RESPONSE TO CHIP
BERLET’S REVIEW OF THE NEW PEARL HARBOR
David Ray Griffin
May 1, 2004
PREFATORY
NOTE: On April 21, 2004, Mr. Berlet alerted me to the existence of his
review in advance, giving me a non-public
link to the review as it was slated to appear on the website of Political
Research Associates. In response, I wrote a rather lengthy critique of
his review, pointing out what I took to be various types of errors. Although
I wrote this response in the form of a personal letter to him, I indicated
that it laid out at least most of the points that I would make in a formal
response if he decided to go ahead with the plan to make his review public.
Through e-mail discussion, we agreed that he would be allowed to correct
two logical errors I had pointed out, but that otherwise he would publish
his review as originally written. What follows is a my letter, turned into
a formal response, adjusted to account for his revisions, and slightly
modified in a few other places. I wish to commend Mr. Berlet and Political
Research Associates for agreeing to post my response.
Chip Berlet’s critical review of The New Pearl
Harbor (NPH) contains many charges. My response, which deals with most
of those charges, is organized into three sections. The first involves
a misinterpretation of my stance.
I. MISINTERPRETATION OF MY STANCE
The overall concern of the website of the Political
Research Associates appears to be “conspiracism,” which is defined as “[t]he
tendency to explain all major world events as primarily the product of a
secret conspiracy.” The fact that Berlet’s review of NPH appears on this
website seems to imply that he believes me to be guilty of this tendency.
If that is indeed his charge, I would think that he would need a larger sample
(I refer here to his criticism of what he calls “the fallacy of the unrepresentative
sample”). For example, if Berlet himself believed that supporters of Ronald
Reagan conspired with the Iranians not to release the American hostages until
after the presidential election in 1980, this would not provide very strong
evidence that he had a tendency to explain “all major world events
as primarily the product of a secret conspiracy.”
However,
leaving that problem aside, let me move to what seems to be a major misunderstanding
of my perspective. Berlet
seems to believe that a conspiratorial perspective is necessarily opposed
to a “structural, systemic, or institutional analysis.” Indeed, he says that
I provide “a centrist or right-wing populist explanation that if deconstructed
suggests that an otherwise acceptable political and economic system has been
distorted by a conspiracy of secret elites.” Besides the fact that this characterization
of my position would make my friends and students hoot, Berlet perhaps missed
note 25 of the Introduction to NPH, in which I directly confront the worry
that conspiracy theories are diversionary. In pointing out that this worry
often involves valid concerns, I said:
One concern is that a focus on exposing conspiratorial
crimes of present office-holders may reflect the naive assumption that if
only we can replace those individuals with better ones, things will be fine.
Underlying that worry is the concern that a focus on conspirators can divert
attention from the more important issue of the structural problems in the
national and global order that need to be overcome.
Then, after suggesting some reasons why we should
“avoid a too strong dichotomy between structural and conspiratorial analysis,”
I added another reason:
Finally, and most important, the exposure of
a conspiracy may, rather than diverting attention from a society’s problematic
structures, turn attention to them. For example, if it became evident that
our national political leaders caused or at least allowed the attacks of
9/11 and that they did so partly because they had deeply embodied certain
values pervasive of our society, we might finally decide that a society-wide
reorientation was in order.
Berlet cannot justly assume, therefore, that
if I suspect the attacks of 9/11 were able to succeed only because of official
conspiracy, I reject structural analyses of our national and global problems.
The
introductory statement of the Political Research Associates says that they
are concerned to “build a social movement
for real social justice, economic fairness, equality, peace, and democracy.”
We are at one on this. I have, in fact, been working since 1992 on an argument
for global democracy, which, I claim, is the best and probably the only way
to overcome a wide range of global problems, including human rights violations,
global apartheid, ecocide (whether through nuclear weapons, global warming,
or some combination of causes), and, more generally, the war-imperialism-terrorism
system. I first started thinking in this way after hearing Richard Falk’s
structural analysis of the present world order. My entire argument is based
on a structural analyses. In my discussion of war, imperialism, and terrorism,
I draw heavily on the analyses of Noam Chomsky and others who emphasize that
our problems are primarily structural and institutional, so that a mere change
of personnel will solve little. Berlet could, of course, disagree with my
contention that global democracy is the best or even a possible solution.
But we are one in our concern for economic fairness, equality, peace, and
democracy.
Beyond
the fact that Berlet’s critique was perhaps based on a misapprehension
of my beliefs and values, there are
other problems in it. I will illustrate some of these in terms of Berlet’s
analysis of the part of my book to which he devotes the most attention, my
chapter on the Pentagon strike.
II. BERLET’S ANALYSIS OF THE CHAPTER ON THE PENTAGON
ATTACK
There are numerous problems with Berlet’s analysis
of this chapter. I will discuss sixteen.
1. Having claimed that Thierry Meyssan’s “assertions
have been thoroughly demolished by an armada of writers across the political
spectrum” and that I failed to discuss what Berlet calls “the voluminous
evidence that contradicts Meyssan,” he refers to the Urban Legends website,
Snopes.com--this being the only support he provides for his sweeping claims.
However, besides the question of whether this website in fact provides what
Berlet says, his statement could easily give the impression that I made no
reference to this website. But I referred to it in the text on page 37 and
in notes 30, 31, and 54 for Chapter 2.
2. Berlet claims that a logical fallacy in my
argument, following Meyssan, that “whatever hit the Pentagon was not American
Airlines flight 77.” In approaching this argument, he says that it contains
two sub-arguments, the first of which is: “If it was a commercial jet that
hit the Pentagon, it was not American Airlines flight 77.” But I have no
independent argument against that idea that it was AA 77. The argument goes
the other way: There is evidence that it was not a Boeing 757, therefore
that it was not AA 77. My alleged second sub-argument is: “If it was
not a commercial jet that hit the Pentagon, it was a guided missile.” That
is also wrong. The argument is simply that the evidence, while not consistent
with the aircraft’s being a commercial jet, is consistent with its being
a missile or a small military plane. (I am, incidentally, preparing a 2nd
edition of NPH. One change will be to make clearer that, although I quote
Meyssan’s missile theory, I do not necessarily endorse it, partly because
there is evidence that lends support to the other alternative he suggests--that
it was a small military plane.)
3. Berlet seems to think that I claimed that
all the eyewitnesses who said that they saw an American Airlines plane were
all military personnel. But my statement about military personnel related
only to Meyssan’s point that the initial identification of the aircraft
that hit the Pentagon with Flight 77, which occurred on the afternoon of
9/11, seemed to be based entirely on statements by military personnel. When
I later discuss eyewitnesses who reported seeing an American airplane, I
make no suggestion that they were all military personnel. Indeed, it is clear
that at least most of them were not.
4. In reference to my summary statement of Meyssan’s
first argument (“that all the information originally connecting Flight 77
with the aircraft that struck the Pentagon evidently came from dubious sources”),
Berlet registers this complaint: “The first premise has not been demonstrated
as true--much less plausible.” In the first place, however, this “first argument”
is not the first premise of a logical syllogism, as the term “premise” implies,
but simply the first of Meyssan’s many specific points in his cumulative
argument. Second, readers cannot judge from Berlet’s discussion whether Meyssan
had made the claim plausible or not, because Berlet fails to inform them
of Meyssan’s arguments for considering the sources dubious (which I summarized
at NPH 27-28).
5. One of those arguments is that there are reasons
to suspect that Ted Olson may not have been telling the truth when he reported
receiving a telephone call from his wife, Barbara Olson, from Flight 77.
Berlet, by contrast, simply assumes that he was telling the truth.
Berlet says, as if this were not the point in dispute, that Olson “spoke
with his wife.” If Berlet were to construct a logical argument for his conclusion,
it would presumably go something like this:
1. Ted Olson said that he spoke with his wife.
2. Ted Olson--although he works for the Bush
administration, and although he has said publicly that it is sometimes justifiable
for government officials to lie--was not lying.
3. Therefore Ted Olson spoke with his wife.
Would Berlet really want to defend the soundness
of this argument--especially in the same context in which he has complained
that I failed to show the plausibility of one of my premises?
6. Berlet also devotes attention to the questions
raised concerning Barbara Olson if the official account of Flight 77 is rejected.
After raising various rhetorical questions, he says that “Griffin admits
that there are problems with the idea that Ted Olson--who spoke with his
wife Barbara Olson while she was a passenger on the ill-fated hijacked flight--was
part of a conspiracy in which she would disappear.” But the word “admits”
makes it seem as if this were a reluctant concession on my part. But I myself
had raised a great many rhetorical questions in relation to the conspiracy
theory about “what really happened” that seems to be implicit in the accounts
of the revisionist critics of the official account. Near the end of this
series of questions, I asked:
Furthermore, what plausible account can be given
of the role of Ted Olson? Are we to believe that upon learning that his wife
had just been killed in an operation overseen by his superiors, he willingly
told a lie to help them out? Or that the whole story was a hoax--that Barbara
Olson was not really killed, which would mean that she would have to spend
the rest of her life incognito? (NPH 137)
I also pointed out that Meyssan also said that
he had no answer to the question about what happened to the passengers on
Flight 77 (NPH 137). Berlet has, accordingly, not pointed out any difficulties
for a revisionist conspiracy theory that are not already raised in my book.
7. In much of his attempted rebuttal, Berlet
simply ignores the fact that the issue is not whether there was an airplane
in the area with American Airlines markings on it, but whether we should
accept the official account’s identification of the aircraft that hit the
Pentagon with a Boeing 757 and, indeed, with Flight 77 as such. Berlet, failing
to make that distinction, launches into a long discussion of the fact, which
is not in dispute, that a number of people reported seeing an American Airlines
plane. He seems to assume that, since it would not be plausible to reject
all this testimony, it shows that the Pentagon was indeed hit by Flight 77.
But none of the eyewitnesses could have credibly claimed to have seen Flight
77, as if this number were written on the fuselage.
8. Part of Berlet’s argument is that I reject
the testimony of people who reported seeing a commercial airliner. He says:
In a clear case of omitting conflicting eyewitness
testimony, Griffin quotes one air traffic controller and three eyewitnesses
who describe something that does not resemble a Boeing 757 commercial jetliner
heading towards the Pentagon, implying that it was a missile. But there are
scores of eyewitness reports who describe a commercial jetliner flying almost
on the ground toward the Pentagon.
I, however, devoted an entire section (NPH 36-39)
to various ways that critics of the official account have dealt with the
fact that many people reported seeing an American Airlines plane going toward
the Pentagon. I then, in explaining Meyssan’s approach, mentioned that he
pointed out that “there were also several reports of eyewitnesses who said
that the aircraft looked and/or sounded like a missile or a military plane.”
I also said that Meyssan showed that “the eyewitnesses supportive of the
official theory are at least partly balanced off by eyewitnesses supportive
of the missile theory” (emphasis added). How could anyone regard this as
my implying that there were more witnesses reporting seeing a missile
or small military plane, especially given the fact that I later reported
Gerhard Holmgren’s analysis of stories about 29 people who were said to have
reported seeing a commercial airliner? (Here Berlet may have been partly
misled my his misinterpretation of the statement about military personnel,
which he mentions several times.)
9. Berlet seeks to show the unreliability of
Holmgren’s analysis, at the end of which Holmgren concluded that “there is
no eyewitness evidence to support the theory that F77 hit the Pentagon, unless
my search has missed something very significant”--a rather nondogmatic statement,
I thought. Berlet sought to illustrate Holmgren’s unreliability by pointing
out that, although Holmgren was unable to find an AP reporter named Dave
Winslow, Berlet easily found him. But although this fact may show that Berlet
is better at locating people, it does little if anything to undermine Holmgren’s
conclusion.
In
the first of Winslow’s statement quoted by Berlet, Winslow reportedly said:
“I saw the tail of a large airliner.
. . . It plowed right into the Pentagon.” But as Holmgren shows, many statements
that at first glance seem to report seeing an airliner hit the Pentagon do
not actually do so. What Winslow says he saw was “the tail of a large
airliner.” His statement that “[i]t [the airliner] plowed right into the
Pentagon” might, like many other similar statements examined by Holmgren,
have turned out under questioning to be an inference rather than the report
of a direct observation. That possibility is, in fact, supported by the second
statement quoted by Berlet, in which Winslow reportedly said:
I saw a jumbo tail go by me . . . . I just saw
the tail go whoosh right past me. In a split second, you heard this boom.
. . . Then came an enormous fireball.
Although Berlet calls Winslow an example of one
of “hundreds of eyewitnesses to the commercial jet hitting the Pentagon,”
he appears instead to be an example of one of Holmgren’s main categories:
people who have been said to have claimed that they saw a big plane
hit the Pentagon but whose statements, when examined, do not actually make
this claim. As I put it,
Holmgren’s main point is that most of the eyewitnesses
who seemed to have claimed to see an American Airlines passenger plane hit
the Pentagon actually claimed only that they saw it come very close to the
Pentagon just before the explosion. (NPH 39)
All that Winslow’s second statement as quoted
says is that he saw the tail of a jumbo airliner go by him, then he heard
a boom, and then he saw a fireball. Winslow’s testimony can, therefore, accord
perfectly well with Dick Eastman’s two-aircraft hypothesis, which Holmgren,
as I reported, has accepted.
10. In seeking to show that there are statements
from witnesses who saw Flight 77, or at least a Boeing 757, hit the Pentagon,
Berlet quotes the following statement, which had been reported as the testimony
of an eyewitness:
The windows were dark on American Airlines Flight
77 as it streaked toward its target, only 50 yards away. The hijacked jet
slammed into the Pentagon at a ferocious speed. But the Pentagon's wall held
up like a champ. It barely budged as the nose of the plane curled upwards
and crumpled before exploding into a massive fireball.
Is it not clear, however, that this statement
belongs in Holmgren’s category of quoted statements that are simply not credible?
First, as Berlet himself acknowledges, this statement mixes observation with
interpretation, referring to the plane as “Flight 77” and the “hijacked jet.”
Indeed, to be fastidious, it is even interpretation to conclude that, just
because an airplane had American Airlines markings on it, it was an
American Airlines plane.
Second,
and more important, can Berlet really believe that if a 100-plus-ton airliner
going several hundred mph--it
was said to have “streaked toward its target”--hit the wall of the west wing
of the Pentagon, the wall would have “barely budged”? The wall had, to be
sure, recently been reinforced. But could Berlet find any physics professor
who would say that the reinforced wall was so strong that it could stop a
giant airliner cold? (The Twin Towers had steel beams around their perimeter
and yet the airplanes ripped right though them.) Furthermore, if the wall
“barely budged,” then most of the airplane would have been visible in front
of the wall in the various photographs that were taken shortly after the
attack, which I mentioned. But there is no such plane visible. The quoted
statement said, to be sure, that the plane exploded “into a massive fireball.”
But unless Berlet has a reputable physics book that says a hydrocarbon fire
can cause steel and aluminum to vaporize--and without scorching the earth
to boot--he has done nothing to undermine Holmgren’s conclusion.
11. Berlet suggests that I ignore or discount
all the reports by eyewitnesses of having seen an American Airlines plane.
But I do not. Rather, after having referred to many types of physical evidence
suggesting that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon could not have been Flight
77--because it could not have been a Boeing 757--I respond to the claims
of defenders of the official theory who seem to think that the eyewitness
testimony trumps all this physical evidence. I point out that critics of
the official account have employed four approaches to dealing with this evidence.
The final of these four is Dick Eastman’s two-aircraft hypothesis, which,
I point out, “allows an even less skeptical [than Holmgren’s] approach to
testimony that seems to support the official theory,” so that “at least most
of the testimony of most of the witnesses can be accepted as accurate.”
12. According to Berlet, I claim “that no one
saw pieces of an airplane after the impact.” He then says that this claim
“is refuted by several eyewitnesses who described seeing pieces of the plane.”
Berlet adds that “there is even a photograph of a piece of wreckage that
appears to be from an aircraft lying on the grass outside the Pentagon.”
However,
I never made the sweeping claim that “no one saw pieces of an airplane.”
What I said is that evidently no
one reported seeing pieces that provided evidence that the Pentagon was hit
by a Boeing 757. Berlet, furthermore, does not cite any witnesses
who reported seeing things that were clearly or even probably from a Boeing
757. The “piece of wreckage that appears to be from an aircraft” to which
he refers is the flimsy little piece of metal in the photograph by Mark Faram.
But Meyssan, besides saying that this piece of metal “does not correspond
with any piece of a Boeing 757-200 painted in the colors of American Airlines,”
added that it “has not moreover been inventoried by the Department of Defense
as coming from flight 77.” Berlet responds to the first of these claims by
citing people who argue otherwise. But even if one accepted this counter-claim,
how impressive would this be? Can anyone really believe that only one or
two tiny pieces of a giant airliner, made of aluminum and steel, would have
been left after such a crash? Is Berlet not grasping at straws? Furthermore,
Berlet simply ignores Meyssan’s second point--that the Pentagon report itself
did not claim that this piece in Faram’s photograph came from Flight 77.
Does Berlet want to claim that it did, even though the Pentagon did not?
Or does Berlet have evidence that, contrary to Meyssan’s claim, the Pentagon
really did claim that that piece was from Flight 77?
13. Berlet says that I falsely assume “that the
entire jet aircraft maintained its structural integrity lengthwise as it
plowed through the Pentagon, leaving its wings outside on the lawn.” He then
says:
This is a physical impossibility given the dense
mass and structural strength of the Pentagon building materials and reinforcements.
In fact, the plane disintegrated and collapsed lengthwise as it proceeded
through the building.
One problem here is that Berlet elsewhere complains
about writers who make statements about matters about which they are not
experts. Berlet has not explained his own credentials for making this confident
assertion about what happened to the airplane.
More
serious is the problem of how Berlet could reconcile this statement, about
the plane plowing through the Pentagon,
with the claim of his eyewitness that the wall of the Pentagon was so strong
that it “held up like a champ” so that it “barely budged.”
But
the most serious problem is that the main reason for saying that if the
Pentagon had been hit by a Boeing 757,
its wings would have been visible in the pictures. This reason is that there
are pictures that were taken before the facade of the west wing collapsed.
As I pointed out (NPH 29), these photos, besides showing that the entrance
hole was no larger than 18 feet in diameter, also show “no damage above the
hole or on either side of it.” The wings of a Boeing 757, of course, have
huge steel engines on them. And with its tail the plane is about 40 feet
tall. So the pictures of the facade provide extremely strong evidence that
no Boeing 757 entered the Pentagon. And yet Berlet, without mentioning these
photographs, claims that what went through three rings of the Pentagon was
not simply the nose of the Boeing but “the rest of the aircraft fuselage
and metal skin, along with the wings and jet engines, and the tail.” How
can Berlet make this claim in the face of photographic evidence to the contrary?
14. To generalize this point: Berlet’s charge
that I had ignored eyewitness testimony shows that he believes that we should
not ignore evidence that counts against our own theories. But Berlet fails
to mention most of the evidence that I cited against the Boeing theory. Although
I gave eight kinds of physical evidence against this theory, Berlet focuses
on only two of these--Meyssan’s claim about the fire and his claim about
nose of a Boeing and the C-ring. These are indeed probably the two claims
by Meyssan upon which it is easiest to cast doubt. I would add, however,
that even here Berlet’s argument is problematic. His main contention against
Meyssan’s argument about the kind of explosion that occurred in the Pentagon,
for example, seems to be that “Meyssan has no qualifications whatsoever to
analyze explosions from a forensic perspective.” But Berlet does not inform
us of his own qualifications to provide an alternative analysis. In any case,
if Berlet is to deal seriously with a cumulative argument--which is what
Meyssan provides--he needs to take on its strongest parts, not simply its
weakest.
This
is a most important point. In the Introduction to the book, I explained
the difference between a deductive
argument, which is “only as strong as its weakest link,” and a cumulative
argument, which cannot be refuted by simply refuting one or two of its steps.
In note 43, I added:
I emphasize this point because some polemicists,
when confronted by a book whose conclusion they do not like, seek to undermine
this conclusion by focusing on the few points that they believe can be most
easily discredited. That tactic, assuming that good evidence is really presented
against those points, is valid with regard to a deductive argument. In relation
to a cumulative argument, however, it is tactic useful only to those concerned
with something other than truth.
It
is hard for me to resist the conclusion that Berlet has resorted to this
tactic, even if only unconsciously. In any case,
by virtue of ignoring most of the arguments for the conclusion that the Pentagon
was not struck by Flight 77, Berlet has done nothing to refute this conclusion.
15. One of the claims in my book that Berlet
seeks to undermine was stated thus:
A Boeing 757, besides being so tall and having
such a wide wingspan, weighs over 100 tons. Traveling at a speed of 250 to
440 miles per hour, it would have caused tremendous devastation. (NPH 31)
To rebut this claim, Berlet says: “The Pentagon
is an immense, solid, reinforced structure with a mass that makes a 100 ton
airplane relatively small by comparison.”
We
are agreed that the Pentagon is very big. As I pointed out (NPH 40), one
of the problems with the official theory
is why terrorists would have gone out of their way to hit the facade of the
west wing when they could have simply flown the plane into the roof, which
covers 29 acres (and in particular the roof of the east wing, where they
might have killed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and some of the top brass).
But how is the size of the Pentagon relevant? Berlet’s argument would need
a second premise to connect his first premise--the Pentagon is much bigger
than a 757--to his conclusion--which is that a 757 would not cause much destruction
to the particular section of the Pentagon that it hit. I for one cannot imagine
what that premise would be.
16.
Berlet appeals to the claim that the airplane hit the ground before it
hit the Pentagon, therefore losing much of its power.
But Berlet simply ignores the fact that I provided evidence against this
claim, pointing out that the photographs show a lawn free from any sign of
having been scraped by an airliner. “Whatever struck the Pentagon made a
clean hit from the air and went completely inside” (NPH 29). He still, therefore,
has done nothing to undermine the conclusion that, if the Pentagon had been
hit by a Boeing 757, the photographs would have shown far greater damage,
immediately after the impact, than they do show.
III. OTHER PROBLEMS
Having dealt at length with Berlet’s treatment
of the Pentagon strike, I will conclude this response by pointing out a few
other problems in his review.
1. Berlet says, at the outset of his review,
that I make the following claim: “The U.S. government caused or deliberately
allowed the attacks of 09/11/01 to take place.”
One
problem here is his calling this “a claim.” In the place that he does this,
he takes the statement out of context.
The statement, which occurred in the interview with Nick Welsh, came in response
to the question of how I accounted for the fact that the American media have
“been asleep at the switch.” My answer, which Berlet quoted elsewhere in
his review, was: “It is very difficult for Americans to face the possibility
that their own government may have caused or deliberately allowed such a
heinous event." By taking it out of context, Berlet turned my statement--about
Americans finding it difficult to face a possibility--into a direct charge
of complicity.
In
any case, Berlet then charges that my statement is guilty of the fallacy
of the false dilemma--giving only two
options when there are really three. Berlet says:
it is asserted that the evidence suggests Bush
either caused the attacks on 09/11/01 or knew about them in advance and did
nothing to stop them. One option not given (or repeatedly dismissed) is that
Bush should have known that an attack was imminent, but failed to take the
proper measures to stop them.
In my book, however, which is supposed to be
the subject of the review, I point out that there are not only three but
at least eight possible levels of complicity--in addition to the official
theory, according to the attacks resulted from failures of various sorts
(NPH xxi-xxii).
2. Berlet agrees that it would have been nice
if there had been some jet fighters ready for scramble orders at Andrews,
but, he says:
There
were not. . . . [T]he duty assignments on 9/11/01 for scramble alert jet
aircraft on the east coast were Langley
in coastal Virginia to cover Washington, D.C. and Otis on the coast on Cape
Cod in Massachusetts to cover New York City. . . How do I know this? Because
the pilots have given interviews describing their duty assignment and how
the were scrambled on 9/11.
The logical argument implicit here would seem
to run something like this:
1. Pilots said X.
2. Pilots would never lie, even if ordered by
superiors to do so.
3. Therefore X.
Now we have a logically valid argument. But would
Berlet really want to commit himself to its soundness by endorsing the second
premise?
Furthermore,
can Berlet really believe that on some days, the defense of the nation’s
capital is left to the relatively
distant airbase at Langley, so that there would be no pilots at Andrews,
ten miles from Washington, ready to respond to scramble orders? I certainly
cannot believe this.
3. Berlet attempts to bolster his point by saying
that “[t]here is no evidence that has been produced so far that demonstrates
that there were jets ready to scramble at Andrews.” But Berlet later includes
under the various logical fallacies what he calls the Argument From Ignorance,
namely, “because something is not known to be true, it is assumed to be false.”
Is not Berlet here arguing that because there is no evidence demonstrating
that the jets were ready to scramble, this claim can be assumed to be false?
4. Berlet rejects my suggestion that it would
be “inexplicable” if it took F-15s six minutes to take off after scramble
orders were given. In attempting to explain why this would be perfectly explicable,
Berlet describes several steps the pilots would have to go through--this
evidently being another area in which he is qualified to refute the authorities
on whom I relied. But in explaining why it could easily take six minutes
just to take off, Berlet ignores the fact that I had quoted the US Air Force’s
own website, according to which an F-15 routinely “goes from ‘scramble order’
to 29,000 feet in only 2.5 minutes” (NPH 4).
5. Berlet points out the fallacy of Affirming
the Consequent, in which one argues: “If A, then B; B; therefore A.” Berlet
then says that I commit this fallacy because I argue, he claims, thus: “If
a heat-seeking missile hit United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, it would have
knocked off the jet engine. A jet engine from the aircraft was found miles
from the main crash wreckage, therefore this is evidence that a heat-seeking
missile hit United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania.”
However,
aside from the detail that I did not say that an engine “was found miles
[away],” I did not argue thus. Again,
as in several other cases, the argument that I give--in this case Paul Thompson’s
argument--is a cumulative argument, with many parts. After giving the most
important parts of Thompson’s evidence for the belief that Flight 93 was
shot down, I say:
This conclusion is undergirded still further
by reports about the location of remnants from the plane. For one thing,
a half-ton piece of one of the engines was reportedly found over a mile away.
One newspaper story called this fact “intriguing” because “the heat-seeking,
air-to-air Sidewinder missiles aboard an F-16 would likely target one of
the Boeing 757’s two large engines. (NPH 52)
It is quite a distortion for Berlet to write
as if I used the engine report as the only evidence and as a deductive proof.
It was clearly presented as a report that further undergirded the
most important parts of the cumulative argument.
6. Berlet charges that I commit this same fallacious
reasoning in the discussion of Bush’s behavior in the Sarasota classroom.
He summarizes my argument thus:
If Bush knew about the 09/11/01 attacks in advance,
he would remain in a classroom talking with children, (and the Secret Service
would not whisk him away to safety). Bush stayed talking with children, therefore
this is evidence that Bush knew about the 09/11/01 attacks in advance.
But insofar as there was a formal argument implicit
in my discussion, Berlet has mis-characterized it. It would instead run thus:
If the attacks had been a surprise to the head
of Bush’s Secret Service detail, Bush would have been whisked away. He was
not whisked away. Therefore, the attacks were not a surprise.
The form of the argument, in other words, is
not if A, then B; B; therefore A. Rather, it is if A, then B; not
B; therefore not A. And this form is perfectly valid.
7. Berlet finds a fallacy--the fallacy of leaping
to a conclusion based on the Post Hoc fallacy--in the following exchange:
Nick Welsh said: “Let’s say there has been this complicity. To what end?”
I replied: “There were several benefits that could have been anticipated
from 9/11,” after which I mentioned the ability to pass the PATRIOT Act and
to get wars against Afghanistan and Iraq authorized. Berlet charges that
I am assuming that the fact that these events followed from 9/11 provides
proof, or at least evidence, that the Bush administration caused or allowed
9/11. But I was simply responding to Welsh’s hypothetical question (“Let’s
say...”). And surely Berlet would not dispute the fact that it is common
in criminal investigations to ask about possible motives. Juries will find
it difficult to believe that Jones murdered his wife if the prosecution cannot
suggest a plausible motive. The existence of a motive is not proof. But it
is generally considered a necessary--albeit not a sufficient--condition for
suspecting complicity.
CONCLUSION
In sum, although Berlet asserts that The New
Pearl Harbor is marred by serious flaws of various sorts, I cannot
see that he has supported this assertion. I cannot see, therefore, that
he has shown that Richard Falk, Rosemary Ruether, and Howard Zinn should
be embarrassed by having lent their names to the book.
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