Write for God
February 5, 2008

About two years ago, I attended a ritzy public relations conference paid for by Homeland Security, which had to find something to spend all those zillions they were getting from the federal government to protect us from terrorism. As a public information officer, I was sent by my local government to Orlando’s genteel Peabody Hotel with almost every expense paid. Other than my mileage from the Tampa Bay area to the middle of the state and a couple of meals, my employers had all of their costs covered by Homeland Security.

I saw some friends, learned from some excellent communications presenters and took the evenings off to window-shop at some fancy malls in Orlando. It was an excellent mini-vacation with some take-home value.

The most interesting of the seminars was presented by Dr. Vincent Covello, a crisis communication expert who told us an amazing story. His group had rehearsed former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his officers in how to respond to situations that included planes hitting the World Trade Center. Statements had been prepared and rehearsed way in advance of September 11, 2001. Suddenly, the poise and leadership that Giuliani was admired for seemed hollow.

Every eventuality, said the crisis expert, should be prepared for and rehearsed so that those in charge look cool and confident when it happens. In fact, said the expert, nothing should be left to chance. Former Gulf War Commander Norman Schwarzkopf had rehearsed the famous tear he shed during a Barbara Walters interview when she asked about the casualties of the first Gulf go ’round. And the Academy Award goes to…I thought about that session today as Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman interviewed the author of a new book unveiling the close ties between 9/11 Commission head Philip Zelikow and the Bush Administration. New York Times reporter Phillip Shenon discussed the issue in The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. In what some in the media are calling a bombshell, Shenon says that Zelikow was tight with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. Phone logs and requests not to keep phone logs that documented Zelikow’s calls to Rove were mentioned. (Democracy Now’s report is available here.)

I learned about Giuliani’s rehearsals and Schwarzkopf’s crocodile tear from a crisis communication expert at a Homeland Security event, but I had known about Zelikow’s Machiavellian handling of the 9/11 Commission from reading Dr. David Ray Griffin’s excellent The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions and The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9-11. There wasn’t anything in Shenon’s “bombshell” discussion today that I hadn’t read in Griffin’s books some years ago.

Same message, different messengers. Shenon is employed by the New York Times, which is supposed to have credibility and tradition. Griffin is a conspiracy theorist, a nutcase, a black helicopter kook. Those aren’t my terms, of course; they’re regularly used by “credible” media such as the New York Times, which arrived at the story too late and is just now catching up.

Griffin is a retired philosophy and theology professor. He’s not a conspiratorial maniac or a paranoid schizophrenic. There’s nothing insane about his books that ask for full and honest investigations of 9/11. Everything is well documented, indexed and found in a media source. There are no independent investigations or leaked documents from unnamed sources in Griffin’s books. (Cable network C-SPAN featured Griffin in a speech available here. Doesn’t Griffin look like a lunatic on camera. Hardly.)

I have a friend who is well informed and intelligent, but he believes all of the questionable goop that Popular Mechanics served up in book form to tear down authors such as Griffin. My friend has made his 9/11 case from the magazine’s arguments, but cannot get beyond the fact that there are increasing numbers of skeptical people around the world who are disagreeing with Popular Mechanics, which is certainly not the Holy Bible of hard news. Unless plans for a DIY crystal radio set or instructions on fixing your dishwasher constitute investigative journalism, I’d look to scholars and researchers for 9/11 answers instead of Popular Mechanics.

Before dismissing Griffin and all of the other sane, intelligent voices calling for an open investigation of 9/11, it’s worth reading Griffin’s well annotated books. It’s time to reopen 9/11, if only because a reporter from the New York Times is suddenly telling the nation that all wasn’t kosher on the commission that was cozy with the same administration it was supposed to be independent of. Or are there kooks and conspiracy theorists at the New York Times, too? We might all end up getting our news from Popular Mechanics if the Times keeps this up.