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Book Review: The Terror Enigma and Stranger Than Fiction
by Rich Brooks
9 January 2004
[The Terror Enigma: 9-11 and the Israeli Connection by Justin Raimondo (iUniverse, Inc., 2003)
Stranger Than Fiction: An Independent Investigation of the True Culprits Behind 9-11 by Albert D. Pastore, Ph. D (Dandelion Books, 2003)]
What really happened on 9-11? That this 2001 "most deadly attack ever on American soil" was a turning point in the history of our nation -- at least comparable in magnitude to the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy -- goes without saying. I won't bore you with all the clichés and platitudes this event has unleashed, but I will note that -- unlike the Kennedy assassination -- there has been a remarkable lack of skepticism over the official government explanation. I know of very few people who today accept the "lone gunman" theory fostered by the Warren Commission, but these same skeptics seem willing to swallow whole the official lie that 9-11 was solely the work of evil Arab terrorists who "hate us for our freedom." A majority, in fact, even believe the demonstrably false assertion that Saddam Hussein was one of the masterminds behind the attack. Even now -- more than two years after the event -- there have been few public outcries for a full-scale Congressional investigation, and the Israeli-dominated Congress has been more than happy to do essentially nothing except to rubber-stamp GW's requests for the billions in additional military spending which are somehow going to protect us against "turrists."
It is only on the Internet, and occasionally in the European and Arab press, that we have been able to read facts and opinions which dramatically contradict the catechistic Bushy doctrine, although as the toll of body bags coming back from "liberated" Iraq continues to mount, that situation might well change. One Internet pundit and reporter most doggedly challenging the official "war party" line has been paleolibertarian Justin Raimondo, editorial director for antiwar.com. Although I have been told that he is part jewish, Raimondo has consistently challenged the notion that American and Israeli interests are identical. In fact, those interests are often opposed -- as witnessed by the 1967 Liberty attack and the Jonathan Pollard case -- but unfortunately only the Israelis seem to recognize the opposition. I have followed Raimondo's columns ever since 9-11, and he has steadfastly maintained and offered convincing evidence that at the very least Israel had advance knowledge of the attacks but failed to warn American Intelligence.
I was therefore eagerly anticipating the publication of JR's book on 9-11 and the Israeli connection, because I thought it would be a real blockbuster and perhaps deal a crippling blow to the commonly accepted notion that Israel is our gallant little ally in a hostile part of the world. JR announced its completion and pending publication more than a year ago, but months went by with no further word about it. Very strange, but really not so strange at all when you consider who owns the major book publishing firms. Finally, just before Christmas 2003, this long-awaited "book" was "published." I use quotes for both "book" and "published" because this volume is a mere 65 pages of text and the "publisher" is a vanity press outfit called iUniverse, Inc. which prints to customer order and for a price would publish even my submissions. The title, 'The Terror Enigma: 9-11 and the Israeli Connection,' is not exactly one you are likely to encounter in an airport terminal bookstore. For that matter, you are equally unlikely to find it in any mainstream bookstore although I understand you can now buy it online at either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
As it was, I ordered it directly from the publisher and paid the rather steep price of almost $20 including shipping. But after I did this, what I got was really pretty much of a letdown. There are no, I repeat no, new revelations in this thin tract; everything contained therein has previously been reported on (and usually at greater length) in one or more of Raimondo's thrice-weekly antiwar.com columns. It is mainly a rehash of the saga of the 200 Israeli "art students" who were engaging in a Mossad spy operation prior to 9-11, with nothing about events after January 2003 (Raimondo's original intended publication date) discussed. However, all of this having been said, this little pamphlet is a valuable primer to offer friends who have previously been taken in by the official 9-11 lies. The complicated chronology and the many characters involved in this spy saga are distilled into a form which can easily be read and digested in two or three hours without taxing even the lemming brain too strenuously. Although no one reading this book will necessarily come away a confirmed jew-hater, at least he will begin to see Israel in a more critical light.
I agree with most of what Justin Raimondo writes, which is why I get so infuriated with him whenever he gets on the subject of "racism" or "anti-semitism." He goes so much further than the vast majority of pundits in criticizing "liberal democracy" in general and Israel in specific, but rather than follow his thoughts to their logical conclusions, he seems to hit a brick wall whenever he smells "racism." The first time I noticed this was when he attacked the gentlemanly Jared Taylor with the same vehemence he usually reserves for Ariel Sharon. I forgave him this one outburst, but have since seen several occasions when he has gone to great pains to proclaim that he is not a "racist" and that he doesn't have anything against jews. For example, in the current volume JR questionably asserts that "the policies of the Sharon government are no more representative of Jewish opinion worldwide than the rantings of Robert Mugabe are globally emblematic of blacks." (p.58) On that same page he decries the "promiscuous use of this loaded term" (anti-Semitism) because it "allows real anti-Semites an opening." Heaven forbid! JR is also at pains to separate himself from "unfortunate conspiracy theories" (p.29) -- even after documenting in page after page that jews actually were conspiring to do all kinds of nefarious things. And even though he realizes that our pro-Israeli policies were a primary motivation for the attack, he never once questions the accepted notion that Al Qaeda and Bin Laden were ultimately responsible. No, The Terror Enigma is definitely not the definitive text about 9-11 that I had hoped it would be, but it is still a valuable reference book for your library.
For a much more conclusive account of 9-11, I would instead recommend another thin paperback I also recently purchased. It is Albert D. Pastore's Stranger Than Fiction: An Independent Investigation of the True Culprits Behind 911 and is only slightly longer at 145 pages. I first became aware of Dr. Pastore and his decidedly conspiratorial take on 9-11 about a year ago, when I read an internet version of Stranger Than Fiction. My natural proclivity is to be extremely skeptical of any sensational conspiracy claim, especially one made via the 'net; but since the link was provided by a VNN reader who vouched for its importance, I decided to check it out. To my surprise, I was readily convinced of the truth of the things he was saying. To convey the whole truth about a world-changing event such as 9-11, one must come up with a story, in other words write a script. The script Justin Raimondo writes, while it contains many factual elements, is incomplete; it does not tell us the whole story. Albert D. Pastore, Ph. D (understandably, a pen name) does, on the other hand, tell us a complete story -- or in his words, fits all of the pieces of the puzzle together in the only way possible. While he claims to be an investigative reporter, a kind of open-source intelligence operative, I would characterize him as an advocate writing a legal brief for his position. He is perhaps open to the charge that he selectively uses facts which fit his story, but I would challenge anyone questioning this story to present his contrary evidence -- in other words to try this critically important issue as if we were in a court of law.
Now to the substance of Pastore's story. Far from being the work of fanatical Muslim terrorists, the 9-11 attacks were entirely a "false flag" Zionist production. Israel not only had advance knowledge (as Raimondo believes), but actually planned and orchestrated the attacks. Who else, Pastore asks, had the motive, the means and the opportunity to pull off such a complex operation? He traces the infamous history of the Zionist jews who led America into World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II and recounts the terrorist beginnings of the state of Israel. He then directs our attention to certain disturbing facts surrounding the actual events of September 11, 2001 -- for example, the dancing Israelis and the bomb materials found in their van (or vans?), the strangely precise way in which the WTC buildings collapsed, and the miraculous "Passover" of Israelis working in the WTC. This latter fact has never seen the light of day in the jewsmedia, not even (as far as I'm aware) to dismiss it as an "urban legend" as they have with so many other claims which contradict the canonical gospel of 9-11. As David Duke has pointed out almost from day one, no Israeli national working in any of the World Trade Center Buildings was killed in the blasts! This completely defies the laws of probability, since almost 500 foreign nationals from 70 countries were killed that day and we all know how prominent Israelis are in the field of international finance. In fact, as Pastore points out, the 911 emergency switchboards were inundated by calls from over 4000 worried Israeli citizens that day. Oh, yes, there were three Israelis killed that day, but one was a visitor to the WTC and the other two were (why, one wonders) on planes that crashed.
Pastore's tone throughout this book is reasonable and logical -- not what one would expect from a "conspiracy nut." His style is somewhat breezy and his language occasionally earthy, but I don't believe this detracts from the either the accuracy of his research or the validity of his conclusions: in fact, his book is highly readable. I noticed a few grammatical lapses when I first read the web version, but these seem to have been edited and corrected in the print edition. I did find it a little annoying, though, that he occasionally found it necessary to use multiple exclamation points and question marks to emphasize his arguments. There are extensive endnotes, and he even takes his annotation a step further than usual; he gives us the Google or Yahoo keywords we can enter to verify his quotes.
To those who would dismiss any "conspiracy theory" out of hand, the author points out that there was undeniably some conspiracy involved; the government asks us to believe it was a conspiracy hatched in the caves of Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden. The only question to be answered is which conspiracy theory we are to believe. As Pastore says, his theory "is the only scenario into which the many pieces of the 9-11 jig-saw puzzle snap together to reveal a clear image. Compare this to the official story of 9-11, which requires us to force, bend, recreate, ignore, and manipulate puzzle pieces." (p.143)
It is evident from his frequent use of the term "lemming" that this author is familiar with the writings of Dr. William Pierce. Like David Duke and some other racially conscious Whites, however, Pastore takes pains to draw what I believe is a false dichotomy between "jews" and "Zionists" or "Jewish Supremacists." (See my recent VNN article "The 'Good' Jew" for more discussion of this.) "It is a mistake," he claims, "to assume that all Jews are supporters of the 'Zionist Mafia' or Jewish Supremacy." (p.11) He then gives us a short list of oddball jewish turncoats like Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak and Henry Makow in a futile attempt to persuade us that he is not really "anti-Semitic." This disclaimer shouldn't fool anyone, however; especially not the jews who will most certainly label him an antisemite anyway. But Dr. Pastore seems to get most of his facts and history correct, so I'm not going quibble with him too much about labels and semantics.
There is one historical matter I wish that he had covered, and this omission presents a possible opening for his detractors. He made no mention of the aborted 1993 World Trade Center bombing which was in fact attributed to Muslim extremists. While these two incidents are not as a matter of logic in any way related, I did find this failure to address the 1993 occurrence a little disturbing. I still consider his story, many parts of which I haven't even touched on, to be, so far, unrefuted.
Unlike Justin Raimondo, the author of Stranger Than Fiction is extremely pessimistic that his book will have any effect on national policy; he really doesn't expect lemmings to change their spots. As he states at the beginning of his book:
As a probably useless public service to my helplessly doomed countrymen, and as a gift to a posterity which will hopefully be more enlightened than my bewildered, blood-thirsty, flag-waving contemporaries, I have presented this research with the hope of liberating as many people as I can from the oppressive yoke of media brainwashing and state-sponsored lies. (p.6)
That's probably the best we can hope for short of a true White Revolution. We can also hope that books like both of these, if not necessarily swallowed whole, will at least sow a few seeds of doubt -- much as all of the books written about the Kennedy assassination caused an earlier generation to reject the official government story. Anyway, I would urge you to read Stranger Than Fiction and let me know if you believe any of my conclusions are in error.
RICH BROOKS
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