EMANUEL SFERIOS ON DISINFO IN THE WAR FOR TRUTH

January 25 2007

Emanuel Sferios is the Seattle-based webmaster for the 9/11 Visibility Project (http://www.septembereleventh.org/). In 2006 he marked the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with a hard-hitting piece that reflected his growing doubts about the prospects for full truth in our immediate future. He noted how at a talk earlier that year, he told his audience in essence, “the movement was over, that we had failed, and that the window of opportunity for obtaining justice for 9/11 was closed for good.” He later regretted he didn’t “leave any of these new activists with much hope,” but still stood by his assessment; in five years, movement had accomplished “everything and nothing.” As he wrote, a majority of Americans had just been found to reject the full official story of 9/11, skepticism that had been steadily rising since the attacks and was by then wider than most had ever expected.

But as Sferios points out - and as is obvious - nothing had changed politically. The mainstream media and ruling elites were only weakly reflecting the popular mind-shift if at all, no one had been charged at all, and certainly not the President, the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash, and the global “War on Terror” rolls on unabated. Thus the apt diagnosis of resounding failure within apparent victory. Of course things simply don’t change so easily, and I wouldn’t recommend being so hard on ourselves. But others were just as upset that we hadn’t been able to put some necks in the guillotine, and cited a "lack of political will” on the part of america's citizenry.

While this is certainly a key part of it, and an illustration of why (as some argue) we’re engineered to be so docile and distractable, Sferios went beyond this simple argument, and decided “the reason for the discrepancy between what people know about 9/11 and what they are willing to do to stop the War on Terror […] has to do with the scope and sophistication of the political and social control mechanisms used against us; namely, disruption and disinformation." He knew "COINTELPRO-style disruption" when he saw it; in his 20-year career, "never before have I witnessed it used on such a scale and with such precision as I have within the 9/11 Truth Movement.”

“The shadow government,” as he dubs the villains behind 9/11, had long ago learned “that the best way to defeat your opposition is to become your opposition.” To this end, the powers that be have largely coopted the Truth Movement, "channeling new skeptics (and old) into endless debates around physical evidence and other ineffective actions,” which I guess icludes the debunkings and this website. As with previous COINTELPRO efforts, the plan was to “suck rebellious […] energy and dissipate it ineffectively, preventing the formation of a legitimate, effective opposition.” The no-757-at-the-Pentagon Frustrating Fraud figure most prominently in this set-up:

“To prove that agents are among us, and that they have succeeded in taking over the bulk of the movement, one needs to go no further than compare the number of people who believe no plane hit the Pentagon with the number of people who know about the simultaneous wargames that were taking place on the morning of 9/11, and that prevented NORAD from intercepting the planes before they hit their targets.

The former claim, widely believed, is perhaps the most successful and sophisticated disinformation campaign injected into the 9/11 Truth Movement. Supported by doctored video footage released by the Pentagon itself, it has almost single-handedly made the movement the laughing stock of Washington DC residents [...]”

He further maintains that the no-757 claim "has also been the primary wedge used to divide the movement from itself," a stinging accusation to those pushing such theories, and also perhaps to folks like myself. To prevent unwarranted strife, Sferios didn’t name the suspected infiltrators, noting “you can never really prove who is an agent and who is simply duped by the disinfo itself, much of which is easily believable on the surface.” Of course this is a necessary distinction, but on this site I feel I must name names of people pushing the fraud and hold the offenders accountable – just becuase motives are hard to tell doesn't mean wrong theories creating false certainty don't need to be challenged. It's called hard love. Initially Sferios himself bought the no-757 line, but cited Mark Robinowitz at Oil Empire “for having the stubborn persistency to keep challenging me back when I, too, believed the hoax,” and to Jim Hoffman at 9-11 Research “for his unparalleled analysis of the Pentagon physical evidence.”

Such careful analysis is crucial, especially in this case; as Sferios noted of those Washington DC residents "hundreds of [them] saw the plane hit the building, and thousands of [them] have relatives or friends who did." The Fraud's turning the Truth movement into a sick joke for them (if it didn't start that way), "was likely its intention, for it has successfully alienated from the movement precisely those DC professionals (senators, congressmen, federal judges, prosecutors, etc.) who hold enough power to effectively investigate and prosecute the crime.” Of course it's not as if the more honest elites were about to step up until they saw Pentagon Strike, but it's something to think about when casually batting around theories and then making movies about them. Loosing the change is one thing, properly aiming it is another.

source:
Sferios, Emanuel. "9/11 Five Years Later: What Have We Accomplished?An Assessment of the 9/11 Truth Movement." 9/11 Visibility Project. September 11 2006. http://www.septembereleventh.org/five_years_later.php