Debunking Popular Mechanics' 9/11 Lies

Nepotism, Bias, Shoddy Research And Agenda-Driven Politics

Paul Joseph Watson
August 10 2006
prisonplanet

Popular Mechanics has re-entered the media circus in an attempt to continue its 9/11 debunking campaign that began in March of last year. A new book claims to expose the myths of the 9/11 truth movement, yet it is Popular Mechanics who have been exposed as promulgating falsehoods while engaging in nepotism, shoddy research and agenda-driven politics.

It comes as no surprise that Popular Mechanics is owned by Hearst Corporation. As fictionalized in Orson Welles' acclaimed film Citizen Kane, William Randolph Hearst wrote the book on cronyism and yellow journalism and Popular Mechanics hasn't bucked that tradition.

The magazine is a cheerleader for the sophistication of advanced weaponry and new technology used by police in areas such as crowd control and 'anti-terror' operation. A hefty chunk of its advertising revenue relies on the military and defense contractors. Since the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and in the future Iran all cite 9/11 as a pretext, what motivation does the magazine have to conduct a balanced investigation and risk upsetting its most coveted clientele?

Popular Mechanics' March 2005 front cover story was entitled 'Debunking 9/11 Lies' and has since become the bellwether reference point for all proponents of the official 9/11 fairytale.

Following the publication of the article and its exaltation by the mainstream media as the final nail in the coffin for 9/11 conspiracy theories, it was revealed that senior researcher on the piece Benjamin Chertoff is the cousin of Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

This means that Benjamin Chertoff was hired to write an article that would receive nationwide attention, about the veracity of the government's explanation of an event that led directly to the creation of Homeland Security, a body that his own cousin now heads.

This is unparalleled nepotism and completely dissolves the credibility of the article before one has even turned the first page.

The arguments presented in the article have been widely debunked by the 9/11 truth community as an example of a straw man hatchet job - whereby false arguments are erected, attributed to 9/11 skeptics, and then shot down.

One of the most glaring errors in the Popular Mechanics hit piece appears in the 'Intercepts Not Routine' section where it is claimed that, "In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999."

As Jim Hoffman points out in his excellent rebuttal, "This bold assertion flies in the face of a published report of scramble frequencies that quotes the same Maj. Douglas Martin that is one of PM's cited experts!"

"From Sept. 11 to June, NORAD scrambled jets or diverted combat air patrols 462 times, almost seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from September 2000 to June 2001, Martin said."

The article also makes no mention whatsoever of the numerous war games scheduled for the morning of 9/11 which confused air defense personnel as to the true nature of the attack as it unfolded, as is documented by the recent release of the NORAD tapes.

A section on the collapse of the World Trade Center fails to address firefighters and other individuals who reported numerous explosions before the towers fell, squibs of debris seen shooting out of the towers well below the collapse point, and the fact that the towers fell only slightly slower than absolute free fall.

The article was released before analysis conducted by BYU physics Professor Steven Jones discovered traces of thermite in steel samples taken from the World Trade Center.

"Using advanced techniques we're finding out what's in these samples - we're finding iron, sulphur, potassium and manganese - these are characteristic of a variation of thermite which is used to cut through steel very rapidly, it's called thermate," said Professor Jones.

The article regurgitates pancake and truss theories yet fails to acknowledge the comments of WTC construction manager Frank DeMartini (below) who before 9/11 stated that the buildings were designed to take multiple airliner impacts and not collapse.

The article also completely fails to answer why pools of molten yellow metal were found underneath both towers and Building 7 subsequent to the collapses.

The classic crimp implosion of Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, is glossed over as the piece again tries to mislead its readers into believing that over engineered steel buildings collapse from fire damage - an event unprecedented in world history aside from three examples in one single day.

Commenting on his own interview for the magazine piece, Alex Jones said that initially he thought it was a fake interview or a crank call. Jones has given hundreds of TV and print interviews and thousands of radio interviews but his experience with Benjamin Chertoff was like no other.

"People from school newspapers sound more credible and serious," said Jones.

Jones had to call Popular Mechanics' office and verify that Chertoff actually worked for them. In the course of doing so he was erroneously told by Editor in Chief James Meigs that the story was not going to be a hit piece and that it was simply intended to explore the different theories surrounding 9/11.

In addition, Popular Mechanics highlighted an article that Jones had posted on his website about incendiary devices in the World Trade Center.

Jones' websites feature a cross-section of mainstream and alternative media articles. An article written by Jones himself is clearly labeled as such.

The magazine had contacted the individuals featured in the article who told them that they had never spoken to Jones. The article was clearly attributed to its orginal author - Randy Lavello - and not Alex Jones. When Jones asked Popular Mechanics if they were going to contact the individuals again and ask if they had spoken with the original author, they dropped the subject.
As part of a PR campaign to sell its newly packaged dross, the book 'Debunking 9/11 Lies,' Popular Mechanics' James Meigs appeared on the O'Reilly Factor (watch below).

Meigs and O'Reilly need to be reminded that constantly parroting the word "fact," without presenting any actual evidence, does not make something a fact.

Meigs contradicts himself completely in claiming that, "No one had ever seen a one hundred plus story building collapse to the ground before," and yet less than two minutes later agrees with O'Reilly's comment that nothing unexpected about the impact of the planes or the collapses surprised analysts.

Meigs concurs that it's an unprecedented event and yet claims that analysts knew exactly what was going to happen. How could they have known the ins and outs of an event that had never happened before?

Meigs calls the WTC implosion, "The most closely studied collapse in world history," yet fails to address the fact that 50,000 tons of steel from the WTC, a supposed crime scene, was shipped to Asia and a further 10,000 tons to India, preventing a detailed analysis.

Meigs, citing opinions of engineers, bizarrely states that, "The real surprise is that the building stood up as long as it did."

In February 2005, The Windsor building in Madrid (pictured) burned for over 24 hours as shooting flames engulfed almost the entire structure and yet the building did not collapse. The core of the WTC was exponentially more robust than the Windsor building.

So we have one building that burned incessantly for over 24 hours and did not fall, compared to two buildings which were structurally far superior, burned briefly from limited fires, and yet both collapsed within an average time of 79 minutes - and Meigs claims they should have collapsed sooner!

Meigs claims that Popular Mechanics' investigation is "not political," and yet the foreword to their book is written by none other than GOP darling Senator John McCain.

In the foreword McCain re-hashes an abhorrent amount of Neo-Con detritus that relies solely on 9/11 having happened exactly as the government claims it did.

"We liberated Afghanistan from the murderous rule of the Taliban, our attackers' proud hosts. We chased Al Qaeda around the globe," barks McCain.

Afghanistan is now a failed narco-state run by tribal warlords and ex-Taliban kingpins, nowhere outside of Kabul is secure, malnutrition amongst children is the highest in the world outside Africa, and opium production is at record levels.

Bellicose statements about chasing Al-Qaeda around the globe are somewhat contradicted by the fact that Al-Qaeda-Iraq links were proven to be fraudulent and outgoing CIA director AB “Buzzy” Krongard told the London Times that Bin Laden should stay free.

Couple this with President Bush's view on Bin Laden - "I truly am not that concerned about him," and McCain's rhetoric falls flat on its face.

McCain also uses the callous tactic of saying that questioning the government's version of 9/11 insults the victims and this is also parroted in the Popular Mechanics magazine piece.

Let's hear what Bill Doyle, representative of the largest group of 9/11 family members has to say on this subject.

"If you want to believe what they want to snow you under on like the 9/11 Commission - that's a total fallacy," said Doyle.

"It looks like there was a conspiracy behind 9/11 if you really look at all the facts - a lot of families now feel the same way."

Doyle said that half of the family members - relatives of the 9/11 victims - he represents thought that the US government was complicit in 9/11.

Despite the efforts of Popular Mechanics to whitewash government complicity in 9/11 via a front page feature story and a new book, recent polls clearly show an increasing trend towards a rejection of the official version of events.

If we are to set aside the 30% of Americans that do not even know the year in which September 11 happened, then we are left with figures of around 36% who agree that the government was involved in the attack and only 34% of Americans who actually know in which year the attack took place that still think it was carried out solely by a rag-tag group of 19 incompetent morons who couldn't fly Cessna's at the behest of a man on a kidney dialysis machine.

Popular Mechanics are sure to make a tidy sum of money from their latest publication, but their credibility is certain to dwindle in light of the fact that they are willingly acting as collaborators by aiding the cover-up of a crime that resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and untold more to come as a result of how the attack changed US foreign policy.