REBUTTAL TO JAMES FETZER

LITMUS TEST FOR RATIONAILTY?
REBUTTAL TO JAMES FETZER
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
June 27 2007
last updated September 15 2007

A new press release boosting Pilots for 9/11 Truth as “driv[ing] another nail into a coffin of lies told the American people by The 9/11 Commission” was just released by Scholars for 9/11 Truth (the Fetzer wing). Co-founder of the recently-divided organization James Fetzer in fact seems to have written up the release, titled “New study from Pilots for 9/11 Truth: No Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.” It was released on June 21 and picked up by Yahoo news, apparently a bit of an achievement, and has been widely republished since then. It demands a firm, well thought out response from my end, and hence the slight delay in publishing this (and the later edits and updates).

As the public decree explains, the Pilots had petitioned the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) under the Freedom of Information Act to receive data from the Black Box (FDR) of Flight 77. Their study of the data, Fetzer announced, “has confirmed the previous findings of Scholars for 9/11 Truth that no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon on 9/11.” [1] I'm not sure "report" is quite the right word; it's "signed by fifteen professional pilots," so it seems to be their three-month-old March 26 Press Release, which summarized all their AA77 FDR findings. Fetzer sums their points: “the plane was too high to hit lamp posts and would have flown over the Pentagon, not impacted with its ground floor.” So it's not terribly “new,” and what’s even older is the tired list of hollow no-planer reasoning that is his group’s bolstered previous argument.

"We have had four lines of proof that no Boeing 757 hit the building,” he explained, all flawed, well-explained or seriously questioned elsewhere, and too boring to bother re-hashing in detail here; but briefly, 1) the too small hole and “the wrong […] kind and quantity of debris,” 2) the CCTV video that shows something smaller than a 757 he thinks, 3) ground effect, and 4) the unmarked lawn. These four tracks of reasoning prove to Fetzer, “conclusively, in my judgment - that no Boeing 757 hit the building.” Noting the eyewitness accounts of an AA 757 that flew by that way as the “most important evidence to the contrary,” he found that “if the NTSB data is correct, then the Pilot's study shows that a large aircraft headed toward the building but did not impact with it. It swerved off and flew above the Pentagon." [2] Just like others have been theorizing lately. How nicely it all falls together… and the Pilots don’t even have to offer a theory themselves.

Anyway… he wrote the piece with the cooperation of Rob Balsamo (John Doe X, co-founder of Pilots for 911 Truth), who explained elsewhere “Jim Fetzer and myself worked on this together.” Yet the final PR contained a major blunder… Fetzer stated that the Pilots “not only obtained the flight data but created a computer animation to demonstrate what it told them.” [3] What on Earth does that mean? I haven't seen this other animation yet, and had just been in a wrangle with Balsamo for hinting at just that possibility, contrary to their claims. Balsamo had to scramble to clarify their group “did not create the animation, which we included in "Pandora's Back Box". The NTSB provided the animation based upon its own data and spread spread sheets which can be found at our site/forums.” [4]
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update 8/11: Recently Pilots for Truth did release an animation based on the black box data. It's pretty interesting and well done. Viewable here. Perhaps this is what Fetzer was talking about?
update 9/15: As Rob has pointed out to me, the crossed-out statement above is wrong - based on a misreading. Aplogies to have miseld with this sloppiness. They worked together on the corrections, as is obvious when I look back. In pennance, a gratis link to his unfiltered words.
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Otherwise Fetzer carefully quotes Balasamo’s vague copy-and-paste master take on their findings: "the information in the NSTB documents does not support, and in some instances factually contradicts, the official government position that American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001." While it’s more tame than what Fetzer says, he’s not so much putting words in Balsamo’s mouth as – well, here’s another careful quote:

“Pilotsfor911truth.org does not make the claim that "No Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon". We have analyzed the Flight Data Recorder data provided by the NTSB and have shown factual analysis of that data. We do not offer theory.

While we do not make this claim in these words, the analysis we present on the basis of the NTSB's own data factually contradicts the official account that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon--if trends are continued beyond end of data records--and therefore supports the inference that American Airlines Flight 77 did not hit the building based upon that data.” [5]

In other words, they have only discovered and relayed factual government data that supports the inference that the plane would not have hit. They didn’t say it didn’t hit. They let Fetzer say it for them.

“Don't be taken in by photos showing damage to the second floor or those taken after the upper floors collapsed, which happened 20-30 minutes later," Fetzer warned, and by which I’m not sure what he means. "In fact, debris begins to show up on the completely clean lawn in short order,” and proposed this fake plane debris “might have been dropped from a C-130 that was circling above the Pentagon or placed there by men in suits who were photographed carrying debris with them." [6] Might be…

The most famous such scrap, photographed by Mark Faram, Fetzer admits “is a piece from the fuselage of a commercial airliner, which is frequently adduced as evidence,” by, for example, James Hanson of Ohio. Fetzer explains in his PR that Hanson “has traced that debris to an American Airlines 757 that crashed in a rain forest above Cali, Columbia in 1995.” Check out what this genius Hanson uses for evidence: a six-year old liana vine still embedded in the Pentagon "fuselage" metal! You have to see it to disbelieve it, so DO NOT click that link if you want to believe Hanson. Fetzer bought it though and was impressed enough with this find to offer to republish Hanson’s study on the Scholars’ site. [7]

Fetzer in one of his frequent Fox News appearances (artsified by me)

One of the deepest ironies revealed in Fetzer’s missive is that "Fetzer [...] retired last June after 35 years of teaching courses in logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning.” Well, how could one argue with the logical conclusions of a renowned logic expert? I’ll try it caustically. Fact is, what this background of his shows to me is that he knows exactly what he’s doing – elevating a fraud to guiding principle of the “Truth Movement” he claims a leadership role in to arrive at the “truth.” In the end, from all this Fetzer was able to use his deep knowledge of ctical thinking and scientific deduction (as well, of course, as years learning all of their opposites – the arts of sophistry, quackery, and deception) to deduce an argument finally totally inverse to my own growing suspicions:

"The Pentagon has become a kind of litmus test for rationality in the study of 9/11. Those who persist in maintaining that a Boeing 757 hit the building are either unfamiliar with the evidence or cognitively impaired. Unless they want to mislead the American people. The evidence is beyond clear and compelling. It places this issue 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. No Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon."

I am quite familiar with the evidence, and I invite anyone to check my reasoning for soundness of judgment. That’s what this site’s about: “the hijacking of the 9/11 Truth Movement by the no-757 at the Pentagon theory." It almost feels with this salvo like Fetzer the mental “muscle hijacker” is letting us know the pilots have the cockpit; he tells us never mind the doubters, move to the back of the plane. No need to investigate for yourselves, we have it all figured out. We are returning to the airport. We just need to agree on this and move on.

But what if the Pilots intend to crash this plane? It’s happened before. That's not even a box cutter Fetzer's holding, people. It's a carbdoard prop. We can take this plane back. Let's Roll.

Sources:
[1], [2], [3], [6], [7] Fetzer, James/Scholars for 9/11 Truth. “New study from Pilots for 9/11 Truth: No Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.” June 21 2007.
Trackback URL: http://prweb.com/pingpr.php/Q291cC1NYWduLVRoaXItQ291cC1UaGlyLVplcm8=
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20070621/bs_prweb/prweb534642_1
[4], [5] John Doe X. Official Comment/corrections. Pilots for 9/11 Truth Discussion Board. Posted Jun 23 2007, 12:36 AM. http://z9.invisionfree.com/Pilots_For_Truth/index.php?s=ec3b737719855ae19fc27c1b5a81c7b0&showtopic=7372&st=15&#entry9361808

JIM HANSON'S DE-VINE REVELATION

Yage-tripping former Republicans for 9/11 Truth?
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
Last Edited: 4/30/07

[note: I've been getting away from the fun old game of ridiculing fraudsters lately, focusing on solidifying my own case and doing more serious research, but just found this little gem from the Idaho Observer, February 2005, which I had missed before.]

Before he discovered the truth of 9/11, Jim Hanson of Columbus Ohio was a five-decade Republican and "former district campaign manager for Richard Nixon," as conspiratainment radio host Greg Szymanski explained in a February 2005 piece for the Idaho Observer. Szymanski was talking to the retired attorney because of an excellent 1/2 page ad he had taken out in the Columbus Dispatch newspaper "denouncing the Bush administration specifically concerning one photo of the Pentagon crash, which he claims will prove government complicity in 9/11."

The photo refered to by Hanson is the famous shot taken by Mark Faram shown above (cropped on the debris), which Szymanski incorrectly described as “the only piece of wreckage of Flight 77 ever made public.” This also seems to be Hanson’s understanding as well, since he summed up "if it can be proved that this piece didn’t come from Flight 77,” then there would be NO wreckage released of the plane, and this “ would open the door, exposing the rest of the government conspiracy."

This is a serious question then, so Hanson set out two main supports for his conclusion that this did not come from the doomed Flight. Hanson laid out his first charge: While the scrap clearly matches the American Airlines paint scheme, “after blowing up the photo and matching rivets to those of the 757 that supposedly crashed into the Pentagon, I found there wasn’t a match. This piece of wreckage was from a different plane.” I’ve seen this claim made around by others, but still haven’t looked into it closely. A reasonable match to an AA 757 has been demonstrated well enough in this early piece by Jim Hoffman, but for the moment I’ll ignore the possibility that Hanson is flat wrong that the Faram scrap is not from a 757 as alleged, suspend judgment, and turn to his second corroborating proof.

On close examination of the photo, Hanson found "a curious piece of wood or what I have determined to be a liana vine, imbedded into the aluminum piece of wreckage.” A liana vine! What a revolutionary observation! Did the plane swing into the building on a vine in Tarzan style? A little research shows that lianas are a general type of burly climbing vine, one species of which is used in the Ayahuasca or Yage, a ritual Incan hallucinogen now popular in certain non-traditional circles (though usually not elderly Republicans). Is there more to Hanson’s visionary approach to 9/11 Truth than meets the eye? Is he seeing at the heart of the official lie the very vine he’s tripping on?

Whatever the validity of his observation, it all fell together from there: “I then found out that another 757 went down in the South American jungle in 1995, where liana vines (similar to wicker) grow abundantly.” As Szymanski explained, Hanson phoned the NTSB and was told the mangled remains of that 757 were stored at an undisclosed "military disposal site for investigation.” He then had a serious enough hunch to charge that “I think the military substituted this piece of wreckage in an attempt to deceive the public, in an attempt to make them believe Flight 77 hit the Pentagon when it didn’t."

How it is the scrap doesn't match the official 757 plane model but could be from a different 757 he's never seen photos of is unclear to me. I would've guessed all 757s are riveted the same. Furthermore, unless this original flight was AA, it would have had to be re-painted, and it seems odd the special effects guys would miss the woody vines twisted into the metal as they sraped off the paint and stencilled on part of a lower-case "n" to proper scale. Hanson too was aware of the depth of their faux pas: "I think this one mistake regarding the military photo, could bring down the house of cards and expose the entire conspiracy." Hanson himself was putting his Republicanism on hold over the affair; "I am no longer affiliating myself with the Republican Party considering the outrageous acts that have been perpetrated on the American people. This is beyond politics,” he told Szymaski and his readers. “This is outright fascism."

And for the record, here’s the proof of the 21st Century Reichstag Fire that brought Fascism to our own shores: the only non-metal substance I can see with the scrap, the yellow stuff at the bottom, and a couple of ideas as to what it could be:

Don’t scoff! If Hanson is correct, the fate of the free world could be at stake here.

Source: Szymanski, Greg. "Life-long Republican believes only piece of Flight 77 wreckage was planted at Pentagon on 9/11." Idaho Observer. February 2005. http://proliberty.com/observer/20050208.htm