Griffin’s ‘no plane hit the Pentagon’ arguments eclipse ‘consensus approach’

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

The best argument I’ve found against David Ray Griffin’s new “consensus approach” to the Pentagon comes from a very reliable source – David Ray Griffin.

In his new book, 9/11 Ten Years After: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed, the dean of 9/11 Truth makes the strongest case yet that the U.S. government faked a plane crash at the Pentagon to deceive the world. He shows us that the strongest evidence by far shows that a 757 did NOT hit the Pentagon and that claimed hard evidence of a plane impact is likely not authentic.

Even without mentioning the important evidence unearthed by Citizen Investigation Team and Pilots for 9/11 Truth (both glaring and troubling omissions), Griffin still shows conclusively that the official Pentagon story is a lie.

In his argument, Griffin goes over the very strong and persuasive evidence that the eyewitness testimony, which is used to support the plane impact, is highly suspect, contradictory, and comes mainly from people who were likely to be supportive of the official story (government employees, mainstream media, etc.). This eyewitness evidence is not anywhere near as conclusive as the “plane impact” people would have us believe.

Griffin also cites the very strong evidence from Barbara Honegger which supports the idea that bombs were set off in the Pentagon and that numerous witnesses to the destruction saw no evidence of a plane.

Here are a few items mentioned that support the “no 757 hit” position:

• No plane parts can be linked to Flight 77 through serial numbers (FBI admits it has no conclusive evidence that Flight 77 crashed there)
• C ring hole could not have been made by the fragile nose of the plane
• Video evidence (the two almost identical views that were released) can be conclusively shown to have been doctored
• Damage to the light poles doesn’t match what impact with a 757 flying at more than 500 mph would cause
• Eyewitnesses who say they saw impact have credibility problems
• Deaths that occurred in the A and B rings
• People inside Pentagon reported bombs and the smell of cordite
• No evidence of jet fuel fires inside the building
• Lack of debris that should have come from a 100-ton plane

In all, Griffin makes a very persuasive case supporting what he has thought all along – that no plane hit. He even restates his belief that MOST PEOPLE in the 9/11 Truth movement believe that no plane hit.

Unfortunately, he then tosses a good chunk of the best evidence away, settling for the less conclusive evidence “we all agree on.” This he calls the “consensus approach.”

The attempt is a noble one in theory. Griffin recognizes that there have been bitter divisions within the 9/11 Truth movement in recent years, and that these differences are harming the chances of convincing the public that 9/11 was an inside job.

As a result, he has decided that the question of whether a plane hit the Pentagon is unimportant, and that the key point is that a 757 piloted by al-Qaeda did not. He suggests we focus on questions like how Hani Hanjour could have made the near-impossible spiral descent and why al-Qaeda would aim for a sparsely populated part of the building instead of crashing into the roof, which would also have been much easier.

Here’s how Griffin explains his change of perspective: “Because the evidence against the 757 claim has seemed far more convincing to most members of the 9/11 Truth Movement (my emphasis) than any arguments to the contrary, a battle about it surely would not, I assumed, greatly damage the 9/11 Movement. I have now, however, come to see that a battle about this issue could easily become destructive – that is, if it is indeed a battle between the two positions, based on the assumption that the issue is quite important, rather than a discussion, based on the fact that the issue is relatively unimportant.”

Griffin should have stuck with those earlier instincts. I believe he will never get agreement on the consensus approach because it is based on a false premise: that the two sides in the “757 did or didn’t hit” debate both make roughly equally persuasive cases for their points of view and that both sides have something approaching an equivalent stature and credibility within the Truth movement. They don’t and they don’t.

Most importantly, the proffered consensus approach presumes that the division is genuine and not contrived. But the over-the-top and relentless attacks on CIT and Pilots for 9/11 Truth from this group and its supporters over the past few years make it clear that this is not simply an honest difference of opinion; it is the attempted hijacking of the movement by those who depend on bullying and character assassination. Even if the four pro-757 people Griffin quotes don’t do most of the heavy bullying, they certainly condone it, by their silence if nothing else.

I will never find consensus with Legge or Chandler, who believe the hole in the Pentagon was plenty big enough to admit a 757. They don’t state how they know this, they just do. The group presents a very weak overall case based largely on supposition and conjecture, examples of which Griffin points to in his book. Hoffman, for example, suggests that there was no damage to the building from the plane’s tail section because it might have been blown up by an on-board bomb or hit with a surface-to-air missile.

I believe Griffin gives far too much weight to these specious arguments early in his Pentagon chapter but then rebounds to show how weak they are later on. This latter part is vintage Griffin, and it is this part that inspires me to continue the fight.

If you take Griffin’s “no plane” evidence and add to it the research by CIT and Pilots for 9/11 Truth, you’ve got a fantastic argument that the plane crash was faked. It is this accumulation of evidence that sold me in the first place. And it is with this accumulation that we have to attack the 9/11 lie and create a convincing and powerful case to reach out to people outside the Truth movement.

The case shouldn’t be weakened or watered down to please a small group tied closely to the fully compromised web site 911blogger, which has shown itself to having a murky and dubious relationship with the truth.

The consensus approach won’t get the Truth movement any new converts. As for bringing peace that would increase the movement’s credibility, the best way to do that is to stop placing so much importance on a small group that makes such poor arguments and that spends so much time attacking others in the movement.

If truth activists of good will were to come together to show how empty the official story is, it wouldn’t matter what this small and unpersuasive group said or how much they stomped their feet.

In my next post, I’ll look more closely at the evidence Griffin cites both in support of, and in opposition to, the view that a plane hit the Pentagon. Judge for yourself where the strongest case lies.