Richard Gage joins perplexing gang-up on Citizen Investigation Team

By Craig McKee (http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com)

Mr. Gage, you’ve lost me.

In the past week, highly respected 9/11 researcher Richard Gage – founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, released a statement (http://911truthnews.com/richard-gage-completely-withdraws-support-from-cit/) withdrawing his support for Citizen Investigation Team, which champions the idea that an airliner flew over, not into, the Pentagon on 9/11.

Gage doesn’t like the investigative methods of CIT’s Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis. He says that even though he initially supported CIT’s film National Security Alert, he has come to rethink its approach and its conclusions. Now, he seems to prefer the Bush administration version of the Pentagon story – that is to say the official story.

Unfortunately, Gage has jumped in with a group of people who frequently post at the now very exclusive 911Blogger.com, a site that has little tolerance for people who actually think the Pentagon event might have involved some kind of deception. They’ll agree the planes should have been intercepted before reaching the Pentagon. But that’s about it.

This crowd loves to call CIT divisive liars and many other worse names. Anyone who agrees with CIT is called a dupe, a disinfo agent, or worse. The Blogger people use every vicious personal attack in the book, but CIT gets the label as being intentional disruptors. Gage, fortunately, has been above the kind of mean-spirited and condescending attacks we get from forum contributors like Snowcrash, Chris Sarns (aka BS Buster), kdub, and others.

This group seems to feel that if you say you don’t believe the official story about Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, you’re helping to discredit the 9/11 Truth movement. I have no idea what these people are talking about.

Of course, Gage is entitled to support whomever he chooses, but his decision to jump on the bandwagon (and to piggyback on the recent anti-CIT statement from David Chandler and Jonathan Cole on 911Blogger) is a bit perplexing – especially the timing.

Gage brings up the witnesses who support the plane hitting the building. This is certainly a central problem to be resolved. But some of these witnesses also support the north of Citgo flight path, which is inconsistent with the light poles being knocked over. Are they just confused about what they saw?

It is important to remember that CIT contends (and I agree) that the Pentagon event on 9/11 was designed to fool onlookers and the world. Isn’t that the whole point? Simply pointing to eyewitness accounts as being enough to shoot CIT down doesn’t make logical sense. It’s relevant to examine these accounts, and they are obviously very important, but we can’t forget that 9/11 WAS MEANT TO BE AN ILLUSION. It was supposed to look like the U.S. government was taken by surprise by a group of Muslim fundamentalists. And the destruction of the World Trade Center wasn’t supposed to look like a controlled demolition. So eyewitness accounts of the plane hitting the building have to be considered in this light. Not discounted, just factored in with other evidence.

This idea that if we can’t prove a 757 didn’t hit the Pentagon then we should default to the official story is absurd. Why does the OS get a pass, just because it can’t be proven wrong? Why doesn’t it have to be proven right? Aren’t there enough questions about the Pentagon – involving proof or not – to support a new investigation? Isn’t that the goal?

At the bottom of his statement, Gage refers readers to several articles that he says will help them understand why he has soured on CIT. One of them is called “Debating What Hit the Pentagon: Exaggeration, Name-calling, and Threats” by Gregg Roberts. This article, which appeared on 911Blogger, is a response to an article in the Rock Creek Free Press accusing 911Blogger of working against 9/11 Truth.

In the article, Roberts suggests that “the complainers” as he calls the authors of the article were told how to behave, failed to listen, and then were told why they were banned. I don’t know if this is a fair account, but I know that I was banned after just two weeks as a member of the site, and I called no one names. I was also never given a reason for the banning – not even a response to my query on the subject. I doubt that I’m alone.

By jumping in bed with 911Blogger, Gage seriously damages his credibility on this issue. This site regularly bashes CIT while not allowing CIT to respond because they’ve been banned.

Gage admits he is not as knowledgeable about the Pentagon as he is about the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. His statement, and the articles he refers people to, confirm his lack of knowledge of the subject.

Another article is the condescending piece by Victoria Ashley called To Con a Movement: Exposing CIT’s PentaCon ‘magic’ show. Ashley mocks the idea that much of the Pentagon evidence may have been faked. Light poles faked, wreckage faked, witnesses who were plants or confused? Frankly this doesn’t seem the least far-fetched. Why would the perpetrators of this event not fake things to help sell the lie?

She also says that if not for the “CIT/no plane hit the Pentagon” theory, then all kinds of constructive discussion could have taken place about the real issues like why the planes weren’t intercepted. But whose fault is that? If you think CIT is off on a tangent, why have YOU devoted so much time and effort to attacking them? YOU are the people bringing attention to the disagreement. And it is the fight itself that is hurting the movement.  There is room for more than one belief about how we were hoodwinked that day.

And one more point about science. As I wrote in my last post, 9/11 is not just a scientific story, it is also a highly political story. The idea that only science can be applied to what we know is much too narrow. We want a real investigation of 9/11, do we not? Do we have to prove inside job beyond a shadow of a doubt before we can demand more inquiry? People get sent to the electric chair with a less strict burden of proof than that.

I agree with one point Gage made in his statement. Everyone should do their own research and draw their own conclusions. By attacking CIT so relentlessly, the advocates of the “big plane, small hole, folding wings” theory give people no credit for being able to think for themselves. I can figure out which questions I want answers to, which parts of the Pentagon story are suspicious and call out for more investigation. I don’t need any “parental” truth filterers to do it for me.