Slide #6 - Scripps Howard Poll, Slide 2

In this slide, Richard Gage brings up the same Scripps Howard report. This time it is referenced in a different article, one from the Washington Post.

Washington Post Article

For some reason, Gage omits the actual title of this article - "The Disbelievers." He's content to call the article by its longer subtitle. Perhaps he finds the actual title disagreeable.

The article is worth a read. It's a great introduction to several firebrands within the 9/11 Truth Movement. Among the names is another you will find again and again in Gage's work - David Ray Griffin.

He felt no shiver of doubt in those first terrible hours.

He watched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and assumed al-Qaeda had wreaked terrible vengeance. He listened to anchors and military experts and assumed the facts of Sept. 11, 2001, were as stated on the screen.

It was a year before David Ray Griffin, an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down the path of disbelief.

"...how can I ignore that we have become entranced by demonic power, so focused on lust for wealth and control that almost anything becomes possible?"

Steven Jones is another name you will see again and again in Gage's presentations, but others you will not, like Jim Fetzer, Morgan Reynolds, and Nico Haupt. And the article makes it very clear why.

They are cantankerous and sometimes distrust each other -- who knows where the double agents lurk?

...Some days the 9/11 truth movement resembles an Italian coalition government -- dissolution is a certainty. Honegger and Griffin believe bombs brought down the twin towers but have little truck with make-believe planes. There's a faction that says the Mossad did it and another that says that's insane, and maybe anti-Semitic.

So our 4.5% is even more divided than you could imagine. There is no unified theory of MIHOP that anyone could get behind.

And that's where Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth comes in. They are trying to build a political consensus behind their own personal MIHOP theories.

These theories may not be as peculiar as some of the stranger MIHOP scenarios. Yes, some people believe that there were no hijacked planes on 9/11. They also believe that whatever flew into the towers on 9/11, it was not passenger jets. Some are not willing to grant you that anything flew into the towers on that day.

However, just because someone doesn't advance something that crazy doesn't mean that their own theories are completely bogus as well. It is not on Gage's authority that you must judge these theories, nor Griffin's nor Jones' nor Kevin Ryan's (one of Gage's card-carrying members). It is on the facts rightly identified and interpreted.

16% Suspect Controlled Demolition

As I pointed out on the last page, only 4.5% of people are willing to stake themselves to a MIHOP scenario, and this is what Gage's proposals are manifestly.

So what to make of this 16% of people who say that controlled demolition theories are either "very likely" or "somewhat likely"? Let's take a look at the actual question.

The collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings.

• Very likely 6%
• Somewhat likely 10%
• Unlikely 77%
• Don't know 6%
• Other response 1%

That 16% isn't quite as persuasive when it's split into its components and right up against a staggering 77% that find such a scenario unlikely.

Furthermore, if you think Al Qaeda might have secretly planted some explosives in the twin towers, you are a part of the 10% that says "Somewhat likely." Many people on the day of the attack thought that other devices might have been planted in the building. A belief that explosives might have been secretly planted is not necessily a belief in MIHOP.

Why A Second Source?

As I pointed out above, this poll is the same one quoted in the Time Magazine article. Why does Gage do this? Isn't the reference in the Time Magazine article enough?

And why, if he wants to talk about the poll numbers, doesn't he simply go to the Scripps Howard website itself? The poll is laid out there in all its detail. That would be more consistent with dealing with the raw data, something Gage is supposed to be doing later on.

First, this is a continuation of Gage's massive appeal to authority. Quoting the Washington Post and Time Magazine is meant to make you feel how mainstream Gage's proposals are. The more comfortable you are with this, the more willing you are to accept what Gage is saying.

However, as we've seen on the last slide, Gage's proposals are very far from the mainstream.

Second, Gage quotes the Washington Post here because the article misstates the actual question from the poll. From the Washington Post article:

A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll of 1,010 Americans found that 36 percent suspect the U.S. government promoted the attacks or intentionally sat on its hands. Sixteen percent believe explosives brought down the towers. Twelve percent believe a cruise missile hit the Pentagon.

However, the actual question reads like this:

The collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings.

That's an important difference. According to the Washington Post article, the stated belief is that the explosives brought down the towers. But the question only asks if the person believes that explosives "aided" the destruction.

How do I know this misstatement is why Gage quoted the Washington Post article? Because of his use of quotation marks on his slide:

Gage puts quotation marks around the entire quote from the Washington Post, but he also puts quotation marks around the words "brought down." That implies that the words "brought down" is from the original Scripps Howard poll.

It's not. Neither the actual poll question nor the Scripps Howard article explaining the poll use that wording. The Washington Post writer is the source for that wording, and he didn't use quotes in his article when he did so. Someone added those quotation marks, and the only reason to do so is give stronger authority to a mistake that benefits the controlled demolition position.

In other words, deception.

Let's be honest. When someone is building a PowerPoint presentation, and they use a long quotation like this one, they cut and paste. We all do. And since those quotation marks aren't present in the actual article, someone added them.

Gage either added these quotation marks himself, or he cut and pasted the quotation from a source that did so. Either way, we have our first solid piece of evidence that Gage isn't to be trusted.

We are six slides into Gage's presentation, and this is the first outright lie. It is that step from "aided" to "brought down" that makes the 16% seem like they are believing in controlled demolition. But as the actual question shows, that's not so.

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