Choose your conspiracy: depraved or demonic?

By Alan Wisdom

A review of: Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, by David Ray Griffin (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006; 246 pages; $17.95, paper)

Editor’s note: Westminster John Knox Press is an imprint of the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, which is separately incorporated and receives no funding from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). For the publisher’s statement, “Why We Published This Book,” go to the Presbyterain Publishing Company's Web site.

conspire [from Latin conspirare, to breathe together]: to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act. (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

“The Bush-Cheney administration orchestrated 9/11 in order to promote this [American] empire under the pretext of the so-called war on terror.” This is the conclusion of Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11, a controversial new book published by Westminster John Knox Press. The author is David Ray Griffin, a retired professor at Claremont School of Theology in California.

According to Griffin, the World Trade Center towers were brought down in a “controlled demolition” (39) carried out by unnamed “federal officials.” He acknowledges that American Airlines Flight 11 and United Flight 175 crashed into the north and south towers, respectively. But he doubts that there were any al Qaeda terrorists piloting the planes. Whatever may have crashed into the Pentagon, Griffin does not believe that it was American Flight 77. And he is convinced that the U.S. Air Force shot down United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania.

“The U.S. government was planning, therefore, to use the deaths of some 3,000 people (whom itself had killed) to justify wars that would most likely kill and maim many hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions,” Griffin charges. To find an excuse for taking over Afghanistan and Iraq — which posed no threats, in Griffin’s view — the Bush administration was willing to slaughter 3,000 of its own citizens, including the wife of that administration’s own solicitor general.

Do you doubt these allegations? Griffin suspects that you have not read his book or considered the evidence that it adduces. And he thinks you are blinded by the “a priori assumption … that America’s political and military leaders simply would not commit such a heinous act.”

I don’t recommend that everyone replicate my labor in slogging through this book, including the 49 pages of endnotes, and comparing its accounts of 9-11 with others that reach different conclusions. But I encourage fellow Presbyterians to take seriously Griffin’s challenge to our assumptions. Is it true that America’s leaders would never contemplate such an atrocity? Or, to ask a very different question, could they commit such an atrocity and get away with it?

Could U.S. government officials be capable of mass murder?

Reformed Christians cannot dismiss these questions lightly. Our tradition historically has made a grim assessment of human depravity. The Scots Confession teaches that “our nature is so corrupt, weak, and imperfect, that we are never able perfectly to fulfill the works of the law.” (3.15)

John Calvin observed that “the whole man, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is so deluged, as it were, that no part remains exempt from sin, and, therefore, everything that proceeds from him is imputed as sin.” (Institutes, Book II, Chapter 1, section 9) Calvin admitted that “all these iniquities do not break out in every individual.” But he added, “Still it cannot be denied that the hydra lurks in every breast.” (Institutes, Book II, Chapter 3, section 2)

So could U.S. government officials be guilty of mass murder? We cannot rule out the possibility. Indeed, it has already happened, as when the Cherokee were forced to walk the Trail of Tears. There are surely persons within our government today who, under the right circumstances, would be tempted to terrible deeds.

But under the right circumstances any other government or group might also be capable of mass murder — al Qaeda, for instance. Long before September 11, 2001, it had declared war on the American “infidels.” Multiple al Qaeda statements since that date have claimed credit for the 9-11 attacks. In a May 2006 audio recording, Osama bin Laden boasted, “I am responsible for assigning the roles of the 19 brothers to conduct these conquests….”

As David Ray Griffin remarks, both his explanation of 9-11 and the “official” explanation involve a “conspiracy theory.” Either large numbers of U.S. government officials agreed secretly to attack the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and possibly some other target — or a much smaller number of al Qaeda operatives agreed secretly to attack those targets.

The question is: Which conspiracy is more plausible? Given that all the suspects are sinful humans — with limited knowledge and abilities, mixed motives, and weak wills — which group of sinners would be more likely and more able to carry out the 9-11 attacks?

Griffin thinks the answer to that question is obvious. He scoffs at the notion that “nineteen Arab Muslims defeated the most powerful and sophisticated defense system in history.” Indeed, Griffin has no apparent interest in al Qaeda, its agenda, its history, or its capabilities. He simply asserts that “the Bush-Cheney administration, and only it, had both the means and the opportunity to bring about the attacks of 9/11.”

Demonic activity in D.C.

It is not clear whether Griffin holds the Reformed understanding of human depravity, and he does not use the term in relation to the Bush administration. Obviously, he regards that administration as morally corrupt. But he shows little sense that its members might be weak and imperfect in every other respect, too. He assumes instead that they would have almost superhuman powers to choreograph an elaborate, bloody ruse perfectly and then keep absolute silence for five years and more.

From Griffin’s perspective, in fact, the Bush administration is much worse than depraved. It is demonic. And Griffin levels this accusation not only against the Bush administration, but also against the entire U.S. government — Republicans and Democrats alike. “[T]he United States is today the chief embodiment of demonic power,” he insists. “By threatening to bring about the grossly premature death of this planet … the United States is threatening to defeat the divine will for this world in the most extreme way imaginable. Nothing, therefore, could be more demonic.”

Truly, the U.S. government would have to be demonic from top to bottom (rather than merely depraved in the Reformed sense) to have carried out the 9-11 conspiracy as Griffin imagines it. The parties that he names as willing collaborators in the attacks or the subsequent “cover-up” make an astounding list:

• Vice President Cheney
• Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials
• the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
• the head of President Bush’s Secret Service detail
• a young White House aide
• “the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Justice, and … members of the U.S. Congress”
• Democratic and Republican members and staff of the 9-11 Commission (whose report Griffin calls “a lie from beginning to end”
• former New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani and his successor, Michael Bloomberg
• several New York City fire chiefs
• the Securacom firm that held the security contract for the World Trade Center
• the owner of one of the World Trade Center buildings
• the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• “the mainstream media,” in particular Popular Mechanics magazine
• an obscure explosives expert at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

(Curiously, Griffin never charges that President Bush was personally involved in the 9-11 conspiracy. He seems to belong to the Bush-as-dupe school of thought. It is Dick Cheney who plays the evil mastermind, in Griffin’s account.)

Moreover, the full list of alleged accomplices in mass murder would have to be even longer. It would have to include the complete chains of command by which the orders to murder and then lie were transmitted through the government agencies. So, for instance, we would have to add: the explosives experts and workers who allegedly placed the charges that brought down the World Trade Center towers; all the Air Force officials up and down the East Coast who disseminated and received Cheney’s alleged “stand-down orders” that allowed flights 11, 175, and 77 to reach their targets; and the radar operators and pilots allegedly involved in shooting down Flight 93.

A fair number of these individuals must be Democrats who would have been happy to supply testimony leading to the impeachment of George W. Bush. Many of them must have personal agendas that would cause them to turn against other persons and agencies involved in the alleged conspiracy. At least a few of them must be chatterers or braggarts who could never keep a secret. Most of them surely must have consciences that would not rest easy about their complicity in a crime that killed 3,000 innocent fellow citizens.

Unanswered questions

How could all these people have cooperated in such disciplined fashion on that September 11, and then kept their unified silence through five years? Any correct estimate of human depravity would suggest that such a conspiracy could never succeed. Even if we granted that an inner circle of conspirators was totally committed and capable, the weaknesses and inconsistencies of the pawns in their plot would inevitably doom them. As more people become involved in a conspiracy, as its goals become more ambitious, and as its timeline grows longer, the odds on its staying secret rapidly approach zero.

But David Ray Griffin is so set in his view of the U.S. government as demonic that he overlooks all the difficulties of his 9-11 conspiracy theory. In fact, he never bothers to describe exactly how he imagines that the Bush administration could have carried off this complicated enterprise. Among the questions that he leaves unanswered are:

• Who are the “federal officials” who supervised the “controlled demolition” of the World Trade Center towers? With which agency were they affiliated?
• How did they manage to smuggle into the building the thousands of pounds of high explosives that would have been required to bring down the towers?
• If the purpose was to bring down the towers and then blame al Qaeda, why was it necessary to fly planes into the buildings and also to plant explosives?
• If there were no hijackers, who were the pilots that the U.S. government recruited to attack the World Trade Center? What were their motives in undertaking this suicidal/homicidal mission?
• If Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon, what happened to all the passengers and crew on that flight? Were they kidnapped and then killed at another location? Were their remains then planted in the Pentagon rubble, where the rescue workers found those remains?
• Why would the U.S. Air Force, having deliberately refrained from intercepting flights 11, 175, and 77, then turn around and shoot down Flight 93?

Griffin does not seem concerned with any of these obvious questions. Evidently, the supposed demonic power of the U.S. government explains it all to his satisfaction.

Inconsistencies in the “official” explanation of 9-11

The strongest point in Griffin’s argument, at first glance, is the enumeration of apparent inconsistencies in the “official” explanation of 9-11. There can be no doubt that it was a freakish day on which unexpected things happened, people did not react as planned, and memories of important details differed. Military theorists call this situation “the fog of war,” and it is yet another symptom of our fallen human condition.

The FAA and NORAD were supposed to coordinate a quick response to a hijacking. But confused reports of the diverted flights bounced around the FAA bureaucracy for nearly two hours. The appropriate authorities in NORAD were not notified until it was too late. Griffin fulminates that “such incompetence by FAA officials is not believable.” Others would find it all too true to what we know of human nature and government bureaucracy.

The World Trade Center towers were supposed to withstand the impact of a commercial airliner. Never before had a steel-frame skyscraper collapsed in the manner that the towers did. But when the towers were constructed in 1966, the architects could not have expected or modeled the effect of a loaded Boeing 767 barreling in at full throttle.

Griffin is convinced that he has found facts “that contradicted the official story and thereby implied government complicity of some sort.” But sometimes an anomaly is just an anomaly. Not everything that happens is the result of someone’s rational plan or conspiracy.

For readers who wish to evaluate the details of Griffin’s conspiracy theory, I recommend Popular Mechanics’ recently-released book Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts. This alternative interpretation, with illustrative photos and diagrams, is far more readable and more credible. It explains most, although not all, of the anomalies on which Griffin focuses.

For example, Griffin makes much of testimony from witnesses in the World Trade Center who heard explosions in the lower levels of the towers in the period preceding their collapse. He assumes that these blasts had to come from explosive charges. Popular Mechanics has a better explanation: Jet fuel from the planes spilled down the elevator shafts all the way to the bottom, setting off secondary fireballs on the lower floors.

Griffin’s book is not a work of careful scholarship. When citing eyewitnesses to 9-11, he quotes only those whose words seem to support his own thesis. He ignores a mass of contrary evidence: the photos of sheared and bowing columns in the World Trade Center towers, the seismographs that show a progressive collapse rather than a quick series of timed explosions, the eyewitnesses who saw the American Airlines plane slam into the Pentagon, the cell phone calls from passengers on the doomed flights, the cockpit transmissions and black box recordings of the hijackers, the other information subsequently collected about those 19 individuals, and the statements from al Qaeda itself.

Much of Griffin’s evidence on 9-11 seems to be drawn from the websites of fellow conspiracy theorists. Popular Mechanics, interviewing eyewitnesses and experts cited by Griffin, shows at least five of them rejecting his misinterpretations of their words taken out of context. In several instances, Griffin relays unsubstantiated rumors and hearsay as if they were admissible evidence.

Unorthodox theology

Oddly, less than half of this 9-11 conspiracy book is about the events of 9-11. The rest is a strange salad of political analysis, historical vignettes, Biblical interpretation and theology.

The chapter on “Jesus and the Roman Empire” takes the same conspiracy theory approach to the New Testament that Griffin has already applied to 9-11. He depicts Jesus as the preacher of an “anti-imperial gospel” that condemned the Roman Empire as demonic. Griffin agrees with two other scholars that the original and genuine goal of the church is to “form a practical worldwide alliance against the forces of empire.” But, he laments, this political message “has been largely hidden to readers of the Gospels.” It was allegedly suppressed by New Testament writers who wrongly emphasized the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The theological chapter on “The Divine and the Demonic” is by far the most sophisticated in the book. Not surprisingly, the longtime professor of philosophy and theology is more skilled in his own field than he is in crime-solving, history, political analysis or Biblical scholarship. One almost suspects that Griffin slipped in this sample of his own version of “process theology,” knowing that the 9-11 cover story might attract a popular audience not likely to read his more academic works.

Griffin’s theology is as unorthodox as his take on 9-11. He follows a form of panentheism, holding that God is in all things but not identical with the universe. On the contrary, Griffin believes in the eternal existence of self-determining entities autonomous from God. He therefore denies God’s omnipotence and sovereignty, as well as the doctrine of creation out of nothing.

Griffin sees “divine power [as] persuasive, not coercive.” He maintains, “The battle between divine and demonic power is therefore a real battle, with the outcome still undecided.” Griffin is seriously afraid that American imperialism could thwart God’s purposes for this world.

Griffin accuses Christians who do not share this fear of being “complacent” about evil. This is really the same caricature of Christian faith that the apostle Paul confronted in his letter to the Romans: Should we cease struggling against sin in this world, knowing that God’s grace will cover us in any case? “By no means!” the apostle thundered. (Romans 6:2)

Paul called Jesus’ followers to undertake that struggle confidently, with the assurance that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) To Paul’s list of powers not to fear I would add: not even the U.S. government, with its all-too-human imperfections.