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HOME INDEX OF SEPT 11 ARTICLES DISINFO INDEX BACK TO PAGE 1 PAGE 2 0F 4 Hoffman writes [[2. No Stand-Down Order Here, the article falsely implies that emperors-clothes.com and StandDown.net both claim that no jets were scrambled to pursue any of the four commandeered jets. It then attacks this straw man…]] (“emperor’s clothes” is an alternative name for TENC) Here, Hoffman is supporting the official story that fighters were scrambled before the pentagon was hit and didn’t get there in time. One of very same myths which TENC worked so hard to expose as bogus. According to Hoffman, the claim that no fighters were scrambled is a “straw man” . That’s curious, because it’s the exact opposite of what Hoffman writes on another part of his site plagiarizing TENC’s much more thorough deconstruction of the issue.. [[The Changing Story For the first few days after the attack, the official story was that no interceptors were scrambled until after the Pentagon strike. On September 16th Vice President Cheney told Meet the Press that George Bush personally made the decision to scramble interceptors, and suggested that he did so only after the Pentagon was hit. 1 General Myers, during his confirmation hearing on September 13th, said that no military aircraft were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit. 2 There was also no mention in the major media of scramblings of jets prior to the Pentagon hit, until September 14th, when Dan Rather announced on the CBS Evening News that F-15s were scrambled from Otis at 8:44 and F-16s were scrambled from Langley at 9:30. 3 Officials such as Cheney apparently were not kept apprised of these new "facts," since his Meet the Press interview was two days later. Four days after the CBS disclosure, the new story was incorporated into NORAD's official timeline. ]] So, where it’s convenient to him, Hoffman uses (without accreditation) TENC’s research showing that the claim of scrambles prior to the pentagon strike was a retrospective back flip by officialdom to try to cover up what they’d earlier admitted—that nothing was scrambled until after the pentagon was hit. But when writing his cleverly disguised agreement with Popular Mechanics, he put on his other face and supported the official story. His only issue with Popular Mechanics was a complaint that the claim that such scrambles didn’t take place was a “straw man” and didn’t represent genuine Sept 11 scepticism. Furthermore, he falsely attributed to TENC agreement with the official story of the scrambles. Misrepresenting the same people from whom one plagiarizes one’s research is about as low as one can go. Superficially, Hoffman appears to have at least linked to TENC, so that what they wrote can be easily checked. But this is also a deception. He has linked not to the specific article nor even the relevant section of their site, but simply to their home page. Since the site deals with a wide range of issues, someone not familiar with the site and the issue would have little chance of quickly finding what TENC actually wrote in relation to this question. Hoffman used some cleverly deceptive language, probably in preparation for the very type of criticism which I am now presenting. [[the article falsely implies that emperors-clothes.com and StandDown.net both claim that no jets were scrambled ]] If we read that carefully and literally, it leaves open the possibility that *one* of the sites does present such a claim. However, there is no doubt that the way it is written is intended to mislead readers into thinking that *neither* site made such a claim. If Hoffman were to object that his writing was not intended to give this misleading impression, and that it’s not his problem if people misinterpret technically correct language , this only digs him into an even more serious hole. Implicit in such a defence is a claim that TENC got it wrong—so wrong that their work can be described as a “straw man”, and that StandDown.net (which supports the official story of the early scrambles) got it right. Even though Hoffman found it convenient to mimic TENC’s “straw man” on another part of his site. Which means that he’s calling the same TENC work that he copied and posted in order to raise his own profile, a “straw man”. An examination of StandDown.net, shows that it’s another site which plagiarizes TENC’s original research and then subtly distorts it. In order to understand this, we need to divide point 1 of TENC’s case into two sections. A) As already explained, early statements from officials all admitted that nothing was scrambled until after the pentagon was hit, and the stories about the scrambles which allegedly took place earlier were only introduced retrospectively to try to cover the holes in the first story. One should read the TENC article to get a full grasp on the evidence for this, although Hoffman’s summary of it quoted earlier gives a basic idea. B) TENC showed in a different article written later, that had such earlier scrambles taken place, then the fighters involved would have to been flying at such ridiculously low speeds (less than 260 mph, as compared to top speeds of around 1500 mph), that this further supports their earlier published evidence that the alleged scrambles were a retrospective concoction. Most of the truthling sites which plagiarize TENC’s work have twisted this evidence. They mostly omit part A of the analysis, and present it as fact that the earlier scrambles took place. Having done this, they present their scepticism in the form of asking why the scrambled fighters flew so slowly, rather than admit the obvious deduction that no such scrambles took place and that the ridiculously slow flying speeds were the result of trying to fit something which didn’t happen into the established timeline—a deduction supported by the evidence in part A, which the truthlings usually leave out. StandDown.net is a case in point. Most sites which plagiarize TENC’s work imply it to be their own work rather than directly claim it. Hoffman and Rabinowitz for example, simply imply a claim of originality by failing to acknowledge where they pinched it from. StandDown.net uses far more aggressive and malicious plagiarism. Ignoring part A of the above analysis, it describes part B and directly attributes the original research to a person named Scott Shugar , who isn’t available to tell his side of the story because he reportedly died in 2002, not long after writing it. The author of the site, Mark Elsis also takes partial credit, even boasting that no-one but he and Shugar had the courage to write about the issue. [[Stand Down is dedicated to Scott Shuger. Scott was known as the first Internet reporter. He was also the only mainstream or alternative media writer, besides myself, who had the courage to write about the elementary mathematical facts (that the two United States Air Force (USAF) F-15 fighters ordered to intercept United Airlines Flight 175 and the two or three USAF F-16 fighters ordered to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 were flying at only 25.8% and 27.4% of their top speed) of the NORAD Press Release of September 18, 2001. Scott's article is called IGNORAD The Military Screw-up Nobody Talks About. Scott Shuger died in a scuba diving accident June 15, 2002. IGNORAD The Military Screw-up Nobody Talks About by Scott Shugar http://AttackOnAmerica.net/IGNORAD.htm ]] Following this link we find an article pushing part B of the above analysis and claiming it to be original work. It’s dated Jan 16 2002 and in its basic substance, is a copy of the TENC article published a week earlier. It also plagiarizes other aspects of the TENC research which were published even earlier than that, but carefully avoids the other evidence that the alleged scrambles prior to the Pentagon strike were retrospective concoctions, as shown by TENC and repeated by Hoffman In summary, this is what Hoffman has done. First, in the main part of his site, he has attempted to write TENC out of the history of their own research, claiming it by implication as his own. Having achieved some success with this, he then subtly confuses and undermines the findings of the research by, in his response to Popular Mechanics, retiring the evidence that the alleged scrambles were fictitious—to the point of describing it as “straw man “ evidence , while opportunistically playing the other side in another part of his site. This is coupled with attempting to misrepresent TENC and shift credit for their original work to StandDown.net which also misrepresents the early scrambles issue. HOFFMAN AND CHENEY SPIN TOGETHER Hoffman uses the same tactic against TENC’s second point. That being the way in which Cheney attempted to confuse the issue of interception with the issue of shooting down, and create the impression that executive authorization was required to scramble fighter jets. The TENC analysis begins thus [[Lie # 2: Presidential Authorization Was Needed To Scramble Jets To Intercept Flight 77 On Sunday, September 16th, Vice-President Richard Cheney was interviewed on NBC TV's 'Meet the Press'. During that interview he created the impression that the military would have needed presidential authorization to scramble fighter jets to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon.]] Hoffman’s plagiarism describes it this way. [[Cheney, in an interview with Tim Russert on NBC, indicated that the President made the decision that day to scramble fighter jets. This is very unusual, as it is contrary to standard operating procedures ]] And in another part of his site [[It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. 1 Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times.2 In the year 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times.]] Now we’ll see how later, through different channels, Hoffman played the other side, going to elaborate lengths to revive Cheney’s spin disguised as a new development. Here is an article called “Found: The 9/11 strand down order ? “ dated March 31 2004. It is written by Jerry Russell, but he is obviously acting as a mouthpiece for Hoffman. Some extracts. [[Jim Hoffman has discovered a document which I believe may be very important to the 911 skeptic movement. This document superseded earlier DOD procedures for dealing with hijacked aircraft, and it requires that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is personally responsible for issuing intercept orders. Commanders in the field are stripped of all authority to act. This amazing order came from S.A. Fry (Vice Admiral, US Navy and Director, Joint Staff) so it appears to me that responsibility for the US armed forces "Failure to Respond" rests directly with Fry for issuing this instruction, as well as with Donald Rumsfeld for failing to execute his responsibility to issue orders in a timely fashion… ...this discovery could somewhat diffuse the power of our movement's message about the "Stand Down", since it is now clear that it was implemented through a routine administrative memo...The relevant documents are on the Web at: http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/docs/intercept_proc.pdf http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/d302515_021897/d302515p.pdf ]] (Note that the first link is Hoffman’s site) If you actually read the documents in question, you’ll see that they are nothing to do with routine interception procedures. The changes represent merely a regulation adding UAV’s to the definition of “derelict objects” in the section relating to “destruction of derelict airborne objects” and some minor shuffling of definitions and references. . |