Denial, Projection, and Reaction Formation Taint Otherwise Perceptive Remarks by Johnson Administration Press Secretary

Bill Moyers disses 9/11 researcher/activists in a recent speech. (Photo: Grahamtastic; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

On January 27, respected journalist Bill Moyers made a keynote speech to History Makers, described as “an organization of broadcasters and producers from around the world concerned with the challenges and opportunities faced by factual broadcasting.” Moyers made many comments with which we can all agree. Yes, “the struggle against power ‘is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’” Yes, we would all like to see more “television ‘that dignifies instead of debases’.” Yes, we would all like to see less demagoguery. And like Moyers we are discouraged by the new research findings indicating that people whose minds are made up harden their positions even further in the face of contrary information, “twist[ing] facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions.”.

However, anyone acquainted with the vast body of evidence indicating that the three World Trade Center skyscrapers were demolished by explosive controlled demolition on 9/11 would be dismayed by some of Moyers’ comments about that historic event. Rather than honoring the efforts of 9/11 researchers and activists to get our government and media to acknowledge well-documented facts about 9/11, Moyers engaged in what can easily be described as an uninformed diatribe.

Moyers’ dismissive and exaggerated way of framing the issue shows that he has zero awareness of the factual problems and internal contradictions in the official story. He falsely associates questioning 9/11 or believing it was an inside job with being on the political Left. In fact, on the contrary, an honest awareness of the problems in the official account of 9/11 unites people fairly equally from all across the political spectrum, from atheistic democratic socialists to Christian libertarians.

Moyers offers a superficial laundry list of alleged flaws in the case against the official account of 9/11, a list which he admits was taken from a recent single opinion column by journalist Robert Parry, whose criticisms have been responded to by Kevin Ryan (among other things, a member of the AE911Truth board of directors) Following are several examples of the purest projection. Each of these criticisms by Moyers are either false or misleading. The first two apply not to the 9/11 truth movement but to the official account:

As AE911Truth and others have been documenting for years, the official story ignores dozens of damning facts which have persuaded more than 1,400 architects and engineers and more than 11,000 other citizens to sign their real names to a public petition calling for an investigation of the total near free-fall destruction of all three skyscrapers on 9/11, risking public ridicule and harm to their careers. These facts are summarized in the right-hand column of our home page at AE911Truth.org. They boil down further as follows:

• The energy expended in the destruction far exceeded what was available in the gravitational potential of the three WTC skyscrapers

• The destruction was too symmetrical to have been unassisted by explosives

• The destruction involved extremely high temperatures that produced molten iron or steel; this cannot be accounted for by office fires or jet fuel

• WTC 7’ freefall collapse, acknowledged by NIST, required explosives

• There is forensic evidence of unignited engineered energetic materials left over throughout the WTC dust

In his speech, Moyers also said:

“Many people inhabit a closed belief system on whose door they have hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign, that they pick and choose only those facts that will serve as building blocks for walling them off from uncomfortable truths.”

We could hardly have said it better ourselves.