Peter Lance and David Ray Griffin: 9/11 Research from Different Angles

By S.T. Patrick

While every generation waxes retrospectively about their halcyon days, each generation also marks the loss of its innocence with a great American tragedy. For the “Greatest Generation,” as Tom Bro­kaw termed them, it was Pearl Harbor. For baby boomers, it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. For Generation X, it was 9/11. As we approach the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, watching the Biden administration marginally pull out of Afghanistan, there are still unanswered questions that plague any serious study into that day.

Unlike the Kennedy assassination research community that has spent decades digging a continental divide between the “Lone Nutters” and the “Conspiracy Theorists,” there are many valuable lines of research that have emanated from the search for answers regarding the bombing of the World Trade Center (WTC) in 1993, the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon in 2001, and the downing of United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania. The mainstream research community is best evidenced by Peter Lance, an award-winning journalist who was a former correspondent for ABC News. Lance does not believe there is a 9/11 conspiracy that goes beyond massive governmental malfeasance and legal incompetence. In digging into the governmental blunders, however, Lance has now done two dec­ades of the best work on the events leading up to 9/11.

Lance is the author of 1000 Years for Revenge: International Terrorism and the FBI—The Untold Story, Triple Cross: How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, Green Berets and the FBI, and Cover-Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror. Lance’s general thesis is that there are political reasons why the FBI’s New York office bungled simple leads that could have easily created a valuable timeline that led to 9/11. Many of the main characters operated openly and under their noses.

One such operator was Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheik,” who taught at mosques around New York City and personally guided, spiritually, those found responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It was the sheik’s student, El Sayyid Nossair, who was also linked to the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League terror group. Lance charges that U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald mislead the courts and the public in ways that failed to uncover an al Qaeda cell in New York City.

Triple Cross details al Qaeda spy Ali Muhammad’s infiltration of the U.S. intelligence apparatus in the years just before 9/11. Similar to what Rahman did with religion, Muhammad trained the top al Qaeda operators within the U.S. in spy craft and violent militarism. Because Muhammad was embedded into American culture, he also trained them to act as Americans. Muhammad’s trainees included Nossair and others involved in the 1993 WTC bombing and the Kahane assassination. The negligent character in Triple Cross is Fitzgerald who later became the U.S. attorney in Chicago and prosecuted both journalist Judith Miller and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Fitzgerald began a public relations campaign trying to get Harper Collins to pull Triple Cross. It was unsuccessful. Lance’s three 9/11 books are the canon for mainstream coverage, and it’s unlikely that anyone will do better critical work that follows the road to 9/11.

David Ray Griffin is the author of The New Pearl Harbor and many other valuable 9/11 works. For those ultra-skeptical of the U.S. government’s 9/11 narrative, Griffin should be the starting point that Jim Marrs and former Liberty Lobby attorney Mark Lane are for the JFK assassination. The title is taken from the neo-conservative group Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a group that, before 9/11, released a call to action in the Middle East entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” One section stated, “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”

To those who do not believe the mainstream media narrative on the events of 9/11, Sept. 11 is that “new Pearl Harbor,” the false flag used to invade Iraq and Afghanistan as PNAC had always wanted to do. PNAC included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, John Bolton, and others. It was founded by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, the husband of controversial Joe Biden State Department appointee Victoria Nuland.

Griffin and others, such as Kevin Ryan, also look at the typical conspiratorial questions regarding 9/11:

• Was there an implosion in New York City?
• At what temperature does steel melt?
• Is it possible that thermite was used?
• Why were there no visible plane parts shown after the Pentagon was hit?

In the most protected air corridor in the world, why does no clear video of the Pentagon being attacked publicly exist? What was posted on the Pentagon website was admittedly a “recreation” of the event.

• If a pilot did make that difficult turn and dive into the Pentagon, why does the hole not seemed shaped as such that the wings hit the walls as well as the nose?
• Why were parts of United 93 spread for miles over the fields of Pennsylvania?
• Was United 93 shot down by U.S. military aircraft?
• What happened to Building 7 and why did it collapse?
• Was there an order to “pull it” (Building 7), meaning to implode it by controlled demolition?
• Who profited from the insurance policies on the World Trade Center complex, and who shorted the stocks just before 9/11?
• Whatever happened to the “Dancing Israelis”?

There are so many questions that stem from the events of 9/11. Griffin boldly and brilliantly covers them all. But what Lance and Griffin do so well is to criticize the road to 9/11 and the government’s bungling of events after the attacks.

The 9/11 Commission was another Warren Commission in terms of its selective use of evidence and it’s mishandling or ignoring of important witnesses that did not fit the narrative they needed told. Compared to the volume of work that has been done on Pearl Harbor or JFK, 9/11 is a toddler today. Lance and Griffin deserve your attention, but the best work may be ahead of us.