Slide #5 - Scripps Howard Poll, Slide 1

The Scripps Howard August 2006 Poll

In August 2006, the Scripps Howard News Service conducted a study of 9/11 conspiracy theory beliefs. Their findings were published in this article, and then used as part of the Time Magazine article found on this slide and the Washington Post article on the next.

The results were eye-opening.

Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."

...The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.

...Sixteen percent said it's "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that "the collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings."

Gage is using this information to make you feel more comfortable with the idea of believing what he wants you to believe. There is safety in numbers, and 36% of Americans is a rather large number!

The Scripps Howard poll combines two different takes on the 9/11 conspiracy theory known by the popular acronyms LIHOP and MIHOP. The LIHOP side charges the U.S. government with a sin of omission. They Let It Happen On Purpose. The MIHOP side charges the government with a sin of commission. They Made It Happen On Purpose by either giving covert assistance to the hijackers or actually planning and carrying out the attacks.

The Zogby International September 2007 Poll

Both LIHOP and MIHOP cover a dizzying array of theories as to what actually happened on 9/11. It really isn't fair to lump these two sides together into one 36% figure. A more recent Zogby poll allowed people to choose between the official story, LIHOP, MIHOP, and Not Sure. The numbers lined up well with the Scripps Howard poll. 36.4% chose an option other than the official story.

Yet the breakdown of this 36.4% is very revealing. Only 4.6% were willing to stand by the MIHOP scenario. Another 5.3% were not sure and so represent crossover between all three of the other options. A whopping 26.5% went for the LIHOP scenario.

The 2006 Scripp Howard poll found that this belief in government culpability had spiked in the two years before the poll. They also found a specific reason for this recent increase:

University of Florida law professor Mark Fenster, author of the book "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture," said the poll's findings reflect public anger at the unpopular Iraq war, realization that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction and growing doubts of the veracity of the Bush administration.

"What has amazed me is not that there are conspiracy theories, but that they didn't seem to be getting any purchase among the American public until the last year or so," Fenster said. "Although the Iraq war was not directly related to the 9/11 attacks, people are now looking back at 9/11 with much more skepticism than they used to."

Conspiracy-believing participants in the poll agree their suspicions are recent.

...[T]he new survey found that 77 percent say their friends and acquaintances have become angrier with government recently and 54 percent say they, themselves, have become angrier - both record levels.

The survey also found that people who regularly use the Internet but who do not regularly use so-called "mainstream" media are significantly more likely to believe in 9/11 conspiracies. People who regularly read daily newspapers or listen to radio newscasts were especially unlikely to believe in the conspiracies.

So the growth in belief of 9/11 conspiracy theories is directly related to anger over the bungled war in Iraq. Whether people are justly angry over this is another argument. Even in their anger, the vast majority of people willing to state a belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories only go as far as a LIHOP scenario.

Richard Gage's proposal of controlled demolition belongs firmly in the MIHOP camp. The Scripps Howard poll leaves open the possibility for its respondents that the Al Qaeda terrorists may have planted explosive devices in the twin towers. But Gage is not arguing this. He means to convict people within the United States Government of demolishing those buildings, and thus participating materially in the 9/11 attacks. That is where he is going.

Time Magazine Article

Richard Gage takes this quote from a Time Magazine retrospective done five years after the attacks:

A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. Thirty-six percent adds up to a lot of people. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality.

This is quite true, and the reasons for this are given above.

Here's a second quote from the Time Magazine article that you won't hear from Gage:

But there's a big problem with Loose Change and with most other conspiracy theories. The more you think about them, the more you realize how much they depend on circumstantial evidence, facts without analysis or documentation, quotes taken out of context and the scattered testimony of traumatized eyewitnesses.

Gage tries very hard to not appear to rely on such weak evidence, but as we proceed, you will see that this is pretty much all that he has. Given the extreme nature of his propositions and the flimsy nature of his evidence, there is no need to trust Gage or his fellow theorists with subpeona power. If the American public is going to find satisfaction over the waging of the war in Iraq, they will need to look elsewhere for leadership.

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