Rating: 
Summary: THE PRESIDENT'S BEHAVIOR ON 9/11
Review: David Ray Griffin provides a compelling account of why it was in the interest of President George W. Bush for 9/11 to occur. (A pretext for taking over control of Iraq.) Mr. Griffin also provides evidence that President Bush's behavior was suspect on the morning of 9/11. Mr. Griffin points out that President Bush arrived at Booker Elementary School at Sarasota, FL, for a "photo opportunity" with second graders shortly before 9:00 a.m. on September 11, 2001. While the children were demonstrating how well they could read, President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, walked up to President Bush (this is captured on video tape) and whispered in his ear that a second airplane had flown into one of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings. President Bush continued to listen to the reading demonstration and then took time to praise the youngsters for their excellent reading ability. After the reading demonstration was completed, President Bush left the classroom at 9:16 a.m. to meet with his advisors. He returned at 9:29 a.m. to conduct a hasty press conference to announce that terrorists had flown airplanes into both of the WTC towers. (American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the WTC at 8:46 a.m. and United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the WTC at 9:03 a.m.) Mr. Griffin points out that President Bush claims he knew about the first airplane striking the North Tower of the WTC before he even went out to meet with the Booker Elementary School Children. Mr. Griffin points out that during a town meeting in Florida during December 2001 President Bush stated that while "I was sitting outside the classroom [at Booker Elementary School] waiting to go in . . . I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, 'there's one terrible pilot.'" (Reported by CNN on December 4, 2001.) Mr. Griffin points out "that the pictures reportedly seen by Bush could not have been 'those accidentally filmed by French documentary-makers Jules and Gedeon Nauder,' because 'their video was not released until thirteen hours later.'" Mr. Griffin suggests that what President Bush claimed to have seen [the first airplane striking the North Tower of the WTC] must "have been secret images transmitted to him without delay in the secure communications room that was installed in the elementary school in preparation for his visit." (Quoting Thierry Meyssan's book: The Big Lie (2002).) (This suggests that someone in the government was prepared to film the attack on the first WTC building.) Mr. Griffin points out that an article in the October 22, 2002 issue of The Boston Herald stated: Think about that. Bush's remark implies he saw the
first plane hit the tower. But we all know that the
video of the first plane hitting the tower did not
surface until the next day. Could Bush have meant
he saw the second plane hit -- which many Americans
witnessed? No, because he said that he was in the
classroom when Card whispered in his ear that a second
plane hit. Mr. Griffin pointed out that The Boston Herald article asked: "How could the commander-in-chief have seen the plane fly into the first building -- as it happened?" This is only a small part of the evidence that suggests that President Bush knew that an attack such as occurred on 9/11 was likely to occur. Mr. Griffin's book should be read by all persons who want to know how 9/11 could have happened. James E. Baker, Seattle
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Summary: The scariest book I have ever read!
Review: The New Pearl Harbor should be mailed to every major news agency on the planet. It is absolutly disgraceful that our own American news media has not given this book the attention it deserves. READ THIS BOOK! Ask your friends to read it, your co-workers, your Representitives, get the word out!
Rating: 
Summary: Questionable sources
Review: To be sure, David Ray Griffin asks some good questions in this book, and is at his best in the pre-9/11 arguments, which are well documented. But I found much of the book relies far too heavily on dubious sources. This review focuses on the more sensational claims in the beginning of the book. 9/11 It may well seem the response times were slow on 9/11, and Griffin is right to ask questions. Yet the claims made by the critics are also exaggerated. For example, none of the quoted passages in the text actually say that an airliner in the context of 9/11, as a matter of protocol, would be intercepted "within 10-15 minutes," despite the critics wanting to draw this inference. One should remember that during 9/11, once the hijacked airplanes' transponders were switched off, the only radar returns were without specific identification, requiring controllers to guess at which of the thousands of returns might be a potential threat. I also find it curious why these critics (and Griffin) are never able to quote a single qualified expert to support their skepticism. (If there are, they are not mentioned. For more perspective here, see "Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks" at the Aviationnow website) Controlled Demolition It is difficult to imagine such an elaborate logistical scheme as wiring the WTC with explosives being pulled off without anyone noticing (or not breathing a word for over 2 years.) What I find more curious is the claim regarding WTC-7. What would be the motive for wiring it with explosives when it would make no difference in the overall outcome of 9/11 once the twin towers were destroyed? This casts additional doubt on all the demolition claims. The only expert Griffin cites does not endorse the theory. The rest of these authors have no apparent credentials as demolition experts, or as authorities on the physics of building collapses. They include Jeff King, a completely unknown quantity; Eric Hufschmid, a software developer; Scott Loughrey, "an amateur media critic;" Peter Meyer, who "attended university," and Bill Manning, who is quoted as if he lends support to this skepticism, when in fact he does not (the full context of his remarks can be found at the Rense website). One tactic of these authors is to present ambiguous observations as established fact (such as that the fires were "burning out," or that the intense heat was only "momentary.") Why are they more qualified than experts to tell us this? And why could Griffin not find a single expert to support this theory? It surely can't be every last one of them joined the conspiracy. Flight 93 I concede there's a case for a shoot down. Yet the evidence is not nearly as strong as Griffin suggests when one goes back and checks firsthand news accounts. For example, the debris found 8 miles away consisted of extremely light objects capable of being carried by air currents. This also has past precedent (for example, USAir flight 427 in 1994). And the engine he mentions was in fact 600 yards from the impact, not "over a mile." In any event, even if Flight 93 was shot down, why should it support the complicity theory? The much more obvious and straight forward motive for shooting it down would be to prevent a 4th attack. The complicity theory also implies the government would want to create the impression it was not complicit. So the allegedly complicit government would, presumably, be dying to take credit for having stopped F93, once it became known it was shot down. That it didn't makes it all the less likely. Flight 77 The weakest argument in the book pertains to Flight 77. Again, Griffin relies on questionable authors with no expertness in high speed airliner impacts. Their ignorance is laughable to those who follow even casually the air crash investigation scene. Griffin relies heavily on Thiery Meyssan's views, which have been completely refuted by several web sites. They point out there is nothing unusual about this crash when compared to other high speed impacts. Meyssan does not present the pictures showing the large amount of debris from the 757 that were later collected at the crash site. His assertion there should have been a "burnt-out wreck" is ignorant to anyone familiar with high speed impact crashes. A refutation of such pseudo crash experts is found in many similar crash impacts, such as the aforementioned USAir flight 427 in 1994. Almost everything in that impact was pulverized into millions of tiny pieces. The example is not isolated. In addition, a photo (available online) clearly shows a twisted part of the aluminum colored fuselage of F77, with part of the red American Airlines livery, lying outside the Pentagon. Griffin quotes Meyssan (p182) as claiming the picture does not "correspond with any part of a Boeing 757." Again, that is an ignorant statement from a self-anointed expert. Plane crashes twist and bend parts into weird shapes, and the photo looks no more unusual than countless fragments from many other high speed crashes. Even without all the massive documentation that F77 hit the Pentagon, it should be clear to any thinking person that if F77 crashed elsewhere, the odds of it going unnoticed for 2 1/2 years is close to zero. If it "landed unnoticed at Reagan National" (p39), why did no one see the plane parked there? Where did the passengers go? If they were removed from the plane, or murdered, how was this accomplished w/o anyone noticing? Few conspiracy tales have been as obvious a hoax as F77. That a whole chapter is devoted to it in an allegedly scholarly book is indeed curious. In summary, while the book tries to be undogmatic and balanced, and does make many strong arguments, its main contention is too reliant on sensational claims that are poorly documented. If the author had not made them such a prominent part of the book, perhaps I would be less critical.
Rating:
Summary: Friendly note
Review: Many of you seem to think this is one of the most important books ever written. If you think this one is revealing, you should try 'The Creature from Jekyll Island' also from Griffin, proving the reader with a much broader and accurate description of the masters of puppets and their mechanisms. This book won't reveal anything an average-intelligence person could not find out putting 2 hours of research into the matter, but consolidates about 85 % of the evidence in a meaninful fashion.
Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: Griffin expertly lays out the most convincing alternative theories about 9-11, starting with the forensic evidence of the actual events on the day. Beginning with the Flights that hit the World Trade Center and the destruction of the World Trade Center itself, he then focuses on the Pentagon and the dubious claim that it was hit by a commercial jet. Next he turns his attention to Flight 93, which may have been shot down over Pennsylvania, and to the Bush's strange series of actions on that day. In each chapter he asks the important questions and demonstrates--through deductive reasoning--that the official account cannot be reconciled with the available evidence and that the alternative hypothesis put forward by 9-11 skeptics (or "revisionists" as he calls them) more closely fit the facts. Griffin's skepticism of the official account is also not uncritical. He states quite clearly that he takes it on faith that the revisionists have not manufactured or distorted any facts, and that he hasn't time to verify if this is so. At the end of the book, he asks some rhetorical questions that challenge the alternative theories. For example, he asks "why would the Bush Administration engage in such a grand conspiracy when something much less elaborate (such as an act of biological terrorism) might have had the same effect (notably a scared and jingoistic American populace willing to accept any authoritarian reorganization of society and any military adventure the US Government would propose)." Griffin also gives fair space to those on the left who argue that 9-11 was a coincidence (capitalized on by the Bush Administration for political gain) rather than a conspiracy. The author then debunks the "coincidence" position by showing just how many "coincidences" there are (at least 38) and how unlikely many of them are by themselves, let alone together. Griffin is the first 9-11 skeptic to take this step to its logical degree. Griffin is also the first 9-11 skeptic to show that there are at least eight different levels of conspiracy that might have occurred on 9-11, from the weakest form of conspiracy ("construction of a false account" to cover-up incompetence) to the most extreme ("the Bush Administration involved in planning 9-11"). He demonstrates how each of the events on 9-11 require a certain level of conspiracy and concludes that the evidence points to (or at least near to) the most extreme, that 9-11 was planned by the Bush Administration. The lie of 9-11 is so big that it will be difficult to unravel all of its strands, yet it is also too big for the perpetrators to cover up.
Rating:
Summary: Read Now
Review: This is the most important book to be published in the United States in the last 50 years. A must read for all patriots of the United States of America.
Rating:
Summary: It's all here
Review: There are very few books of which it could be said, "this one has the potential to change history." But The New Pearl Harbor is such a book. For the first time, a veteran scholar clearly and dispassionately lays out all of the evidence about 9/11 which contradicts the official account, and leaves us wondering if we have been duped. I cite but two of the two dozen pieces of evidence Griffin lays out: "4. Evidence that the attacks of 9/11 could not have succeeded without an order from the highest level of government to suspend normal operating procedures for responding to hijackings," and "9. Evidence that what hit the Pentagon was not a Boeing 757 but a much smaller aircraft, such as a guided missile." Almost all the information he assembles has been out there for a considerable time. But Griffin (Professor of the philosophy of religion at the Claremont School of Theology) puts it all in one place, simplifies it, and with a researcher's organizing skill, shows clearly what the possible implications might be. He does not come up with a theory to explain it all; rather he presents a prima facie case for a thorough, wide-ranging investigation. The American people deserve such an investigation; the more of them who read this book, the more likely it is that such an investigation will be demanded.
Rating:
Summary: Asks the Right Questions. Monumental Implications.
Review: One remarkable aspect of this book is that most of the questions its author poses arise from information that has been readily available for most of the time since 9/11. The way in which this information is organized and examined has made me aware of its monumental implications. Having reviewed the evidence set forth, it is difficult for me not to wonder if the Bush Administration was complicit in the attacks. If this is the case and it is proven, we will face the greatest crisis in this country since the Civil War. Also, the press in this country will have been revealed to be grossly inept and its credibility will be indelibly blemished. All thoughtful citizens should read this book.
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Summary: "I want the truth!"
Review: Remember the lines from the movie, A Few Good Men: "I want the truth!" -Lt. Kaffee (Tom Cruise). "You can't handle the truth!"-Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson). This comes to mind as I contemplate how difficult it will be for the American people to be open to the evidence David Griffin lays out meticulously, logically, and dispassionately in The New Pearl Harbor. It does, indeed, take a few deep breaths to turn the pages. It also takes a few good citizens to change history. Be one of them. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Read it, pass it on...and quickly.
Review: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer It is unlikely that any of us will read a more important book.
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