Why did the Truth Movement fail ?

Oystein said:
But paloalto says he is NOT part of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
If true, this makes engaging with him off-topic :p
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Neat but only partial truth. It is only off the topic of Cosmic Yak's tactical attempt to engage paloalto in debate of the OP. The scope of the OP topic is broader than Cosmic Yak's focus in his challenge to paloalto.

The mission of the truth movement has never been tightly defined as several members have commented BUT from the outset it included technical and political concerns.

The "off topic" aspect is that paloalto and several of those responding to him persist in discussing details. paloalto in his SOP poorly focussed "wall of text" style. The failure of the truth movement was not in any of those specific details. Rather it was in management at the more strategic level. And that is where the OP is - or should - be focussed. Whether or not it COULD have progressed further is not the issue. The failure was that it did not adequately cover the whole scope of its concerns. It lost the technical debates and did not effectively pursue other issues. Sure it was a failure to define objectives or aims. But those objectives should have addressed the full scope of the concerns. They effectively retreated into one side of the debate - and got thrashed on the technical issues.
 
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dudalb said:
I always wondered why MIHOP is so very much more popular in the Truth Movement then LIHOP. Both are worthless BS, but at least with LIHOP you don't have the idiocy of trying to disprove indisputable facts:that four airliners were hijacked by Mideastern terrorist and flown into the WTC and the Pentagon and a meadow in Pennslyvania.
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A similar question would be why are JFK CT's so intent on disproving that Oswald shot Kennedy? As others have stated in this thread, a conspiracy involving Oswald is much more credible, and fits the facts much better.

It seems that the CT mindset is that everything about the "official story" has to be false. It is also much easier to hunt anomalies in the "official story" than it is to construct a plausible alternative to it, and this seems to be where most CT's direct their efforts.

The truther narrative, that the PTB arranged for planes to be flown into the buildings and explosively demolished them never made sense. Why would they do both? Either one would have been sufficient to provoke the "war on terror" and invasions of Afghanistan and Iran. Had the towers not collapsed from the plane impacts, there still would have been several hundred, if not a few thousand deaths. Similarly had the buildings been blown up and the explosions attributed to terrorist bombs. The Truther scenario makes no sense whatsoever.
 
Axxman300 said:
If they received information about a "Huge Attack" it was not specific. And everyone, including the Jordanian Press knew Al Qaeda was planning to attack CONUS because Al Qaeda backers told them something was on the way. They didn't know because the Planes Operation was kept to a handful of AQ operatives, in fact it's not clear that all 19 hijackers knew they were going to die, just the pilots (I think they all knew).

If CIA knew it involved aircraft, they were the only ones. DoD got the same information that April, 2001, and promptly closed off public access to all military bases and reservations in CONUS. If the intel clearly spelled out hijacked airliners as missiles to target the WTC, Pentagon, and Capitol Building, why close off the bases? Why not put anti-aircraft missiles around all of the targets? Why not maintain an a fully armed CAP of F-15's, and have standby aircraft that were armed at the ready 24/7?



And the DoJ already had Ramzi Yousef, the guy who came up with the plot, which mostly focused on blowing up international flights over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. As far as the DoJ, FBI, and CIA were concerned, Bojinka was over. It wasn't until August, 2001 that the CIA and FBI caught on that Al Qaeda operatives were taking flight lessons in CONUS, but their concern was the many other bad things a terrorist can do with an airplane.

I keep telling anyone who reads that the DoS issued a travel warning in July, 2001, warning of an Al Qaeda plot to hijack commercial jets. Their focus was the Middle East and the Med, but obviously they had an intelligence source that put the words: Al Qaeda - Commercial Jetliners - Hijack together in one report. For all your claims of research you have yet to look into the single best example of an advanced warning for an Al Qaeda attack to take place between August 1, and September 1, 2001. It is safe to assume that the intel for this travel warning did not come from CIA, or FBI. The NSA didn't prioritize Al Qaeda communications, so it didn't come from them. This means that either the DIA had something, or there was a credible walk-in at one of the embassies in the Middle East. That means there is a CIA cable in a file somewhere, or a DIA cable in a file somewhere, and the have to be memos in DoS files regarding the travel warning.

I have never seen them, nor have I seen them referenced by any credible 9-11 historian, and certainly no Truther wants to touch this one.





Just because they're friends doesn't mean proprietary, compartmentalized intelligence was freely shared. Scheuer's ALEC Station staff were uncomfortably loyal to him, and it's hard to say what Blee was briefed on when he took over. He certainly did not share Sheuer's histeria about an incoming Al Qaeda attack.



Torture was not in the CIA playbook prior to 9/11/2001.



Only because it undermines your claim.



You didn't read what I wrote.




No. The FBI dropped the ball. The FBI doesn't take orders from the CIA, and vice versa.
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This makes more sense than paloalto's scenario. I strongly suspect, that on the morning of 9/11/2001, a number of CIA and FBI people said, "Oh ****, that's what those bastards were up to." It's pretty clear that they were well aware that they were up to something. They just hadn't figured out enough to start making arrests. paloalto seems determined to shoehorn it into a LIHOP scenario.
 
CORed said:
This makes more sense than paloalto's scenario. I strongly suspect, that on the morning of 9/11/2001, a number of CIA and FBI people said, "Oh ****, that's what those bastards were up to." It's pretty clear that they were well aware that they were up to something. They just hadn't figured out enough to start making arrests. paloalto seems determined to shoehorn it into a LIHOP scenario.
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I have asked paloalto if he could have predicted the attacks exactly, given the information available at the time.
To my enormous surprise, he has thus far failed to answer.
 
CORed said:
A similar question would be why are JFK CT's so intent on disproving that Oswald shot Kennedy? As others have stated in this thread, a conspiracy involving Oswald is much more credible, and fits the facts much better.

It seems that the CT mindset is that everything about the "official story" has to be false. It is also much easier to hunt anomalies in the "official story" than it is to construct a plausible alternative to it, and this seems to be where most CT's direct their efforts.

The truther narrative, that the PTB arranged for planes to be flown into the buildings and explosively demolished them never made sense. Why would they do both? Either one would have been sufficient to provoke the "war on terror" and invasions of Afghanistan and Iran. Had the towers not collapsed from the plane impacts, there still would have been several hundred, if not a few thousand deaths. Similarly had the buildings been blown up and the explosions attributed to terrorist bombs. The Truther scenario makes no sense whatsoever.
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This is what makes paloalto's theories more interesting (at least for me).
He accepts entirely that Al Qaeda was responsible, and is basing his ideas on the official documents.
It is a reading that is both unusual and untenable, but it is at least more grounded in reality than the no-planers. Though I disagree entirely with his conclusions, he has made more of an effort (some might say, looking at his infamous walls of text, perhaps too much of an effort) to provide evidence for them than many other truthers.
This approach, however, has been as woefully unsuccessful as that of the hologram brigade and the dustification posse, and this is why I still think it is worth examining the reasons for this in this thread.
paloalto: are you going to share your conversations with the authorities with us? I am genuinely interested.
Another question: have you convinced anyone from the Truth Movement of the validity of your theories?
 
My issue with Palo Alto is his glaring unfamiliarity with how the US Intelligence apparatus works. He talks a good game with names and dates and chains of command, but it's all CIA all the time. His claims are devoid of history, and the other things that were going on at the White House, FBI, and CIA from 1994 to 2001 that directly impacted the success of the Al Qaeda strike.

The "C" in CIA stands for "Central", meaning that all foreign intelligence is funneled through Langley. It is the CIA that directs the NSA on which targets to prosecute for communications intercepts. The NSA intercepts just about all electronic communications from the Middle East, North Africa, and key countries on the European side of the Mediterranean. However, all of that data is not screened, or translated unless an NSA customer like the CIA, or DoD, or DIA has a specific request.

On 9-11, 2001, the head of the NSA initiated an inventory of collected data using key words and phrases, and within 10 days it was clear that the NSA had everything related to the attacks except for the targets.

The point is that on 9-10, 2001, the NSA had no clue what they'd been sitting on. This is because NOBODY AT CIA had asked for that information, or had tasked them to follow certain cell phone, and land line, and email accounts. Nobody from the FBI had asked via DIA or CIA for any information. And while the NSA at the time could not provide any outgoing replies to Al Qaeda from within the US, they could have revealed all of the incoming communications.

The bottom line is that there were two units hunting Al Qaeda prior to 9-11: the CIA's Alec Station, and the FBI's Al Qaeda unit. Both were insulated from their larger agency and bureau counter terrorist desks(which is why there were no NSA intercepts) . Both had very different missions with the FBI looking to make arrests to prevent an attack, and the CIA hoping to either run an asset inside Al Qaeda, or wanting a clearer picture of their structure. All of this took place against the backdrop of the late 1990's where the concept of Arab terrorists was politically incorrect and thus career suicide, in a country where the President had been impeached due to scandal yet remained in office putting himself in a no-win situation. Throw in the bad blood between the CIA and FBI thanks to the Aldrich Ames case and you had a recipe for failure.
 
Axxman300 said:
My issue with Palo Alto is his glaring unfamiliarity with how the US Intelligence apparatus works. He talks a good game with names and dates and chains of command, but it's all CIA all the time. His claims are devoid of history, and the other things that were going on at the White House, FBI, and CIA from 1994 to 2001 that directly impacted the success of the Al Qaeda strike.

The "C" in CIA stands for "Central", meaning that all foreign intelligence is funneled through Langley. It is the CIA that directs the NSA on which targets to prosecute for communications intercepts. The NSA intercepts just about all electronic communications from the Middle East, North Africa, and key countries on the European side of the Mediterranean. However, all of that data is not screened, or translated unless an NSA customer like the CIA, or DoD, or DIA has a specific request.

On 9-11, 2001, the head of the NSA initiated an inventory of collected data using key words and phrases, and within 10 days it was clear that the NSA had everything related to the attacks except for the targets.

The point is that on 9-10, 2001, the NSA had no clue what they'd been sitting on. This is because NOBODY AT CIA had asked for that information, or had tasked them to follow certain cell phone, and land line, and email accounts. Nobody from the FBI had asked via DIA or CIA for any information. And while the NSA at the time could not provide any outgoing replies to Al Qaeda from within the US, they could have revealed all of the incoming communications.

The bottom line is that there were two units hunting Al Qaeda prior to 9-11: the CIA's Alec Station, and the FBI's Al Qaeda unit. Both were insulated from their larger agency and bureau counter terrorist desks(which is why there were no NSA intercepts) . Both had very different missions with the FBI looking to make arrests to prevent an attack, and the CIA hoping to either run an asset inside Al Qaeda, or wanting a clearer picture of their structure. All of this took place against the backdrop of the late 1990's where the concept of Arab terrorists was politically incorrect and thus career suicide, in a country where the President had been impeached due to scandal yet remained in office putting himself in a no-win situation. Throw in the bad blood between the CIA and FBI thanks to the Aldrich Ames case and you had a recipe for failure.
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It's very easy in hindsight to say that they should have figured out what Al Queda was up to. It's a bit more of a leap from there to, they did know what they were up to, and deliberately ignored it to further Bush's agenda of invading Iraq. I strongly doubt that career CIA or FBI agents would have followed such orders even if they were given.
 
Allen773 said:
Failure was embedded in the "Truth" "Movement" from the start. That's why.
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Yes because they don't have science on their side, just a "belief" that all the damage was not done by 19 terrorists flying nearly fulling loaded with fuel jets. And the resulting fires that weren't suppressed for hours. Then old gravity came into the event. Even Hulsey with his architectural training didn't account for the fire on the structures. His and others lack of evidence to counter the data the incident.
 
bknight said:
Yes because they don't have science on their side, just a "belief" that all the damage was not done by 19 terrorists flying nearly fulling loaded with fuel jets. And the resulting fires that weren't suppressed for hours. Then old gravity came into the event. Even Hulsey with his architectural training didn't account for the fire on the structures. His and others lack of evidence to counter the data the incident.
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Only on the MIHOP side, not the LIHOP, which is why I am trying to get paloalto to engage.
He's still about (last activity 7.30 this morning), but has presumably run away from the thread. Again.
No doubt we'll do this all over again in a few months. What an exciting prospect.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Only on the MIHOP side, not the LIHOP, which is why I am trying to get paloalto to engage.
He's still about (last activity 7.30 this morning), but has presumably run away from the thread. Again.
No doubt we'll do this all over again in a few months. What an exciting prospect.
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(s)he still won't have any science on the side of a conspiracy.
 
I just listened to a podcast on hunting Bin Laden. Michael Scheuer mentioned how they knew in advance that planes-as-a-weapon were a thing that CIA knew about. Having read a Nelson Demille book which featured this as a plot point, I knew about it too.

The truth movement was absent from the discussion.
 
carlitos said:
I just listened to a podcast on hunting Bin Laden. Michael Scheuer mentioned how they knew in advance that planes-as-a-weapon were a thing that CIA knew about. Having read a Nelson Demille book which featured this as a plot point, I knew about it too.

The truth movement was absent from the discussion.
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I was told that they war-gamed hijacked airliners-as-missiles at Langley at least once between 1999 and 2001. I just don't know the specifics of who or when or what the targets were.

Again, in July, 2001, the DoS issued a travel warning stating that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack commercial airliners. The warning ran through the first week in September. That means that there was intelligence on an Al Qaeda operation to at least hijack planes. The problem with the DoS warning was it focused on the Middle East and the Mediterranean. To my knowledge, the source of this intelligence has never been publicly explored, even by the 9-11 Commission.
 
Axxman300 said:
I was told that they war-gamed hijacked airliners-as-missiles at Langley at least once between 1999 and 2001. I just don't know the specifics of who or when or what the targets were.

Again, in July, 2001, the DoS issued a travel warning stating that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack commercial airliners. The warning ran through the first week in September. That means that there was intelligence on an Al Qaeda operation to at least hijack planes. The problem with the DoS warning was it focused on the Middle East and the Mediterranean. To my knowledge, the source of this intelligence has never been publicly explored, even by the 9-11 Commission.
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Deep throat. ;)
 
Axxman300 said:
I was told that they war-gamed hijacked airliners-as-missiles at Langley at least once between 1999 and 2001. I just don't know the specifics of who or when or what the targets were.

Again, in July, 2001, the DoS issued a travel warning stating that Al Qaeda was planning to hijack commercial airliners. The warning ran through the first week in September. That means that there was intelligence on an Al Qaeda operation to at least hijack planes. The problem with the DoS warning was it focused on the Middle East and the Mediterranean. To my knowledge, the source of this intelligence has never been publicly explored, even by the 9-11 Commission.
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The U.S. Navy also war-gamed an attack on Pearl Harbor by carrier based aircraft as early as 1932. But the parsimonious explanation is bureaucratic incompetence rather than conspiracy.
 
Redwood said:
The U.S. Navy also war-gamed an attack on Pearl Harbor by carrier based aircraft as early as 1932. But the parsimonious explanation is bureaucratic incompetence rather than conspiracy.
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In hindsight that may appear to be the explanation, but in real terms it is difficult to maintain a "high" alert for such occurrences is difficult to maintain for long periods of time. People tend to fall into a sense of security and lower awareness as time ticks by them.
 
Redwood said:
The U.S. Navy also war-gamed an attack on Pearl Harbor by carrier based aircraft as early as 1932. But the parsimonious explanation is bureaucratic incompetence rather than conspiracy.
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A more accurate descriptive term would be "pusillanimous explanation of
bureaucratic incompetence rather than conspiracy".
 
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Fonebone said:
A more accurate descriptive term would be "pusillanimous explanation of
bureaucratic incompetence rather than conspiracy".
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Given that not one truther I have ever encountered has had enough intestinal fortitude to actually stand up and do something about their beliefs, I would say that was rich coming from you.
Accusing those who disagree with you of cowardice is rather lame, and also unsupported by evidence.
What is also unsupported by evidence is your claim of conspiracy. How about showing this famous truther courage and presenting your complete and evidenced theory of what happened on September 11th?
This would make a refreshing change from your usual tactic of posting and then running away.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Given that not one truther I have ever encountered has had enough intestinal fortitude to actually stand up and do something about their beliefs, I would say that was rich coming from you.
Accusing those who disagree with you of cowardice is rather lame, and also unsupported by evidence.
What is also unsupported by evidence is your claim of conspiracy. How about showing this famous truther courage and presenting your complete and evidenced theory of what happened on September 11th?
This would make a refreshing change from your usual tactic of posting and then running away.
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I don't disagree with your broader point, but I believe that Fonebone was describing December 7th in what you quoted there.
 
carlitos said:
I don't disagree with your broader point, but I believe that Fonebone was describing December 7th in what you quoted there.
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I concur with your conclusion concerning the Pearl Harbor attack. This is much like 9/11 intra-agency fumbling of information and failure to pass on information between agencies.
 
Mark F said:
All the genuine truth seekers got the answers they were looking for years ago. All that remain today are POE's, attention seeking trolls and the hopelessly unreachable.
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Speaking of which, I think it's about time to change my sig.

Ask questions. Demand answers. But be prepared to accept the answers, or don't ask questions in the first place.
​
Nowadays there aren't enough people who genuinely have questions, it's not worth keeping it.
 
pgimeno said:
Speaking of which, I think it's about time to change my sig.

Ask questions. Demand answers. But be prepared to accept the answers, or don't ask questions in the first place.
​
Nowadays there aren't enough people who genuinely have questions, it's not worth keeping it.
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Or don't ask questions you really don't want answers. ;)
 
Mongrel said:
As njslim alluded to, I believe many of them are just being contrarian. If they truly believe it's not because they've been swayed by whatever source they're quoting today - they start out with the belief that The Government\The Man\Science is wrong and cherry pick whatever backs them up, no matter how tenuous or inappropriate.
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True. Someone told me once that if vaccines were banned, antivaxxers would do a 180 degree turn and become the most ardent vaccine proponents imaginable. It's not about truth to them, it's about being among the select few who have understood something the masses are still clueless about.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
True. Someone told me once that if vaccines were banned, antivaxxers would do a 180 degree turn and become the most ardent vaccine proponents imaginable. It's not about truth to them, it's about being among the select few who have DO NOT understood something the masses are still clueless about.
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FTFY :thumbsup:;)
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Given that he accepts that Al Qaeda flew planes into the WTC and elsewhere, what science would he need?
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No CD, thermite, Nano thermite, US grounded all military aircraft before the planes hit their targets. All I could think of in 30 seconds, sorry.
 
bknight said:
In hindsight that may appear to be the explanation, but in real terms it is difficult to maintain a "high" alert for such occurrences is difficult to maintain for long periods of time. People tend to fall into a sense of security and lower awareness as time ticks by them.
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Except the War and Navy Departments sent out special warnings the last week in November. See here (Gawdzilla's website).
 
SpitfireIX said:
Except the War and Navy Departments sent out special warnings the last week in November. See here (Gawdzilla's website).
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I have no issue with the War Department sending warnings, what I said in my earlier post is that it is difficult to be in a "high" state of readiness for long periods of time, and I'll add one to two weeks is a long time in the military.
 
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