Intimidation

Since 9/11/01, scores of people have exposed glaring anomalies in the official account of the attack, and implicated insiders in the US government in the planning and execution of the attack. Such exposures were slow to emerge, J. McMichael's Muslims Suspend Laws of Physics! being the first thorough deconstruction of the explanation that the World Trade Center skyscrapers simply collapsed. Over time, an increasing number of critics attacked the many aspects of the official story, this website and its companion, 911Research.wtc7.net, being two examples among many. Since the inception of the 9/11 Truth Movement, we have yet to see any obvious targeting of researchers and activists with assassination, death threats, or even heavy-handed suppression of their messages as through hacking of websites.

Noting the freedom with which 9/11 truth activists are allowed to operate, many people conclude that the message of these activists -- that the attack was aided or engineered by powerful insiders -- is wrong. After all, wouldn't such insiders 'neutralize' anyone publicly disclosing evidence of their crimes?

The answer to this question is not obvious, but is essential to understanding how crimes such as 9/11/01 are covered up. In his video Painful Deceptions, Eric Hufschmid cites Orlando Sentinel reporter David Porter's comment: "Conspiracy people would be killed if they were correct." Hufschimd goes on:

Hufschmid continues by reviewing the Oklahoma City Bombing and noting that General Partin provided conclusive evidence that most of the damage to the building was produced by explosives in the building, not the truck bomb blamed by the official story. If the conspirators had killed Partin in order to silence him, Hufschmid explains, people would have been much more likely to take him seriously, and the perpetrators might not have gotten away with the crime.

While intimidating truth-tellers through assassinations, threats, and other illegal means would risk exposing those involved in the cover-up, a variety of other methods avoids these risks. In fact, most of these other methods function effectively only in the absence of heavy-handed illegal methods of suppression. As long as the truth-tellers are left relatively unmolested, they can easily be ignored as crackpots.

Ridicule

Ridicule is the single most effective tool in marginalizing challenges to the official story. Given the psychological dynamics of the Big Lie, the vast majority of ridicule leveled against such challenges will come, not from architects of the cover-up, but from normal people simply offended by the suggestion that such a crime could be the work of insiders. Americans, in particular, are highly resistant to the idea that high-level government officials participated in the attack, for a number of reasons.

• It is much more comforting to think that the attack was the work of elusive rebels from the opposite side of the globe than of people who share the same language and culture as their victims.
• Government officials have a great deal of power over people's lives (power amplified in the wake of the attack), making it more frightening to entertain notions that those officials would be capable of such crimes.
• People tend to identify with those in power over them, even when the relationship is abusive (a phenomenon known as the Stockholm Syndrome). This increases the difficulty in recognizing the perpetrators of a crime when they are insiders supposedly duty-bound to protect the victims.

Given such reasons for denying the possibility of insider involvement, the majority of Americans tend to reflexively dismiss challenges to the official story as "conspiracy theories" -- even pieces such as David Griffin's testimony to the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference which expose problems in the official conspiracy theory without proposing any alternative theories. Given the forces of denial at work, it is difficult to know whether attacks such as Michael Shermer's are disingenuous or just sloppy.

Disinformation

Disinformation works hand-in-glove with the easily fostered denial that the attack could be the work of insiders. The insertion of ludicrous ideas in support of correct conclusions -- a tactic that has come to be identified with George W. Bush's propaganda architect Karl Rove -- is rampant in the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement. Such claims, aided by effective marketing, easily eclipse rational and scientific analysis of the anomalies and contradictions in the official story. By disingenuously identifying nonsensical criticisms with legitimate ones challenging the official story, attack pieces such as Popular Mechanics ' set up and effectively tear down a straw man. Since this attack piece carefully avoids the real evidence that the attack was the work of insiders while creating the false impression of covering the gamut of issues associated with the 9/11 Truth Movement, it effectively inoculates most naive readers against evidence of the guilt of insiders.

Personal Attacks

Another tool used to sustain the cover-up is the harassment of activists and researchers using personal attacks. Indeed, there are internet personas and websites whose entire purpose seems to be to attack and defame legitimate researchers. Examples such as 'the WebFairy', 'Gerard Holmgren', and 'WingTV' are described on the bogus page of OilEmpire.us. Since these attacks come from entities claiming to be proponents of '9/11 truth' the purpose of their attacks is less likely to be understood by people to fail to understand that the struggle for 9/11 truth is a two-front information war.

The personal attacks serve several functions including:

• Drawing attention away from the work of researchers.
• Distracting researchers away from their work to answer false charges.
• Persuading casual onlookers that the 9/11 truth arena is dominated by ugly attacks and infighting, and lacking in substance.
• Dissuading newcomers from getting involved in 9/11 truth lest they become targets of such attacks.

Virtual Intimidation

While exposing insider involvement in the crimes of 9/11/01 my not be hazardous to one's health, for all the reasons described above, the common belief that it could be is itself used as a tool of intimidation. A case in point is the treatment of Professor Steven Jones by Greg Szymanski.

Other articles by Szymanski seem to be aimed more generally at intimidating people inclined to investigate the attack. The supposed victims cited by Szymanski are notable for their obscurity. Are such articles designed to intimidate would-be whistleblowers who are afraid of being harassed by the government for their work? In a Dec. 2005 article entitled, '911 Lies: Whistleblower Attacked By Microwave Beam', Syzmanski relays the experiences of an apparent victim of microwave radiation for simply trying "to publicize his information on radio and television" about 9/11:

Szymanski does not question anyone else in the piece for verification of the helicopters or medical records for proof of his condition. But the details become more sinister:

Without questioning any of the veracity of this claim, Szymanski goes on to explain:

Again, Szymanski makes outlandish claims of government attacks against 9/11 researchers, yet he gives the reader no way to verify anything he writes. It is bad enough when mainstream media outlets cite too many unnamed sources, or provide a name but no way to verify that the person even exists. It is a huge red flag when it is done by someone who purports to expose a massive government conspiracy, and has neither an editor he reports to, nor, as far as we know, any journalism training.