the
Popular Mechanics hit piece appears in the 'Intercepts Not Routine' section
where it is claimed that, "In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted
only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet,
in October 1999."

As Jim Hoffman points out in his excellent
rebuttal, "This bold assertion flies in the face of a
published report of
scramble frequencies that quotes the same Maj. Douglas Martin
that is one of PM's cited experts!"

"From Sept. 11 to June, NORAD scrambled
jets or diverted combat air patrols 462 times, almost seven times as often
as the 67 scrambles from September 2000 to June 2001, Martin said."

The article also makes no mention whatsoever
of the numerous war
games scheduled for the morning of 9/11 which confused air
defense personnel as to the true nature of the attack as it unfolded, as
is documented by the recent release of the NORAD
tapes.

A section on the collapse of the World
Trade Center fails to address firefighters and other individuals who reported
numerous explosions before the towers fell, squibs of debris seen shooting
out of the towers well below the collapse point, and the fact that the towers
fell only slightly slower than absolute free fall.

The article was released before analysis
conducted by BYU physics Professor Steven Jones discovered
traces of thermite in steel samples taken from the World Trade Center.

"Using advanced techniques we're
finding out what's in these samples - we're finding iron, sulphur, potassium
and manganese - these are characteristic of a variation of thermite which
is used to cut through steel very rapidly, it's called thermate," said
Professor Jones.

The article regurgitates pancake and truss
theories yet fails to acknowledge the comments of WTC construction manager
Frank DeMartini (below) who before 9/11 stated that the buildings were designed
to take multiple airliner impacts and not collapse.

The article also completely fails to answer
why pools of molten yellow metal were found underneath both towers and Building
7 subsequent to the collapses.

The classic crimp implosion of Building
7, which was not hit by a plane, is glossed over as the piece again tries
to mislead its readers into believing that over engineered steel buildings
collapse from fire damage - an event unprecedented in world history aside
from three examples in one single day.

Commenting on his own interview for the
magazine piece, Alex Jones said that initially he thought it was a fake
interview or a crank call. Jones has given hundreds of TV and print interviews
and thousands of radio interviews but his experience with Benjamin Chertoff
was like no other.

"People from school newspapers sound
more credible and serious," said Jones.

Jones had to call Popular Mechanics' office
and verify that Chertoff actually worked for them. In the course of doing
so he was erroneously told by Editor in Chief James Meigs that the story
was not going to be a hit piece and that it was simply intended to explore
the different theories surrounding 9/11.

In addition, Popular Mechanics highlighted
an article that Jones had posted on his website about incendiary devices
in the World Trade Center.

Jones' websites feature a cross-section
of mainstream and alternative media articles. An article written by Jones
himself is clearly labeled as such.

The magazine had contacted the individuals
featured in the article who told them that they had never spoken to Jones.
The article was clearly attributed to its orginal author - Randy Lavello
- and not Alex Jones. When Jones asked Popular Mechanics if they were going
to contact the individuals again and ask if they had spoken with the original
author, they dropped the subject.

As part of a PR campaign to sell its newly
packaged dross, the book 'Debunking 9/11 Lies,' Popular Mechanics' James
Meigs appeared on the O'Reilly Factor (watch below).

Meigs and O'Reilly need to be reminded
that constantly parroting the word "fact," without presenting
any actual evidence, does not make something a fact.

Meigs contradicts himself completely in
claiming that, "No one had ever seen a one hundred plus story building
collapse to the ground before," and yet less than two minutes later
agrees with O'Reilly's comment that nothing unexpected about the impact
of the planes or the collapses surprised analysts.

Meigs concurs that it's an unprecedented
event and yet claims that analysts knew exactly what was going to happen.
How could they have known the ins and outs of an event that had never happened
before?

Meigs calls the WTC implosion, "The
most closely studied collapse in world history," yet fails to address
the fact that 50,000 tons of steel from the WTC, a supposed crime scene,
was shipped
to Asia and a further 10,000 tons to India, preventing a detailed
analysis.

Meigs, citing opinions of engineers, bizarrely
states that, "The real surprise is that the building stood up as long
as it did."

In February 2005, The Windsor building
in Madrid (pictured) burned for over 24 hours as shooting flames engulfed
almost the entire structure and yet the building did not collapse. The core
of the WTC was exponentially
more robust than the Windsor building. So we have one building
that burned incessantly for over 24 hours and did not fall, compared to
two buildings which were structurally far superior, burned briefly from
limited fires, and yet both collapsed within an average time of 79 minutes
- and Meigs claims they should have collapsed sooner!

Meigs claims that Popular Mechanics' investigation
is "not political," and yet the foreword
to their book is written by none other than GOP darling Senator
John McCain.

In the foreword McCain re-hashes an abhorrent
amount of Neo-Con detritus that relies solely on 9/11 having happened exactly
as the government claims it did.

"We liberated Afghanistan from the
murderous rule of the Taliban, our attackers' proud hosts. We chased Al
Qaeda around the globe," barks McCain.

Afghanistan is now a failed narco-state
run by tribal warlords and ex-Taliban kingpins, nowhere outside of Kabul
is secure, malnutrition amongst children is the highest in the world outside
Africa, and opium production is at record levels. Bellicose statements about
chasing Al-Qaeda around the globe are somewhat contradicted by the fact
that Al-Qaeda-Iraq links were proven to be fraudulent and outgoing CIA director
AB “Buzzy” Krongard told
the London Times that Bin Laden should stay free. Couple this
with President
Bush's view on Bin Laden - "I truly am not that concerned
about him," and McCain's rhetoric falls flat on its face.

McCain also uses the callous tactic of
saying that questioning the government's version of 9/11 insults the victims
and this is also parroted in the Popular Mechanics magazine piece.

Let's hear what Bill Doyle, representative
of the largest group of 9/11 family members has
to say on this subject.

"If you want to believe what they
want to snow you under on like the 9/11 Commission - that's a total fallacy,"
said Doyle.

"It looks like there was a conspiracy
behind 9/11 if you really look at all the facts - a lot of families now
feel the same way."

Doyle said that half of the family members
- relatives of the 9/11 victims - he represents thought that the US government
was complicit in 9/11.

Despite the efforts of Popular Mechanics
to whitewash government complicity in 9/11 via a front page feature story
and a new book, recent polls clearly show an increasing trend towards a
rejection of the official version of events.

If we are to set aside the 30%
of Americans that do not even know the year in which September
11 happened, then we are left with figures of around 36%
who agree that the government was involved in the attack and
only 34% of Americans who actually know in which year the attack took place
that still think it was carried out solely by a rag-tag group of 19 incompetent
morons who couldn't fly Cessna's at the behest of a man on
a kidney dialysis machine.

Popular Mechanics are sure to make a tidy
sum of money from their latest publication, but their credibility is certain
to dwindle in light of the fact that they are willingly acting as collaborators
by aiding the cover-up of a crime that resulted in the deaths of nearly
3,000 Americans on 9/11 and untold more to come as a result of how the attack
changed US foreign policy.