Viewers See History Channel 9/11 Special As Straw Man Hit Piece
Documentary set up bias straw man arguments, ignored key evidence, afforded debunkers overwhelming majority of time - so-called "experts" Popular Mechanics are on the same corporate payroll as the History Channel itself, which is owned by Disney, GE and Hearst Publishing

Prisonplanet | August 21, 2007

By Paul Joseph Watson

Initial reaction to last night's two hour History Channel Special on the 9/11 truth movement was vehement and conclusive - the show was nothing more than another biased hit piece that manufactured straw man arguments, ignored key evidence, and afforded debunkers to talk at length while ridiculing any other viewpoints.

According to viewers who were unfortunate to have to sit through 120 minutes of yellow journalism, the program was very similar to a previous BBC hit piece - an outright smear attempt that abandoned any pretense of neutrality early on and sought to vigorously attack so-called conspiracy theories.

Though producers of the show promised Alex Jones directly that the documentary was not going to be a hit piece, according to viewers it was replete with distortion and deception, all delivered in the kind of condescending tone we have become used to from the establishment media.

- According to 9/11 researcher James Gourley, the debunkers attempted to wriggle out of Secretary Norman Mineta's bombshell testimony about Cheney's actions in the Emergency Operations Center, by claiming that Mineta was talking about Flight 93 and not the plane that hit the Pentagon. In reality, Mineta makes it clear in his testimony that he is talking about Flight 77, "the airplane coming in to the Pentagon," and this is then confirmed by Commissioner Lee Hamilton.

- The debunkers admitted that temperatures inside the twin towers were not hot enough to melt steel, but claimed that they were hot enough to weaken steel and cause the collapse. The debunkers uniformly failed to address the fact that firefighters and first responders described witnessing molten steel beneath the rubble of the towers and they also ignored Professor Steven Jones' scientific analysis of the iron-rich microspheres found in the rubble. In a website posting last night, Professor Jones stated that he emphatically pushed the dust analysis during his interview with the producers, but the topic was completely overlooked. The New York Times reported that the molten steel was "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered" but the History Channel, mirroring NIST, failed to address the issue.

- The debunkers mentioned WTC 7 only in passing and completely failed to address why the building, which wasn't hit by a plane, collapsed in 7 seconds into its own footprint after suffering only limited fire damage from falling debris. They also failed to mention why news outlets were reporting the collapse of Building 7 over an hour before it actually fell.

- The wargames that dovetailed 9/11 and deliberately confused NORAD personnel so as to slow response to the real attack were completely excluded.

- The Able Danger program and how the hijackers were discovered before 9/11 was completely excluded.

- The fact that the money man behind the hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials before and on the morning of 9/11, was completely excluded.

- William Rodriguez' first-hand testimony of explosions prior to the impact of the planes was completely excluded, as was the testimony of numerous firefighters who attested to bombs and explosions.

- NBC reporter Pat Dawson claimed that FDNY Chief of Safety Albert Turi had only described explosions, not bombs, going off, contradicting Dawson's own report at the time which stated, "Reports of a secondary device, that is another ‘bomb’ going off."

According to another blogger, the whole tone of the program was crafted to be antagonistic towards those questioning the official version.

Conspiracy theorists were derided throughout the program as being ignorant, mean and kooky with no personal lives. On the other hand, the Popular Mechanics editors were given the last word on each and every subject along with the undeserving title of “expert”. To the best of my knowledge, not one of the pencil pushing staff members have any credentials that are relevant to any aspect of 9/11 truth. Of course it was the conspiracy theorists that were accused of not having any of the valid expertise necessary for stating their assertions logically. They do this by completely ignoring the very existence and works of groups like Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Pilots for 9/11 Truth. Also just as expected, the History Channel failed to disclose the Chertoff connection and other major conflicts of interests that have clearly drastically compromised the research and conclusions of their so-called “experts”. It was disingenuous and deceptive from the very start. It only got worse.

As we reported previously, the makers of the hit piece first advertised the show as a response to "outrageous" theories about 9/11, but then immediately back-pedaled and altered the program description on their website after we highlighted the blatant biased agenda of the piece and its multiple corporate conflicts of interest.

Hearst Publishing's Popular Mechanics, the premiere name in yellow journalism, were featured on the show as the most prominent debunkers, shilling for their corporate bosses in a brazen display of cronyism.

The History Channel is part of the A&E Television Network which is jointly owned by The Walt Disney Company (37.5%), The Hearst Corporation (37.5%), and NBC Universal (25%).

The owners of Popular Mechanics are also the joint owners of the History Channel!

Once again it is not a good starting point for a neutral investigation when the people you choose to represent one side of a factual debate are actually on the payroll.

It makes Fox News appear fair and balanced in comparison!

Furthermore, the other joint owner of The History Channel, NBC Universal, is run by General Electric, the world's second largest corporation and one of the major players within the military industrial complex.

GE is a major supplier of arms and the “war on terrorism” has seen GE’s government and military contracts rise substantially to over $2.2 billion.

In short, GE really has very little to gain and a great deal to lose from probing into questions concerning the possibility of 9/11 being a military intelligence operation to seed the "war on terror" and to justify a huge increase in military activity around the globe.

Despite the fact that this charade was seemingly another crude smear job, we should thank the History Channel for attacking us because it only ensures that more people will check out the evidence for themselves and discover what was deliberately buried by the debunkers.

As we head towards the sixth anniversary of 9/11, our numbers are larger than ever and our credibility is growing, while lying corporate media whores like the History Channel lose respectability at a rate rivaled only by their hemoraging of viewers.