LOOSE CHANGE, “A FINE PIECE OF DISINFO”

A SLICKER PRODUCT HITS THE MARKET
updated 2/5/07

Loose Change started as a hazy idea in 2002 in Oneonta New York with Dylan Avery, a hopeful filmmaker and recent 9/11 skeptic, who had just graduated from High School. His suspicions of conspiracy, while not serious, were clear enough by then to suggest the first version of Loose Change. He visualized “a fictional story about myself and my friends, basically, doing what we've done now; doing our research and discovering that 9/11 was done by our own government, and then, you know, taking the steps to release this information, you know, get chased by the FBI, you know. Just a fun film.” Then in a bizarre and unexpected twist the script came to life and the movie about breaking the truth became them actually breaking the truth as Avery and his friends saw more and more evidence coming to light.

Avery’s childhood friend Korey Rowe was by this time an “Army specialist” [not in disinformation, we presume] who had served in uniform in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Avery described his friend’s disillusionment and evolving thought process on the “war on Terror” and the attacks that underpinned it:

“He goes to Iraq, and that's when things really started to click in his head, where he was like, ‘Wait a minute, I just invaded one country, and now they're telling me I have to go and invade another country, and neither of these countries have the person that we were originally supposed to be going after.’ And I think that's when things really started to click with Korey's head, when he realized he was not an army of one getting the terrorists, but a pawn on one of the biggest chessboards that we've ever seen.” [1]

The Loose Change crew: L-R, Rowe, Bermas, Avery

Rowe then went “rogue” as the producer of Loose Change, and the team was completed with their friend from college Nick Bermas, joining them as the movie’s "fact" researcher. On the title they chose, one may think it a reference to the reported budget of $6,000, but Avery clarified “it actually means the change is loose, you can't stop it - you know, again, it's just one of those titles that, to me, it just seemed perfect. I didn't think that there could have been a better title.” [2]

As for the effectiveness of their project, that depends on just what their real motive and message is. If they meant to convince people of an inside job as is generally presumed, they seems to have done so, and quite well, but largely for the wrong reasons. If they meant to research and present all the disinfo and expose it, they did a fairly good job, but the sarcasm was not clear enough and no one's caught on. If they employed disinformation in a coordinated plan to create false belief in the 9/11 "conspiracy theory" that can be easily discredited, as many suspect to be the case, then they're right on the mark. It's spread wide, it's convinced many, and it's currently being discredited point by point in the minds of anyone willing to face the obvious.

Dave Von Kleist, the mastermind of In Plane Site, called Loose Change “the best damn 9-11 documentary out there,” and the others on his tangent, like the pod people at LetsRoll 911, saw it as an improved and repackaged version of Von Kleist's masterpiece of misinformation. Indeed it is much better, notably in the graphic and musical presentation. They also ignored some of the worst evidence like the pods on the WTC attack planes and their yellow flashes (at least by the newest edition; I recall the first edition paused the video to point them out). They also included at least some of the compelling circumstantial evidence ignored by IPS that can trigger real and rewarding insight to those who follow the leads; the 1962 Operation Northwoods, a long and informative timeline of the development of remote control flight, the PNAC’s September 2000 call for “a new Pearl Harbor,” and a dead-on de-bunking of “Osama’s” 2001 confession video, among others.

As for their take on the Frustrating Fraud of the planeless Pentagon attack, Loose Change corrects IPS on the Mike Walters quote, playing a different part of the interview and citing him specifically as witnessing an “American Airlines jet.” But now he’s a witness they don’t believe and they still chose to put the most weight behind a Cruise missile theory, opening their coverage of the Pentagon with Rumsfeld’s 2001 missile “admission." Point five in their analysis was a virtual copy from IPS: “the damage to the Pentagon [is] completely inconsistent with a Boeing 757.” A rather silly point is where Avery says “the only damage to the outer wall is a single hole no more than sixteen feet in diameter” while the shot on screen has the spray from a fire hose completely covering both this hole and the 65-foot-plus damage area around it that even IPS showed. That's because they were looking at the wrong floor, as explained in the "Entry Wounds" post.

Many errors, like their initial inclusion of the pods and yellow flashes, were “caught” and changed in the second edition, but others were not excised; producer Korey Rowe claimed in an interview “we know there are errors in the documentary, and we’ve actually left them in there so that people discredit us and do the research for themselves.” [3] So far they’ve given their viewers no hints which eggs are rotten, and some folks have swallowed the whole basket. Perhaps it’s meant as a cover for any further "mistakes" that are spotted; “oh yeah, we meant to include that. Good job, you found one!”

And there were mistakes, many of them. Even in the second edition. Mark Robinowitz at Oil Empire titled one review of the video “Loose (with truth in an effort to prevent social) Change.” Between “errors of fact,” “Post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacies,” and other categories, he counted a total of 426 “flubs” in less than an hour and a half – that’s over five per minute on average, or one every 12 seconds. Oilempire also noted its links to IPS, calling it a “reworking” of that train wreck, and noting three major differences: “more true claims in Loose Change than in IPS, which makes the fake parts more believable,” “new hoaxes (and more of them),” and its targeting “toward a younger audience” with its “hip and slick” marketing. He summed it up in the same terms assigned to IPS: “Loose Change is a hoax - a real conclusion using fake evidence.” [4]

Whatever their motives or the quality of their arguments, the video closed, as IPS had, with a call to arms: “Are you angry yet? You should be. […] Why are they hiding from us? What are they hiding from us? And what’s it gonna take until people in this country give damn and do something about it? America’s been hijacked – not by al Qaeda, not by Osama bin Laden, but by a group of tyrants ready and willing to do whatever it takes to keep their stranglehold on this country. So what are we gonna do about it? Anything.” Indeed, an “anything” sort of desperate flailing is the primary acitivity spurred by this video – Avery told his viewers it would be up to them to “get the word out,” of course meaning their word. We would have to “ask questions,” preferably the hard ones they had just presented, and to “demand answers,” preferably the ones Avery and crew had just laid out.

Among the video’s critics, 9/11 Truth warrior Mike Ruppert was perhaps the most explicit, calling it “a very fine piece of CIA disinformation.” [5] Avery called such charges “ridiculous.” “The idea that three kids from a hick town in upstate New York are part of a CIA disinformation campaign would just show how desperate our government is.” [6] Or the video’s success could show just how desperate certain 9/11 Truthers are for final “proof” of their suspicions.


Sources:
[1] "9/11: Truth, Lies, and Conspiracy." Interview with Dylan Avery. Canadian Broadcast Corporation. August 22, 2006
http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911avery.html
[2] See [1].
[3] Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_%28video%29
[4] Robinowitz, Mark. Loose Change: Loose (with truth in an effort to prevent social) Change. Oil Empire. Posting Date Unlisted. http://www.oilempire.us/loose-change.html
[5] Green, Michael B. "Loose Change, an Analysis. 911 Research. August 3 2005. http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_change.html
[6] Sales, Nancy Jo. “Click Here for Conspiracy.” Vanity Fair. August 2006. http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/060717roco02