For 9/11 Skeptics, Case Is Far From Settled

Hansen: For 9/11 skeptics,
case is far from settled
By MARC HANSEN • mahansen@dmreg.com • June
17, 2010

On Tuesday night, Sean Michalek drove from Victor
to Adel for the monthly 911 Truth of Central Iowa
meeting.

The trek west took 105 minutes, but so what?
Michalek, 64, would have driven nine hours to
commune and commiserate with other Iowans who
believe the official story of Sept. 11, 2001, is a big
fat lie.

"It's the only game in Iowa," he said.

The only game, he meant, for people who think
9/11 is the least examined tragedy in American
history.

According to 911truth.org, the Adel group has
company. Grass-roots organizers also exist in
Cedar Falls, Davenport and Indianola.

That said, going on nine years after the attack on
the United States, the 9/11 truthers are still playing
small ball. The group, for the most part, is still more
sect than mainline denomination.

Though 15 people showed up for the June meeting
at the Adel Public Library, the attendees are
convinced the movement is gaining strength and
that someday the conspiracy theory will become an
accepted fact.

James Hufferd, a former junior college teacher with a
Ph.D., has been calling these monthly meetings for
almost three years. When they have a speaker, they
draw a decent crowd. In April, theologian and
author David Ray Griffin filled a 300-seat
auditorium at Drake.

On this night, Dennis Scar, 60, rolled in from his
farm near Earlham. Lin Cornelison, 59, traveled from
Creston. Angela Bassett, 38, came from Urbandale.
Scott Hartung, 51, Kent Harkrader, 45, and John
Frankling, 35, are from Des Moines.

Spread out on a table was a small video library.
Dave Scar, 58, of Woodward, said he's made 11,000
copies of various titles. Simply ask and ye shall
receive.

Beginners, Scar said, might want to begin with
"Loose Change" then work their way to "Zero: 9/11"
or "911 in Plane Site" or "Blueprint for Truth" or
"9/11 Mysteries."

Most members of the group seem to believe the
attack was an inside job that gave the United States
an excuse to go to war. And if you disagree, it's
only because you haven't taken the time to study the
evidence or you've fallen under the sway of the lazy,
corrupt corporate media.

If you want to debate the truthers, come prepared.
Right or wrong, they've looked into this a lot more
than the rest of us.

Michalek, a retired teacher, probation officer, truck
driver, farmer and military veteran, said he lies in
bed wondering how he can make people understand
that, whatever happened, 9/11 cries out for further
investigation.

"I wake up at 3 in the morning," he said, "asking
myself: How can I better reach people? How can I
change minds? For me it was easy. I knew the
government lied to me about Vietnam, because I was
there."

In Tuesday's session, the truthers ate pizza and
watched a film of scientist Kevin Ryan speaking at a
college in Vermont. Ryan was fired from his lab
director job after challenging government findings
that burning jet fuel weakened the steel beams
supporting the World Trade Center towers.

Ryan's laboratory said he was axed for making his
opinions sound like those of his employer. The Adel
crowd believes he was fired for telling the truth.

Before they watched the video, "The Emerging
Science Around the 9/11 WTC Destruction," Hufferd
warned the group. It's a little technical.

A little technical? Ryan stood behind the lectern and
talked about nanothermite and red/gray chips and
methyl ketone something or other.

The video was less about juicy tidbits and dark
scenarios and more about science and how the
collapse of the Trade Center showed all the
characteristics of a staged demolition event.

The truthers watched the film as if it were the final
episode of "Law & Order." In Ryan's Q&A session,
there was some sexy stuff about gangsters and FBI
moles and how the conspiracy might go back
further than people think.

When the film was over, the group members talked
about what they'd learned: "I hadn't heard two
people were killed in the clean-up," one person
said.

Another wondered how John O'Neal really died. John
O'Neal? I looked it up later. He was a
counterterrorism guru who got fed up, quit the FBI
and became head of security at the World Trade
Center. Two weeks later, he died in the attack.

All their curiosity doesn't make the truthers popular.
In fact, it rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

Even loved ones sometimes wonder what went
wrong. Frankling, a carpenter, said his mother isn't
buying what he's selling. "She told me, 'I raised you
better than that,' " he said with a smile.

Most people, somebody else added, don't want to
believe the United States would murder 3,000 of its
own citizens. Truthwise, there definitely is that.



Ähem?

John O'Neal?

I mean come on. How is it possible that he looked it up and still can't spell the name right?