Dead or Alive: Bin Laden's Just a Prop in the War on Terror

Whether Bin Laden is dead or alive, it is clear that the U.S. is using him as a prop for propaganda purposes.

Alive?

If Bin Laden is alive, the U.S. has missed numerous slam-dunk opportunities to capture or kill him. Don't believe me? Read this:

· A retired Colonel and Fox News military analyst said:

"We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it ....Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden."

· The CIA commander in charge of the capture of Bin Laden during the invasion of Afghanistan said that the U.S. let Bin Laden escape from Afghanistan

· French soldiers insist that they easily could have captured or killed Bin Laden, but that the American commanders stopped them

· CIA agents met with Bin Laden two months before 9/11, when he was already supposedly wanted for the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and when it was obvious to the intelligence services that he was supposedly planning 9/11.

So if Bin Laden is still alive, the U.S. has let him slip away and survive on at least 3 different occassions. Why? To use him as a boogeyman to scare people into rallying around America's "war on terror".

Dead?

According to Israeli intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, and other sources, Bin Laden is dead.

According to video experts and and top Bin Laden experts, recent Bin Laden videos are fake.

So if Bin Laden is dead, and yet the U.S. intelligence services are claiming that he's alive and are authenticating his videos, then -- again -- they are using him as a boogeyman to scare people into following the great leader's war vision.

Dead or alive, it is clear that the U.S. is using Osama as a prop.

Family Members and Scientists File NIST Appeal

On April 11th, 2007, family members Bill Doyle and Bob McIlvaine, scientists Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan, architect Richard Gage and the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice filed a petition with NIST demanding that it correct its erroneous methods and findings.

On September 27th, NIST finally replied.

Messieurs McIlvaine, Jones, Ryan and Gage and the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice have now filed an appeal to NIST's reply.

A redacted version of the appeal can be read here.

How Dare You?

Neoliberal sock puppet Bill Clinton, confronted by 9/11 activists who stated the obvious -- that 9/11 was an inside job -- responded

"An inside job? How dare you. How dare you. It was not an inside job."

Well, sir, as the leading spokesperson for the neolib branch of the imperial war party, let me ask this of you:

The Oklahoma City bombing was carried out -- and covered up -- on your watch.

How dare you?

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where the FBI had penetrated the cell which carried out the 1993 world trade center bombing, but -- at the last minute -- canceled the plan to have its FBI infiltrator substitute fake power for real explosives, against the infiltrator's strong wishes, was carried out -- and covered up -- on your watch.

How dare you?

As the commander in chief during two of the worst false flag attacks on American soil, how dare you attempt to now try to cover up the crimes of 9/11?

9/11 may have been carried out on the watch of the neocon branch of the false flag party, but it must have been planned years in advance, by both the "left" and "right" faces of that party. Indeed, the need for false flag attacks to justify military adventures in the Middle East was openly hinted at while Clinton was still in office by Jimmy Carter's neoliberal national security advisor.

9/11 Poll for Scientists, Engineers and Architects

Please answer the following very simple poll, in order to help people understand the events of 9/11. People without a scientific background sometimes have trouble understanding which theories are likely to be true and which are not. This poll is not intended to reach a preconceived result. Instead, I am just trying to get a sense of what the scientific, engineering and architectural community believes.

Please give your honest opinion, based upon your scientific, engineering or architecture knowledge and experience.

For each theory listed below, state whether you think -- given the available evidence and the laws of science -- such a theory is likely or unlikely to be true:

1. World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and/or 7 were intentionally
demolished.

2. The demolition was accomplished using conventional explosives, thermite or thermate.

3. The demolition was accomplished using directed energy weapons.

4. The demolition was accomplished using nuclear weapons.

5. Boeing airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11, as the government claims.

6. The video and photographs of Boeing airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were faked, and no airplane crashed into the buildings.

7. The video and photographs of Boeing airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were faked, and aircraft other than Boeing planes crashed into the buildings.

Please post your answers -- including your name and background (so that we can assess your credibility) here.

Thank you.

Postscript: Someone asked my view of the above-described questions. My view is not particularly important, as I am not a scientist, engineer or architect. However, I have compiled the views of many highly-credible scientists, engineers and architects who question the government's version of the destruction of the World Trade Centers. For anyone who believes the government's version of events, I invite you to see what these world-class scientists say.

Busted: 9/11 News Bias

A YouTube video called "Employees Expose FOX NEWS Distortions" contains an interesting internal memo from Fox News headquarters. The memo, dated March 23, 2004, says:

"The so-called 9/11 Commission has already been meeting. In fact, this is its eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both former and current Bush administration officials are testifying gives it a certain tension, but this is not 'what did he know and when did he know it' stuff. Don't turn this into Watergate"

A screenshot of the memo (from 5:25 into the video) is below.

It is clear (especially within the context of the other memos presented in the video) that Fox headquarters was essentially instructing its reporters to stay away from reporting anything controversial about 9/11. The memo constitutes evidence that Fox reporters were ordered not to mention that:

(1) It was obvious that the administration knew more than enough to stop the 9/11 attacks (that is -- in the words of the Watergate prosecutors -- Bush and Cheney knew a lot, and they knew it before the attacks started)

(2) The Commission wanted to interview Bush and Cheney, but they would only testify if they could be interviewed jointly, and if they were not under oath

(3) The investigation of 9/11 was important, because the government's story made no sense

While you might think that Fox News is an especially-biased news source, this is really just business as usual in terms of media coverage of 9/11.

NIST: "We are Unable to Provide a Full Explanation of the Total Collapse"

On April 11th, 2007, family members Bill Doyle and Bob McIlvaine, scientists Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan, architect Richard Gage and the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice filed a petition with NIST demanding that it correct its erroneous methods and findings.

On September 27th, NIST finally replied.

While the reply is mainly bogus, and the filers of the petition intend to appeal the decision of NIST not to correct the many fatal errors in its reports, attorney James Gourley (who drafted the petition) has pointed out one interesting statement. Specifically, NIST says in its reply:

"We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse".

Well, yes! That's exactly the point the petitioners are trying to make. No modern steel frame high-rise building has ever collapsed before or after 9/11 due to fire other than at WTC 1, 2 and 7, even though other fires have burned longer and hotter. And even if they somehow did start to collapse, the collapse would not have occurred at virtual free-fall speeds while creating enormous dust clouds right from the start.

So yes . . . NIST will forever be "unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse" unless it stops covering up the evidence that the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down by controlled demolition.

To Beat the Enemy, We Must Understand Him

Beat Your Enemy by Knowing Him

Military genius Sun Tzu said:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

In other words, you'll win every battle if you know your enemy's strengths, weaknesses and tactics in addition to your own. If you don't understand your enemy, you will win half of the time or less.

Improving our odds by at least 50% is worth it, right? So we should strive to learn as much as possible about those defending the official version of 9/11, in order to beat them in the struggle for truth.

Laugh at the Enemy

A prominent 9/11 activist, who has himself been harassed, intimidated and threatened by people trying to stop his 9/11 activism, sent me the following message:

"I came across a quote from a respected friend and author who has since passed on -- who said,

'Remember this simple principle: Behavior that receives attention is behavior that is strengthened.'

This is what these guys do -- they seek ATTENTION, and when they get it, they seek more of it by doing more of what they have done to get attention.

So my attention rather will be directed towards those who are doing some GOOD for the 9/11 Truth movement, by challenging the official story and by doing solid research and writing. If I am threatened with violence (for example), I plan to report that to the police rather than making the threats public.

By ignoring their rants, we stop feeding them. And if they actually do something worthwhile for 9/11 truth -- we should give credit (attention), hard as that may seem, so they will do more worthwhile activities".

The original Star Trek show had an episode where a malevolent creature fed off of negative energy. The humans and the Klingons -- being long-time enemies -- hated each other, and so the critter got more and more powerful. Finally, Spock figured out that, in order to defeat the creature, everyone had to stop feeding the negativity -- they literally laughed at the thing, which deprived it of energy, and so it left them alone.

No, I'm not a trekkie. But the episode captured -- in a graphic manner -- what the 9/11 activist was saying.

Sympathy for the Devil

Therefore, from a strictly selfish perspective of doing what is best for ourselves, we might want to have enough sympathy for our enemies to:

· Know their strengths, weaknesses, and fighting styles, to help improve our odds of beating them

· Step out of the endless cycle of negative, hostile, attack-and-counter-attacks, and laugh at our enemy, ourselves, and the situation we're in. Because, by making light of the whole thing, we are more likely to be left alone by the "bad guys"

Should We All Sit Around and Sing Kumbaya?

I'm not advocating that we give up our strength, energy, brains or commitment to promote 9/11 truth and to obtain justice against all of those who carried out the 9/11 attack. I'm not suggesting we become vegetarian and start singing "Kumbaya".

I'm suggesting that we fight as hard as we can for 9/11 truth and justice with total commitment (because this is a fight so important that we cannot and must not lose) and at the same time try to do it in such a way that we are working more or less positively and with a bit of understanding and humor.

What Do the Martial Arts Masters Say?

This is, admittedly, a tough paradox to resolve. It is easy to fight. Or it is easy to sit on the couch and stare at one's navel. It is very difficult to integrate these opposites and fight while maintaining a sense of stillness.

But that's exactly what the world's best martial artists do. Bruce Lee wrote extensively about the paradox of movement and stillness, of combat and peace, of doing and being. Morihei Ueshiba, who mastered several martial arts styles and then invented the martial art of Aikido, said that one of the keys to successful fighting was "stillness within movement." Other top martial artists have said the same thing. These folks were winners who excelled at kicking butt, and I would argue their wisdom is worth listening to.

What does that have to do with understanding our enemy? Well, we can't truly see our enemy unless we are still enough and unless we dial back our hatred of the enemy long enough to see him. If we are so caught up in the fight itself and in our hatred of the bad guy that we lose our ability to see straight, then we will just be flailing against our own ideas about who the enemy is, our own shadow, our own projection. If we do that, we will lose.

By the way, I have not always applied these principles myself, and I apologize to those who I have treated as enemies without seeing who they really were as individuals.

Outcompete the Bad Guys

The bottom line about disinformation is simple: Those fighting for truth have to outcompete those fighting to supress it. It is a good old-fashioned competition.

Understanding the tactics and styles of people spreading disinformation is helpful to minimize the effectiveness of those trying to disrupt the truth movement. But even more important is our ability to simply spread more information, more persuasively, than those spreading lies. If we spend more time discussing disinfo than putting out important info ourselves, we've lost.

The good news is that those who use brute force to obtain imperial control are not very creative. They are using the same false flag terror playbook they've been using for thousands of years. They're trotting out the same old "great leader will protect us from the bad guys" script they've been recycling again and again ever since the days of Caesar.

WE'VE got truth, creativity, passion, brains and justice on our side. Plus, we are defending our own own country, our homes and our families from people who have no loyalty to America or the Constitution.

WE CAN outsmart them and out-create them.

The Web and the Street

We all know the power of the Internet to spread truth. We thought that we would have years to harness the Net for good purposes, and hopefully we will. But the powers-that-be are trying to shut it down pronto or -- at the least -- tame it into a whimpering poodle, a sitcom-level boob-tube like media toy to spoon-feed comforting mush to the sheeple.

The net is now under massive attack by the government and corporate America. For example, the BBC revealed that the U.S. military views the internet as an enemy which should be fought (see also this article for further detail). And the big telecom companies are trying to erect virtual "toll booths" on the net which would limit access to the well-to-do, and make it much more difficult for people to access content which has not been pre-approved by the media conglomerates. See this article.

So download and save all information which you absolutely must have to continue to do your truthtelling and justice-seeking work. This article explains how to do it. Save the information to your computer or CDs. That way, even if they take down the Net, you will still have the most important information for yourself and to share with others.

More importantly, redouble your efforts to take information on the Net and convert it to something physical you can use out in the world to reach people who are not as web-savvy as you. Make flyers, posters, bumper stickers, pamphlets, CDs, DVDs, etc. Put the info on your car, on the street. Paint 9/11 messages in chalk on the sidewalk, and affixed to helium balloons released indoors. Make freeway blogs. Think of new ways to spread truth.

As a well-known 9/11 activist said a year ago "We've already won on the Web ... now we have to go out and conquer the street" with truth.

Can We Win?

Its carpe diem time, folks. There really is is an "info war" being waged against people's hearts and minds. And the stakes are high. The bad guys want to suppress the truth, spread myths, and take away people's freedom, power and options.

Alot of us are very creative, smart or passionate people. Engage that passion, intelligence and creativity to implement RIGHT NOW the highest possible leverage to spread the truth. Let's all work harder and work smarter.

If we outcompete the bad guys, we will win. It won't be easy, but no one ever said it would be. This is what we were born to do. This is why we're here. This is our calling and our destiny. And when we put everything we have into winning the competition for truth, our victory will be a shining legacy we leave for future generations.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you mad."
- Aldous Huxley

"There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear."
- Ted Turner

"We need a program of psychosurgery and political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.... Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electrical stimulation of the brain."
- Dr. Jose Delgado (U.S. government mind-control experimenter associated with the "MKULTRA" program who demonstrated a radio controlled bull on CNN in 1985)

"In March 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press ...They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."
- U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the Journalist is to destroy truth; To lie outright; To pervert; To vilify; To fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinton, the former chief of staff of the New York Times, called by his peers, "The Dean of his profession," in a speech at the New York Press Club.

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."
– Richard Salant, former President of CBS News

"The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. Especially if it is repeated over and over."
- Adolph Hitler

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth"
- Adolph Hitler

"All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion."
- Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
- Goebbels

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
- Goebbels

"Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehoods school. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool"
- Plato

"The real mass media are basically trying to divert people." ... "Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals"
– Noam Chomsky

"As long as each individual is facing the television tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege"
– Noam Chomsky

"Where once the student was taught that the unexamined life was not worth living, he is now taught that the profitably lived life is not worth examining."
– Benjamin Barber

"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."
– J. K. Galbraith

"The world's press is losing its ability to keep power in check"
– Frank Vogl

"The New York Times is for us what Pravda was for the Soviets"
– Gore Vidal

"The mass media is itself part of the same power structure that plunders the planet and inflicts human rights abuses on a massive scale"
– David Cromwell

"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic."
- Dresden James

"The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it."
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)"

"They bought the politicians and the news
They've got all the weapons (which they like to use)

But they are few and we're billions strong
We are the giant ... been sleeping for too long
Time to wake up and sing our victory song"
- The Voice

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

For generations, the wolves were able to fool the flock by dressing up in sheep's clothing and promising to protect them from the predators.

On 9/11/2001, the wolves got a little cocky, so they got careless. They hadn't washed their costumes, and because they were drunk with power and arrogance at how stupid the sheep were, they only zipped them up part way. So the costumes only covered parts of the wolves ... their wolf faces and the splattered blood of past victims stood out clearly, and it was obvious to any sheep with eyes to see that those strange creatures telling them "we'll protect you from the wolves" were not really sheep.

Did the sheep realize that these strange animals were predators -- who had only exploitation of the sheep in mind? Or did they just go along with the wolves' game, even though this time it was obvious that things did not add up?

For thousands of years, tyrants have been clothing themselves as protectors of the vulnerable. News traveled slowly and not very far. People got their news by word of mouth, government- sponsored plays or stories. People knew very little about what happened beyond their own town.

Today, with the Web, cellphones and other forms of instant communication, people can find out what's really been happening in their country and other parts of the world. They can get beyond the "official" histories written by the conquerers and their scribes, and find out the hidden history of false flag terrorism and manipulation of truth.

Those who carried out 9/11 left numerous clues that it was a false flag attack: from the obvious stand down of the military; to the physics-defying demolition of Building 7 and the Twin Towers; to Cheney's control of all of the war games and his angry declaration that "of course the orders still stand!" as Flight 77 approached and then plowed into the Pentagon.

With the Net, people's ability to see that 9/11 was a false flag is easier than it has ever been in history. Will people see that Cheney and the other high-level officials pushing the "official" 9/11 myth are wolves in sheep's clothing? Will they see that the blood on their clothes is the blood of innocent Americans who they killed? Will they see that they were dressed up as patriots and heroes trying to defend the skies and the American people on 9/11, when they were actually the ones doing the killing?

Will people act like Homo Sapiens (which means "wise men")? Will we reclaim our freedom, our liberty, and our power to govern ourselves?

Or will we devolve into Homo Sheepiens? This is our last best chance to wake up and to evolve in order to avoid to protect ourselves from those who wish to manipulate and prey on us. Given how obvious it is that 9/11 was a false flag operation, if we do not wake up to the fact that wolves in clearly-fake sheep's clothing attacked us this time, we will have little chance of waking up before we are all in grave danger.

Indeed, I would argue that we are at a major fork in the road. If we do not get it this time, we will have responded to a key moment in history and made the wrong choice. Instead of rising up to the challenge and becoming more human, intelligent, resourceful, adaptable, visionary and courageous, we will have chosen to become more like animals who are governed by fear and instinct.

Are you a human being or a trembling sheep? It is time to make the choice.

Distracting The Defenders: Radar Injects, Ringing Phones and Fools Errands

Everyone who has taken a fair look at the evidence has concluded that -- at the least -- the U.S. military was intentionally stood down on 9/11. There are numerous lines of evidence that certain high-level people within the U.S. military participated in the intentional stand down.

But what of the many rank and file employees of the various defense departments who were good men and women devoted to protecting their country? Why didn't they stop the 9/11 attacks?

Part of the answer is that they were cut out of the loop by the conspirators, and didn't have the information or access to be able to take preventative action. But another part of the answer is that they were bombarded with distractions, so that they could not focus on their job.

As one example, a December 9, 2001 Toronto Star article (pay-per-view; reprinted here), stated:

"Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated information, what's known as an 'inject,' is purged from the screens".

In other words, someone had inserted false radar blips onto air traffic controllers' screens as part of the 5 or more war game exercises occurring at the time of the attacks (Vice President Cheney was apparently in charge of ALL of the war games and coordinated the government's "response" to the attacks; see this Department of State announcement; this CNN article; and this previously-cited essay).

And air traffic controllers claim they were still tracking what they thought were hijacked planes long after all 4 of the real planes had crashed. This implies that false radar blips remained on their screens after all 4 planes went down, long after the military claims they purged the phantom war-game-related radar signals

As a second example, fighter jets were also sent far off-course over the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the attacks (testimony of Senator Mark Dayton), neutralizing their ability to intercept the hijacked airliners. To this day, no one has admitted being the person who sent the aircrafts on a fools' errand.

A former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew "like the back of my hand" and who handled two actual hijackings says that that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off, and that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon tracked three of the four flights from the point of their hijacking to hitting their targets (also, listen to this interview). Therefore, it is very odd that aircraft were sent off to chase phantoms over the Atlantic.

As a third second example, NORAD and other employees trying to defend the nations' skies on 9/11 were inundated with massive, simultaneous phone calls. While it is still unclear, it is possible that the barrage of phone calls was part of a coordinated terror drill and a pre-planned distraction. Further research needs to be done to verify whether or not this was the case.

As the above examples show, the honorable rank and file military people trying to protect the U.S. on 9/11 never had a chance.

NIST Whistleblower

A former NIST employee made the following statements regarding NIST's politicization, corruption and lack of interest in sticking to science (these emails were forwarded to me by a prominent 9/11 truth activist; I simply edited them to remove names so as to protect the anonymity of the whistleblower):

Communication dated October 1, 2007:

"NBS/NIST had become fully hijacked from the scientific into the political realm well before he became involved. That hijacking happened in the mid-90's, and has only grown stronger to the present. Prior to that time, the Director of NBS/NIST was appointed via the political process (Presidential nomination, Congressional confirmation), but with the firm understanding in the scientific community that the job was essentially a non-political one, as the leader of the government's premiere scientific research institution. Directors were carefully selected from a field of well-known senior scientists with management skills, typically from within the NBS staff, after gaining much credibility in their fields. Once appointed, Directors tended to stay on for several years, through different administrations in an essentially career mode, usually until they retired. That all changed under the Clinton administration.

I saw it happen. After retirement from the Army, in 1983 I joined then-NBS as a scientist on the staff. After 3 years, I decided to move on (engineering on the Star Wars project). Becoming sick of that charade in 1989, I succumbed to my former boss' entreaties and returned to now-NIST in a supervisory scientist position at the top civil service grade. I retired from there in 2001, and worked as a part-time contractor for them until last year. So I've had a chance to observe some of the higher-level NIST goings-on up close and personal for some time, and was personally involved in some of its politicization.

I don't know whether the NBS Director, Dr. John Lyons, was forced into retirement by the Clinton administration; I just remember the abruptness of the change after only 3 years on his job. He was replaced by a relatively unknown and also quite young scientist from DARPA. What I remember about her is her lack of credibility in representing NIST in scientific circles, her choice of senior staff with little regard for their scientific standing, and her keen emphasis on political sensitivities. She departed after a long four years, and the Director's office (and hence the whole Institute) has been in turmoil ever since. Four of her six successors to the present time have been "Acting", meaning in a practical sense that they may well not have had the personal credibility and scientific standing to survive the scrutiny of the confirmation process.

About the time of this major reduction in stature of the Director's office, some other major shifts took place at NIST, the echoes of which may have direct relevance to [9/11 truth]. Prior to that time, we were focused on scientific research and standards development that tended to be independent of what other government agencies were doing. All of a sudden, the senior levels of NIST were flooded with what I perhaps over-harshly termed "political commisars", whose job was principally to deal with what may be called "the political sensitivities" of our work and also making sure it supported big industry.

That support became an overtly-stated major mission for us. We lost a major share of our direct research funding, and from then on have been largely dependent upon receiving funds from other government agencies (the majority from Depts of Defense and Energy) for research and standards-making to support their own work. This "other agency" work amounted to about 40% of our total budget in my last several years there. In essence, we lost our scientific independence, and became little more than "hired guns".

When I first heard of [9/11 truth] and how the NIST "scientists" involved in 911 seemed to act in very un-scientific ways, it was not at all surprising to me. By 2001, everyone in NIST leadership had been trained to pay close heed to political pressures. There was no chance that NIST people "investigating" the 911 situation could have been acting in the true spirit of scientific independence, nor could they have operated at all without careful consideration of political impact. Everything that came from the hired guns was by then routinely filtered through the front office, and assessed for political implications before release.

Sorry this blurb became overly long, but I did want to make sure that an "insider's view" got onto the record."

Email dated October 2, 2007:

"A little more general insight into what I referred to as the NIST politicization, some of which may be of interest to you. In addition to the NIST "front office" looking closely over our shoulders, we had three major external oversight groups keeping close track of our little part of NIST, which admittedly dealt at times with some sensitive issues regarding technological security.

One was NSA (no surprises there!), another was the HQ staff of the Department of Commerce, which scrutinized our work very closely and frequently wouldn't permit us to release papers or give talks without changes to conform to their way of looking at things. A third was a bit of a surprise to some -- the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had a policy person specifically delegated to provide oversight on our work. Just as a reminder, the OMB is an arm of the Executive Office of the President.

One more tidbit - a gentleman named William A Jeffrey served as NIST Director from July 2005 until last month. Interestingly, Dr. Jeffrey's previous assignment was in the EOP's Office of Science and Technology Policy! Talk about high-level oversight!! So one can be certain that on so hot a topic as yours, Dr. Jeffrey (and his previous political handlers in the WH - if they still were "previous") would be very personally involved at every step.

I don't know what more I can add that might be relevant, as I have been once-removed from NIST for the past 6 years as a contractor via [a defense company]. However, I do have some good NIST friends who are rather highly placed, so if you have any other questions re NIST, I might be able to ferret out an answer. Would be worth a shot anyway."