'The Fifth Estate' and 9/11

What can we expect from the mainstream media? When programming is not ignoring the truth movement, it is trying to smear its messengers, even taking aim at 9/11 family members. But a clear exception to this was the November broadcast of the Canadian program "The Fifth Estate" calledThe Unofficial Story, which profiled unanswered questions about 9/11. This comparatively professional coverage exposed crucial forensic evidence including WTC 7 free fall, microspheres, nano-thermite and other points raised by luminaries including David Ray Griffin, Richard Gage, AIA, and others.

While tower footage was broadcast, Mr. Gage pointed out that concrete was pulverized to fine dust, while the building tore itself apart and 20-ton perimeter wall units were hurled up to 600 feet away. The only way a building can fall for 100 feet at free fall acceleration (as WTC Building 7 did), he noted, is to have its columns removed all at once. Perhaps more Canadian viewers will begin to see the problem. Does anyone really believe fire is a process that can violently annihilate steel columns in synchrony, and hurl massive steel wall units two football fields away? Common sense, physics, and history tell us the answer.

"Fifth Estate" host Bob McKeown also highlighted the discovery of microscopic spheres of molten iron bearing chemical evidence of thermite, an incendiary that is said to be explosive. He noted that NIST, the federal agency responsible for analyzing the towers' destruction, admits that it never even tested World Trade Center debris for for the residue of thermite or any other explosives. Then there was the discovery of superthermite in the WTC dust, which as Mr. Gage noted, has advantages for covert operations in that it doesn't produce the loud bangs and bright flashes of other explosives.

The problem: How did such materials get into these buildings?

In an effort to achieve what some viewers may call "balance," the show unfortunately allowed itself to serve as a platform for silly and fallacious statements by James Meigs and Brent Blanchard.

Mr. Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, sidestepped the physical evidence by going off topic. He argued that not all military, intelligence, and media institutions could possibly have been complicit in 9/11. Eureka, a brilliant analysis of nothing! With whom is he arguing? If Meigs takes a closer look, he may notice that the case for a new investigation is based on scientific evidence, which cannot be waved away by extreme assumptions about the number of people required, or by studied ignorance about previous covert operations that were kept secret for decades. Give him points for clever rhetoric.

Most remarkable was Implosionworld.com senior writer Blanchard's denial of freefall, which essentially denies public conclusions by NIST itself. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. His and Meigs' statements are empty and disinformative. Perhaps Mr. Blanchard will try to defend his denial by claiming he was referring to a building other than the one documented by NIST to have descended in part at a free fall rate.

The program's limitations call to mind more general problems of news, namely, that it is expected to draw viewers regardless of whether its producers are given sufficient time to get their facts straight. Viewers of "The Fifth Estate" were not told that government reports regarding 9/11 have changed over time regarding a) the theory called pancaking, and b) the role of diesel fuel and falling debris (in the destruction of WTC 7), and c) the military's account of why it failed to intercept a single one of the four airliners (a point outside the purview of AE911Truth, but historically accurate nonetheless [see: 9/11 Live or Fabricated: Do the NORAD Tapes Verify The 9/11 Commission Report?]).

Some of the evidence highlighted by 9/11 skeptics on "The Fifth Estate" was mentioned only briefly in passing, without explanation. The program mentioned the pulverization of the buildings' concrete, horizontal ejection of huge steel columns, and the discovery of superthermite by a team of scholars. But how many viewers received enough information to make informed decisions? Educating the public in these unexpected and somewhat technical matters will require the contribution of many media institutions each doing their part.

The program's final interview included apt comments by "Rescue Me" actor Daniel Sunjata, who says it was while researching his role on that show that he became a 9/11 activist. "What's the price of not asking these questions?" he asked. "For us to turn this page on history without … reading it properly, and making sure that we have all the right answers; that's unconscionable."

The inconvenient truths uncovered by scholars around the world are becoming harder for pop culture to deny. With "The Fifth Estate," the conventional mass media in North America has begun to form a clearer picture of the 9/11 Truth movement. If more public affairs programs face the hard questions as has the CBC, there is hope that still more citizens will question the strange taboo that has long impeded our call for a new investigation.