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Scientific American's Dishonest Attack On 911Research

repost | 03.06.2005 22:56 | Analysis | World

Shermer uses an array of deceptive methods to persuade the reader that challenges to the official story of the 9/11 attack are worthy only of ridicule and should not be scrutinized. His primary technique is to use hoaxes and unscientific ideas -- long promoted on the web and in videos -- to bracket the valid ideas that he seeks to shield the reader from. That Shermer went to such great lengths to thoroughly misrepresent the painstaking, scientific, evidence-based work of 911Research is a testament to the site's success.

moments before collapse
moments before collapse


Scientific American's Dishonest Attack On 911Research
by Jim Hoffman
May 26, 2005

The editors of Scientific American followed in the footsteps of Popular Mechanics in exploiting a trusted brand in order to protect the perpetrators of the mass murder of 9/11/01. The column by Michael Shermer in the June, 2005 issue of Scientific American, titled Fahrenheit 2777, is an attempt to deceive the magazine's readers into dismissing the overwhelming evidence that 9/11 was an inside job without ever looking at that evidence. More specifically, Shermer attempts to inoculate readers against looking at the decidedly scientific refutation of the official story found on our website, 911Research, with a cluster of disinformation techniques including:

* Mis-attributing to 911Research the erroneous statement that steel's melting point is 2,777ºF

* Falsely implying that 911Research embraces a straw-man argument that the official account of the Twin Towers' collapses depends on the fires having melted steel.

* Contextualizing 911Research as nonsense by surrounding its mention with absurd claims, and racist ideas.

Although the column aims to marginalize the 9/11 Truth Movement generally (without ever acknowledging it by name), mentioning the books Inside Job, The New Pearl Harbor, and 9/11: The Great Illusion, it appears to be aimed primarily at 911Research for several reasons:

* It is one of only two sites Shermer mentions.
* It's the alleged source of his 2,777 figure.
* It's the target of his mis-attribution of the straw man claim about melted steel.
* Its most persuasively argued claim -- that the Towers were destroyed through controlled demolition -- is the only point Shermer attempts to debunk.

(continued)
 http://www.911research.wtc7.net/essays/sciam/index.html

repost
- Homepage: http://www.911research.wtc7.net/essays/sciam/index.html

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Ohhh! Didums

03.06.2005 23:27

Scientific American actually bothers to blunder through and dispute some scientific facts and you get upset?

Move on... doing something positive guys.

-


Pretty weak

04.06.2005 09:11

I have no idea whether these 11 September "attacks" were or were not as the authorities claimed to be; it would not surprise me to discover that they were an "inside job", neither would confirmation of the offical line surprise me either, but many of the arguments of 9-11 Research are pretty weak. They make the age-old mistake of discounting something just because it does not appear "logical".

Try reading the 9-11 Research site with a "sceptic" cap on and you'll see what I mean.

But I agree with Oh Didums...there are more important things to get worked up about at the moment and much positive action to be done.

artaud


(F)artaud

05.06.2005 02:00

But I agree with Oh Didums...there are more important things to get worked up about at the moment and much positive action to be done.
artaud



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WTF???? 9/11 is the KEY to bringing down the whole House of Cards. The arguments that 9/11 was an inside job are weak? What the fuck planet are you living on arsehole? Jeeeesus. You fuckers are going to get nowhere - with anything. Or are you a paid spooks/shills. Let us know, you fucking dumbasses.

Bubba


Lying for the Empire _ Two faced Hoffman is at the forefront

14.06.2005 16:41

When I first started reading this, I thought that maybe Jim Hoffman was in the unfamiliar territory of telling the truth for once. So much for that idea !

Firstly, let me say that I am in total agreement that the buildings were deliberately demolished and that Scientific American's attempted debunking is deserving of the contempt that Hoffman gave it.

Here's my compilation of S11 evidence

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/truth.html

where - unlike Hoffman - I try to promote every aspect of the evidence, rather than cherry pick for the purposes of a limited hangout agenda. For those who might find the compilation overwhelming to begin with, here is a summary article.

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/manufactured.html

Let's look behind the scenes of Hoffman's pretend counter to Shermer .

Why is Hoffman "two faced" ? To get to this, lets examine his limited hangout agenda. Hoffman does a fairly good job of promoting the evidence relating to the demolition of the towers. He would have you believe that he's the great hero of this issue. In fact he's a Jimmy- -come lately, who arrived on the scene after a lot of the hard work was already done, and now runs around trying to take the credit for it, now that the issue has reached a critical mass of awareness.

Well, that wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn't that he also spends a lot of time slandering the very same people who blazed the trail before him, and using his support for the demolition issue as a platform from which to launch attacks on most of the rest of the S11 evidence.

Let me explain. At every opportunity, Hoffman attacks the proofs that no big plane went into the pentagon. He also attacks the people who promote it, ignoring the fact they were mostly the same people who blazed the trail for the demolition evidence, the coat-tails of which he now rides so comfortably on.

See the relevant section for the no pentagon plane evidence in my compilation at

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/truth2.html

At every opportunity he attacks proofs that no big planes hit the WTC. See that evidence at the above link.

Also see

 http://members.iinet.au/~holmgren/planevideos.html

and also see an archived debate on the issue at

 http://members.iinet.au/~holmgren/salter.html

Heh! Hoffman himself makes a rather undistinguished appearance in this debate. His contribution was to argue that the main evidence that a big plane hit the Sth tower is because there isn't any witness evidence for it. That's right ! Hoffman argues that if such a thing happened, hundreds of people would have seen it, and thought it so obvious that no would have mentioned what they saw, so if there were hundreds of witnesses, then we would not expect to have any witness reports, so the fact that there aren't any proves that hundreds of people saw it, which proves that it happened.

Heh! Two faced, but only half brained. Hoffman himself doesn't mind descending to the gutter of lunatic debunkery when it suits his limited hangout agenda.

But I'm still coming to the two faced part. This is how the limited hangout agenda works. Everyone and their dog is going to try to use S11 for their own agenda - whatever it is.

A small number of people are interested in simply exposing the full truth for its own sake. Others want to cherry pick those parts which suit their particular agenda and then tell as many whoppers as the Govt to cover up what isn't convenient to them.

Hoffman’s particular brand of cherry picking does a good job of promoting the demolition evidence, and mumbles vaguely about the stand down evidence while actually refusing to promote the very good research which was done in relation to it

See the relevant section at
 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/truth.html

and attacks or ignores most other evidence.

Which brings us to the "two faced" aspect of Hoffman's counter to Scientific American. He used exactly the same tactic in his response to Popular Mechanics.

That is, when the stupid debunkers attack Hoffman's pet evidence, he cries foul that they could be so stupid as to deny such proof. That's fine as far as it goes. But when they attack the same evidence which he does - like the no pentagon 757 proof, he does a complete back flip in his logic. He claims triumphantly that this proves that the no plane evidence is "straw man". The fact that these morons are attacking it proves that it’s BS.

See how often they attack it ! he shouts triumphantly. This proves that the no plane evidence has been fabricated to give the debunkers a target. They are able to call us silly. They are able to accuse us of junk science.

Umm… Jim...they use *exactly* the same tactics against the demolition. But when they do that, Hoffman cries triumphantly

See, they feel the need to attack our evidence. They are worried ! They are launching a huge counter spin operation !

Jim, you can”t have it both ways. You can't claim that the attacks of people like Shermer and Popular Mechanics on the no plane evidence prove how stupid that evidence is, while at the same time, claiming that their attacks on the demolition evidence prove how stupid they are.

That's right ! Hoffman is actually telling us that attacks by morons like Shermer and Popular mechanics on the no plane evidence are proof that its BS ! Myself, I prefer to just stick to dispassionate examination of the evidence itself, something which Hoffman runs screaming from. But if one were thinking so circumstantially as to try to draw *any* conclusion from the fact that morons like Shermer attack it, surely that conclusion would be that it's valid ?

This is what I mean by double standards. Two faced. This is how the NWO works. They give us villains like Shermer and then set up heroes like Hoffman in fake opposition to him. Or if you’re on the other side of the fixed match, sensible rational people like Shermer and mad conspiracy theorists like Hoffman. Both are lying to you in support of the bigger game behind the fake argument.

Which ever side people take is fine by the perpetrators of the big lie. Every time people like Shermer take a swipe at S11 evidence, it gives Hoffman a chance to take a swipe too. When they attack the no plane evidence, Hoffman attacks it too - on the basis that it's giving people like Shermer ammunition.

Shouldn't the very same logic apply to Shermer's attacks on the demolition ? Not in the loony land of two faced Hoffman.

The evidence Hoffman doesn't want you to know about

The object striking the North tower is not a plane.

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/planevideos.html

The videos of the Sth tower hit which appears superficially to show a large plane hitting the tower are fakes. They were animated with flight simulator. There is no real plane there.

 http://thewebfairy.com/911
 http://911hoax.com

Two of the allegedly hijacked planes did not even fly that day

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/1177.html

Hoffman's response to this evidence when it was first published was very revealing.. The fact is that the official flight logs from the Bureau of transportation say that the flights which are alleged to have hit the pentagon and the Nth tower did not even exist.

Unable to find any fault with the documentation, Hoffman attacked the article on the basis that it might lend credence to the
no planes theory. This is what the idiot said in an email dated Nov 16 2003 – 3 days after I published the findings.

[[Some people have put enormous effort into building a case that either of both of:
(1) what hit the North Tower was not a jetliner, let alone AA F11
(2) no jetliner hit the South Tower -- rather the impact was simulated using holograms or faked video and planted explosives.

I find (1) highly improbable, and (2) laughable.

The object passing over in the Naudet video -- the only known video capturing the North Tower impact, except for an even lower resolution security camera -- sounds like a turbofan: you can hear a distinct hum, not just a white noise roar that a military jet or missile would make. Furthermore, the impact hole matches the profile of a 767 down to the engine pods and wingtips.

I won't even address the evidence about the South Tower impact except to say that when I have in an e-mail list with some proponents of the no-planes theories, I've been labeled a debunker and attacked, especially by webfairy, who's conviction that the Naudet video shows that no jetliner hit the North Tower I might describe as religious. (My comments about motion and pixel-blur, sampling errors, and compression artifacts only elicited further ridicule.)

I very much doubt that webfairy or Scott Longrey (911hoax.com) are insincere, but I think the no-planes-hit-the-towers is a very destructive meme that helps to lump things like the WTC demolition in the catagory of lunatic ideas in the minds of many.
To his credit, Gerard understands this, so he doesn't focus on it despite believing, I think, both (1) and (2).

Gerard's description of (1) as "widely accepted" may reflect the people he communicates with most, and the vocal persistence of webfairy, et.al. And the idea has gained some currency, even appearing on serendipity.li in an article by Leonard Spencer.
 http://www.serendipity.li/wot/aa11.htm

I feel like I have to write an article taking this on, which will distract me from the next upgrade I need to do to my WTC demolition analysis on 911research.wtc7.net . ]]

Hoffman’s comment on the revelation that official flight logs show that AA11 and 77 did not exist is simply to rehash arguments he’s previously had about video evidence of the tower strikes.

He doesn’t address a single word to the documentation presented in the article.

So the Hoffman doctrine is that if this evidence points us in a direction which we don't want to go, then we should simply put our heads in the sand and talk about something else.

Hoffman should be writing for Skeptics Magazine himself, because that's about the level of his logical thinking ability and his capacity for honesty.

As if all that wasn’t enough, here we have proof that the passenger lists for the alleged AA 11 flight, published by the media purporting to be official flight manifests, are fakes.

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/fake.html

Hoffman doesn’t want you to know that either. If he did, he would link it on his site. Like the flight log records, he would promote it at least as an "anomaly", in the interests of making all relevant information available, even if he's not buying the no planes stuff in general. But because he knows that it adds a documentation angle to the video proof that AA11 did not hit the Nth tower , then he simply pretends that it doesn’t exist.

The reason is not any fault in the research. It's because it provides more evidence for something that Hoffman doesn’t want you to know. That this was a war of the worlds con job. There weren’t any hijacked planes. The news is just a movie. This goes way beyond the implications of Govt involvement in S11 and a subsequent media cover up. This proves that it was a giant matrix constructed reality job right from the beginning.

Hoffman is merely playing the script of a "truth seeker' within this movie. He is lying to you just as actively as Popular Mechanics, CNN and the Bush regime.

Visit my links and see the evidence. We no planers deal with real evidence, and can always provide it on demand. Two faced limited hangout perps like Hoffman, resort to cynically using those who they claim to be countering - like Popular Mechanics - as a smokescreen from which to launch their continued attacks on that part of the evidence which doesn't suit them.

Gerard Holmgren


Hoffman the plagiarist

04.07.2005 00:29

In this post I will present the first part of the evidence that Hoffman is a Govt agent, who's mission is one of damage control for that part of the evidence which can't be put back into the bottle.

Even those who are not convinced of this will see that at the very best, Hoffman is a liar and plagiarist, running a duplicitous agenda which has nothing to do with truth, and merely seeks to cherry pick a few selected aspects of the truth about Sept 11 for some kind of personal gain, and doesn't care how much damage he does in order to achieve this goal.

The first issue to deal with is Hoffman's habit of plagiarizing research and then defaming the very people he's plagiarized it from.

If you go to Hoffman's site, you'll see that it's basically divided into two sections.

Some of it is dedicated to pretending to expose the official story. The rest of it is dedicated to attacking most of the S11 evidence and supporting the official story to which he claims to take exception.

As we'll see, the positive section has been built purely as a platform from which to piss on other research and researchers.

Let's first examine his supposed credentials as an S11 researcher. Hoffman's section on the WTC demolition is actually quite good. This is the platform which he needs in order to launch his attacks. The reason that it's a good treatment of the demolition issue is because Hoffman actually made only minor contributions to it. Most of it is plagiarized from earlier researchers such as J. McMichael and Jeff King (also known as "Plaguepuppy" ) who had the WTC demolition case proven well before anybody had heard of Hoffman. Hoffman has made some useful refinements of their arguments, but it's only icing on the cake of proof which was already in the public domain before Hoffman appeared.

In addition , Hoffman has the unpleasant habit of attacking as supposed Govt agents the very same people from whom he steals his work. Let me give you one stunning example of this.

Hoffman has been particularly vicious in his attacks on the Webfairy  http://thewebfairy.com/911

He has ridiculed her skills as a video analyst in relation to the work she's done on the no WTC planes issue. What Hoffman doesn't tell you is that at the same time as delivering this constant barrage of ridicule, and of accusing her of being a spook, he's quietly stolen some of her work on the WTC 7 demolition and passed it off as his own.

WF made some close ups of demolition squibs, close ups of which Hoffman makes good use - without attribution - while at the same time, snarling to the world that WF is a spook who is laughably incompetent with video.

Hoffman has also accused me of being a spook because of my work on the no planes issue.

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren~manufactured.html

What Hoffman doesn't tell you is that while he makes much of the smoking gun proof that the towers fell too quickly for a pancake collapse to be possible, that he learned of this aspect of the evidence from me, and used my original attempts to quantify the problem as the basis from which to develop his own work. He's refined it somewhat, which is what I wanted someone to do with it. However it's a bit rich to them attack the originator of this work as a spook, while also writing them out of the history of the development of the evidence.

For a newcomer to the evidence, a visit to Hoffman's site might give the impression that he played a major role in proving the WTC demolition. In fact he's done little more than tweak and refine the already existing work of the same people he's attacking. Because Jeff King, IMO the best demolition researcher, also supports the no planes evidence, Hoffman has written him out of the history, casting him by implication as a spook, and also incorporating King's work into his list of plagiarized achievements.

Hoffman's plagiarism is not limited to the demolition evidence. In order to maintain his cover it is necessary for Hoffman to pretend to have made a contribution in other areas.

Thus he supposedly exposes the Bin Laden confession video as a fake here.

 http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/deceptions/binladinvideo.html

This is completely plagiarized without attribution from this site which published it about 2 1/2 years before Hoffman.

 http://www.arbeiterfotografie.com/bin-laden-vergleich.html

The top half is in German, but if you scroll down, there's also an English version.

Now we turn to Hoffman's plagiarism of the stand down evidence which was published by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel on www.tenc.net

In some ways this evidence is now somewhat dated, because it shows evidence for a military stand down to allow the hijacked planes to reach their targets.

Since we now know that there weren't any hijacked planes, it's debatable that any such stand down would have needed. Nevertheless, at the time it was published, the Tenc research was courageous and groundbreaking work, and blew a huge hole in the official story, prompting others to dig deeper and bring the evidence to the stage its reached today.

It's also worth noting that Hoffman showed up only after most of the current evidence on S11 had already been assembled, and people had been loudly distributing it for about two years. Tenc's work was published very early, before there was any "911 turth movement", when the authors had no way of knowing how the Govt would react to such publications and so could well have been risking their lives.

The respect that Hoffman pays is by plagiarizing their work and then defaming them.

This article from TENC

 http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htm

has been directly ripped off by Hoffman here

 http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/alibis/cheney.html

And he's only just warming up.

TENC original  http://emperor.vwh.net/indict/urgent.htm
Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/index.html

TENC original  http://www.emperors-clothes.com/indict/faq.htm

Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/defense/index.html

TENC original  http://emperor.vwh.net/indict/urgent.htm
Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/alibis/myers.html

And of course, for anyone who claims that there really were hijacked planes, then an allegation of a military stand down becomes a vital component to claiming to be a critic of the story. Thus the TENC evidence remains vital to the case as long as one believes in hijacked planes, and this is why Hoffman attempts to pass Tenc's work off as his own.

Not content with Plagiarizing them, Hoffman then defames them by misrepresenting them.

 http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/02/1720145.php

Here, Hoffman replies to a piece from Popular Mechanics which attacks S11 "conspiracy theories." If you read Hoffman's reply carefully, you'll see that he actually supports most of Popular Mechanics spin, but cleverly disguises this support as dissent. Hoffman's method is to complain that most of what PM attacks isn't really S11 evidence - that its just disinfo worthy of contemptuous dismissal, and thus he attacks them for alleging it to be serious S11 evidence. In other words, Hoffman actually spends most of the article agreeing with PM.

Apart from the demolition evidence, which as we have already seen is mostly plagiarism and refinement of already existing proofs on his part, his only point of disagreement with PM is that such evidence should even be considered worthy of attack.

However, in relation to the stand down evidence, Hoffman perpetrates a vicious defamation of the same the Tenc work which he plagiarizes.

One of the Govt's cover stories on the stand down issue is that they did scramble fighter jets which just didn't get there in time. In a brilliant piece of research (one of those later plagiarized by Hoffman) Tenc demonstrated that this is a lie and that nothing was scrambled until after the pentagon was hit. But in his reply to PM, Hoffman attributes to Tenc the exact opposite view. He accuses PM of misrepresenting Tenc in attributing to them the research that they actually did. He attributes to Tenc support for the official story. Having set up this straw man, Hoffman then attacks PM for its attack on Tenc. In other words, Hoffman implies that the official story is correct and also falsely attributes such a view to Tenc, leaving his only complaint about PM to be that they've attacked a claim which Tenc supposedly didn't make.

This is a very clever piece of lying. Hoffman has managed to support the official lies on the scramble story, while appearing to take issue with Govt supporters like PM, at the same time as defaming the people from which Hoffman plagiarized his "research". So when a newcomer to this evidence goes to the Hoffman's site to try to sort out the confusion, what they'll see is Hoffman busting open the Norad cover story, something which Tenc supposedly failed to do.

Tenc never directly entered the debate about the demolition of the WTC. However they did, very early on, dig up an important story about how a demolition expert, Prof van Romero was initially reported as calling a controlled demolition and then later retracted in mysterious circumstances.

 http://emperors-clothes.com/news/albu.htm

Hoffman plagiarized it here.

 http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/retractions/romero.html


In following posts I will demonstrate

:Hoffman's likely connections with Govt agencies, in particular the NSA.
:Hoffman's fraudulent use of documentation to attribute to it the exact opposite of what it says
:Hoffman's habit of using such wildly contradictory arguments that one can only conclude that he is lying.
:Hoffman's tacit support for direct lies
:Hoffman's fear of subjecting his disinformation to the scrutiny of direct debate.

Gerard Holmgren


Hoffman the spook

04.07.2005 04:43

When Hoffman first appeared in our research discussion groups, I was not the only one who immediately had alarm bells. His disruptive and destructive and confrontational attitude, and particularly his habit of deliberately twisting the words of other people in order to wriggle out of awkward tangles he had got himself into was a giveaway for those of us who had spent time battling the likes of Ron Harvey.

However, while instinct is sufficient to invoke a suspicion that one is dealing with a cointelpro agent, it is not sufficient for confirmation. It wasn't long before the evidence evolved beyond instinct.

Michael Elliot did some digging on Hoffman and discovered that he worked for an NGO with contracts to the NSA. He alerted the list to this. This of course is circumstantial by itself - we've all got a living to make and can't always choose our employers as carefully as we would like and can't necessarily be held responsible for some of their activities over which we might have no control. In this world it's "let he who is without sin... " in relation to employment - within reasonable limits, and reasonable benefit of the doubt.

However, it's different when someone lies about their employment. Because when Elliot dug this up, Hoffman immediately snapped back in an email "For your information, they fired me".

A little later, Elliot replied "He's lying. I just phoned his work and he's still there".

Hoffman never denied this. He snapped back at Elliot with a tirade of insults but never denied that he was still there and thus that he'd lied about being fired.

Why did he lie ? While one might be given the benefit of the doubt for having a job with an NGO which has contracts with the NSA, lying that one has been fired when one has not significantly tips the scales the other way.

This was more than a year ago. And it appears that he's still there. And the nasty connections are not limited to the NSA. Here are details of Hoffman's work as far as we've been able to ascertain.

This is extracted from an email from WF

[He is still at MSRI,
 http://www.msri.org/people/staff/jim/ an NGO with contracts with the NSA.


In fact, based on a careful study of our website's logs, Jim Hoffman's real job was found to be as a [WWW]computer engineer  http://www.msri.org/people/staff/jim/index.html for a "research institute" at one of the US Government's most important laboratories:
Lawrence Berkeley Labs, and his real email is mailto:jim@ msri.org The [WWW]Mathematical Sciences Research Institute  http://www.msri.org/ has [WWW]amongst its sponsors

 http://www.msri.org/governance/sponsors/govsponsors.html :

*
The National Security Agency
*
The Office of Naval Research, which acts as the research arm of
the Office of Naval Intelligence.
*
The Department of Energy, manager of the US nuclear laboratories such as Lawrence Berkeley and Livermore.

 http://911review.org/911Review.Com.shtml

These nasty connections need to be seen in the context of some who

a)never voluntarily disclosed his work place

b) lied in claiming to have been fired after he was outed.

c) Was a Jimmy-come lately on the S11 scene, and has greatly exaggerated his contribution through an aggressive progam of plagiarizing almost everything which he doesn't choose to attack or ignore.

d) devotes an extraordinary amount of his website to attacking other researchers

But the plot thickens further in relation to Hoffman's probable intelligence connections

Hoffman gained his cred as an "activist" through his "Justice for Woody" activities.

 http://www.justiceforwoody.org/

Although Hoffman is only one of the people mentioned as a friend of Woody's seeking justice , from the style of the website we can clearly see that the same person who does 911research, Hoffman's site, is responsible for the JFW site.

If you have a good look around the JFW site, you'll notice a very curious thing.

Basically it concerns the shooting murder of Hoffman's friend Woody by police who were so over the top in their actions that it sounds like they must have been cracked out of their heads.

Apparently, Woody had taken refuge in a church, with only a small knife and was threatening harm to no-one but himself, and the police came in and just blasted the hell out of him, and the murder has been protected by an official cover up and obstruction of any semblance of proper inquiry.

There are many tributes to Woody, about what a wonderful guy he was, there are descriptions of the community activities he was involved in, there is information on the efforts of friends and family to break through the official cover up. There's lots and lots of information about many different aspects of the Woody case.

But there is one glaring omission. I went all over the site, and am reasonably sure that I looked everywhere, and I could find not one word about the circumstances which led to Woody's murder.

Exactly why was Woody taking refuge in a church and threatening to harm himself ? Did he have a mental illness ? Was he on drugs ? Was he on the run from legal custody or from having allegedly committed an offence ? Had the police just randomly picked him out for harassment, because they wanted to shoot somebody ? Apparently Woody was a non violent community activist.
Well, sometimes the cops can get over the top, but they don't normally do this kind of thing even to rioting crowds bombarding them with rocks.

Clearly it was none of these things because otherwise the cops would not have been so over the top. Woody's fears were justified.
Exactly what had Woody done to piss them off so much ?

Not one word from JFW. Isn't that a bit strange? Woody's attempt to take refuge clearly indicates that he had some idea of what was intended for him. Why would the police just burst in and blast the hell out of him, obviously shooting to kill in a premeditated manner ?

As the JFW site itself says

 http://www.justiceforwoody.org/story/shooting.html

[[Minutes earlier he had been begging the incredulous congregation to grant him the protection of political asylum, explaining that he was being pursued by government authorities, who sought to kill him to silence him. Although he threatened himself in a desperate bid to persuade witnesses to stay, the 18 witnesses maintained that he never threatened anyone else. Why, then, did the police shoot him, and why has the state gone to such extraordinary lengths to obscure what happened that day?]]

Good questions indeed, but what's even more curious is that the JFW site never gives even a hint of trying to explain this itself. Do they really know absolutely nothing ? Is it a total mystery ? And if so, why does the site lack any sense of bewilderment at the events ? There is no hint of "we just have no idea what this was about. "

"Silence him. " About what ? What did Woody know ? What connections enabled Woody to be in a position to know whatever it was that was so important ?

In what is otherwise a fairly detailed treatment of Woody's life and death and the subsequent cover up, in relation to exactly what led up to this , the JFW site is neither surprised in it's tone nor informative.

I'm guessing of course, but to me, only one explanation comes to mind which fits all of these anomalies.

Woody was in some way involved with intelligence agencies or other covert operations. Perhaps he was wanting out of whatever he was involved with, which can be a dangerous thing to try. Perhaps he had stumbled across something which he wasn't meant to know, and met the fate which usually befalls operatives who have become inconvenient. But in some way he had fallen foul of something very big, and JFW (Hoffman ) doesn't want to talk about what it was.

Well, I can't prove this, but to me it is the best explanation which fits all 4 anomalies - 1)Woody's desperate sense that something bad was going to happen to him 2)The obvious determination of the police to shoot to kill without hesitation 3) Officialdom closing ranks behind the police action 4) The total silence of the JFW site (Hoffman) about even the slightest hint of what led up to the situation, coupled with the absence of any surprise or bewilderment in its tone.

If so, it can be reasonably concluded that many of Woody's friends - in particular Hoffman, who obviously maintains the site- are also in some way connected with intelligence or other covert agencies.

And so Hoffman's work connections as exposed by WF in the above quoted mail are hardly surprising.

I recently invited Hoffman to defend himself in an email list debate against these charges. He declined. Why would he not defend himself if the accusations were baseless ?

The invitation to defend himself was in stark contrast to Hoffman's continual accusations of cointelpro against all and sundry made from behind the safety of his website, and then the consistent refusal to subject his allegations to dynamic debate, a matter which I'll detail further in a separate post.

I gave Hoffman every chance to debate this in a less public setting. He refused.

Lying betrays consciousness of guilt. Why did he say he had been fired ? Fear of debate betrays consciousness of guilt. Why did he refuse to debate these observations when they were raised ?

Does he think that he can make consistent, shrill allegations of cointelpro against all and sundry, refuse to debate them in a dynamic situation, and then expect to remain free of scrutiny himself, when he has such nasty skeletons in the cupboard ?

I concede that the evidence compiled here stops short of absolute proof that Hoffman is a cointelpro agent of some kind. But in my opinion the evidence is strong enough for reasonable confidence in this conclusion, and Hoffman only makes his case weaker by refusing the invitation to defend himself in a dynamic debate forum.

Even if his motivations are in fact less sinister thahn what the evidence points to, I will continue my deconstruction of Hoffman's of Hoffman's poisonous, treacherous, and destructive effect on the S11 research community, in further posts. His latest attack on Reynolds is only the same as what he's been dishing out for a long time to all refuse to bow before him

Gerard Holmgren


How Hoffman distorts evidence

04.07.2005 04:46

The Hoffman story gets dirtier.

I will now use Hoffman's treatment of the witness evidence in relation to the Pentagon incident to demonstrate that Hoffman is a deliberate disinformationist, consciously lying in order to give the impression that evidence says the opposite of what it really does.

For those not familiar with this issue, I suggest that you first read the article which I published in June 2002 in relation to the witness evidence.

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/witness.html

This article thoroughly busted the myth that there were "hundreds of witnesses to a large jet hitting the Pentagon.

Since then Hoffman has been on a mission to revive this discredited notion, and lying is fine as far as Hoffman is concerned.

To expose the fundamental dishonesty with which Hoffman approaches this issue ,let's look at this statement.

 http://911review.com/errors/pentagon/witnesses.html

[[Most no-757-crash literature ignores the body of eyewitness evidence indicating the presence of a twin-engine jetliner, and in many cases cherry-picks certain eyewitness accounts that seem to support the presence of a small plane. A common tactic is to present one part of Mike Walter's account:

I mean it was like a cruise missile with wings. It went right there and slammed right into the Pentagon.
while leaving out the earlier part of his account:
I looked out my window and I saw this plane, this jet, an American Airlines jet, coming. And I thought, 'This doesn't add up, it's really low.'
In the context of his full account, it is clear that Walter was using "cruise missile with wings" to describe the way the plane was being flown, not the kind of plane he saw. ]]

In a moment we'll see who's cherry picking ! Hoffman is actually correct in that Walter's reports have been misused by both sides of the debate, and his complaints about the emphasis on the "cruise missile" part by some 757 skeptics is valid. But this is the pot calling the kettle black. It's nothing compared to the gross distortion of the Walter reports by supporters of the official story like Hoffman. For a start, notice that Hoffman refers to "Walter's account" - singular, as if there were only one, and then refers to the " context of his full account " in presenting one of the quotes.

Hoffman is well aware that this is a lie, because he is well aware of the work that I did to track down Walter's full *accounts* - because there were several - and they were so wildly contradictory that it's impossible to make any sense out of them at all.

You can see a full deconstruction here.

 http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/witness2.html

Below is a summary of what my research on Walter found, but I recommend reading the link above to get the full picture

Hoffman says "In the context of his full account..."

And exactly *which* full account would that be, Jim ?

Perhaps the one where he told Bryant Gumbel that he saw a full on impact,

""I was on an elevated area of Highway 27 and I had a very good view. I was stuck in traffic. We weren't moving and--and I could see over in the distance the American Airlines jet as it kind of banked around, pivoted and then took a steep dive right into the Pentagon."

and then when Gumbel responded with

GUMBEL: Did you see it hit the Pentagon? Was the plane coming in horizontally or did it, in fact, go on its wing as--as it impacted the building?

To which Walter responded with

Mr. WALTER: You know, the--the--the--there were trees there that kind of obstructed it, so I kind of--I saw it go in. I'm not sure if it turned at an angle. I've heard some people say that's what it did. All I know is it--it created a huge explosion and massive fireball and--and you knew instantaneously that--that everybody on that plane was dead. It was completely eviscerated. "

So Walter's claim to have seen the plane hit the building lasted all of 5 secs before he backed off the claim.

And just to make sure, later in the interview

GUMBEL: Tell me, if you could, about the manner in which the--the plane struck the building....

Mr. WALTER: Well, as I said, you know, there were trees obstructing my view, so I saw it as it went--and then the--then the trees, and then I saw the--the fireball and the smoke. Some people have said that the plane actually sent on its side and in that way. But I can't tell you, Bryant. I just know that what I saw was this massive fireball, a huge explosion and--and a--the thick column of smoke and then an absolute bedlam on those roads as people were trying to get away."

Now you see it (hit), now you don't.

Or did Jim mean the full account he gave in another interview, only 1 hour later, where he said

"It kind of disappeared over this embankment here for a moment and then a huge explosion, flames flying into the air, and--and just chaos on the road."

So he was in an elevated area with a very good view and saw a full on impact, which he actually didn't see at all because there were trees in the way, but in spite of his elevation and very good view it "disappeared" over an embankment - which is actually what he had been saying the day before anyway, before he changed his mind the next day in the Gumbel interview,and then immediately backed off, and 1 hour later went back to his story of the previous day, where he explicitly stated that he did not see it hit the building.

So who's Cherry picking ?

The only time during Walter's muddled and contradictory statements where he actually claims to have seen a plane hit a building - a claim which was immediately retracted - he says that it took a steep dive in to the building.

In spite of this, Hoffman is untroubled by also quoting from Bart's compilation, another "witness"

"The plane approached the Pentagon about six feet off the ground, clipping a light pole, a car antenna, a construction trailer and an emergency generator before slicing into the building, said Lee Evey,"

I see, it took a steep dive from 6 ft ? No more than one of these two reports can possibly be telling the truth (even ignoring the multiple internal contradictions in the Walter report). So which one is it, Jim ?

And does the second one say what kind of plane ? Big ? Small ? Jet ? Prop?
Civillian? Military ?

It doesn't matter to Jim. They're both being truthful and accurate. It took a steep dive *and* it approached from about 6 ft off the ground. And it doesn't matter that even a hint of the type of plane is unspecified.

It also escapes Hoffman's attention that the "witness" just happens to be

" the manager of the Pentagon's ongoing billion-dollar renovation."

and is reported as making this statement on Oct 6 2001,in relation to the rebuilding program, in a context such that it appears that Levy is not claiming to have seen this first hand is and is just summing up his belief about what happened.

 http://www.detnews.com/2001/nation/0110/06/nation-312016.htm

So the "witness" isn't a witness at all, but a Pentagon spokesman spinning the official line.

This is what Hoffman calls "evidence".

And Hoffman has the nerve to call those who see through this charade "disinformationists".

This is why Hoffman refuses my repeated challenges to a direct debate, because he knows that his lies will be irrevocably exposed.

Gerard Holmgren
- Homepage: http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren