Political Skullduggery

The March 27 issue of New York magazine has an article, The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll, on the current crop of 9-11 conspiracy theories. Aficionados of this genre will find little or nothing new here, but the way the writer, Mark Jacobson, presents his material makes for an interesting read.

Father Frank Morales's conversion was more dramatic. Raised in the Jacob Riis Projects, Morales, who if not for his priest collar could be mistaken for an East Village hipster, is a longtime Lower East Side hero, primarily for his work with local squatter communities. The day after 9/11, the diocese asked if he'd go to ground zero to perform last rites. "They said be prepared, because "we're not talking bodies, Frank, we're talking body parts.""

"I could feel myself getting madder and madder, not the way a priest is supposed to feel," says Morales. Sitting with a fireman, Morales called out, "If I had somebody in this mess, I'd wanna get those motherfuckers." It was then, Morales says, that the fireman whispered, "Hey, that'’s not it. You wanna know something? Bush and bin Laden have the same banker."

Later Jacobson describes his own experiences of that day:

Hours later, I sat down beside another, impossibly weary firefighter. Covered with dust, he was drinking a bottle of Poland Spring water. Half his squad was missing. They'd gone into the South Tower and never come out. Then, almost as a non sequitur, the fireman indicated the building in front of us, maybe 400 yards away.

"That building is coming down," he said with a drained casualness.

"Really?" I asked. At 47 stories, it would be a skyscraper in most cities, centerpiece of the horizon. But in New York, it was nothing but a nondescript box with fire coming out of the windows. "When?"

"Tonight . . . Maybe tomorrow morning."

This was around 5:15 p.m. I know because five minutes later, at 5:20, the building, 7 World Trade Center, crumbled.

LIHOP, MIHOP, and assorted other theories are discussed, and deals briefly with the reason why it will be impossible to decipher the truth of the matter--disinformation intentionally placed in the path of the researcher:

The D-word is nothing to take lightly in conspiracy circles. For, as Thomas Pynchon notes in his "Proverbs for Paranoids," if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Bingo.

There exists many labyrinths and wild goose chases designed to divert anyone who looks seriously at the events of that day.

There are too many grassy knolls this time making for an insurmountable investigative task.

Just the way they want it.