Kevin Barrett Responds to Washington Post, New York Sun, BYU & Deseret News

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Subject: Kevin Barrett responds to Michael Powell's Washington Post article
Date: September 8, 2006 10:00:09 AM CDT
To: letters@washpost.com

To the Washington Post,

Thank you for publishing Michael Powell's article, "9/11 conspiracy theorists multiply" (9/8/06), one of the best mainstream pieces yet about 9/11 skepticism, though it cries out for a couple of clarifications.

First, the term "conspiracy theorist" is an empty insult, and a classic example of "loaded language." The word "conspiracy" is a standard legal term for criminal collusion, meaning that any crime committed by more than one person is by definition a conspiracy. And a theory is an attempt to explain a set of facts. Thus any attempt to explain 9/11, including the ludicrous official one, is a "conspiracy theory."

Powell's article reports some of the gross inadequacies of the official account, but obscures others. He writes:

"The truth movement makes much of a 2001 BBC report that a half-dozen of the hijackers were still alive. They mention Waleed al Shehri, a pilot who still flies commercial runs in Morocco. But the BBC retracted that. It turns out the live guy and the dead hijacker spelled their names differently."

As an Arabic Ph.D., I can tell you that these two individuals (whose identities and relations to 9/11 are still in question) do NOT spell their names differently. The same Arabic name can have different English transcriptions. Powell's ignorant dismissal glosses over the crucially important fact that the FBI itself has admitted that the identities of the alleged 19 hijackers is problematic and may never be known, and that the questions about the al Shehri who is still living in Morocco, and the alleged other one, are still, like many of the alleged hijackers, still very much alive.

The problem here is that despite the FBI statement, and the many mainstream reports of still-living "hijackers," the 9/11 Commission never even examined the question of the hijackers' identities--nor the credible reports that they trained at US military facilities and pretended to learn to fly at CIA drug import airstrips that were "flight schools" in name only. While do not know the full truth about this or other issues, we do know that the 9/11 Commission Report is a "571-page lie," as David Griffin puts it. No reasonable person who reads the official Report, alongside Dr. Griffin's critique, can conclude that the Report is an adequate account of the most important historical event of the 21st century. We must either launch a real investigation, or hold a funeral for Constitutional democracy in America.

Sincerely,

Dr. Kevin Barrett

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Subject: kevin barrett responds to misrepresentations in Chayes NY Sun article
Date: September 8, 2006 11:06:42 AM CDT
To: editor@nysun.com

To the NY Sun,

Matthew Chayes' article "Scholars Say Neocons May Have Planned 9/11" misrepresented my statements and beliefs.

I told Chayes that the signatories to the September, 2000 PNAC document "Rebuilding America's Defenses," which openly yearned for a "new Pearl Harbor" should be investigated. I added that Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose book The Grand Chessboard includes three passages that seem to yearn for another Pearl Harbor, also ought to be questioned. And I added that I, like virtually all serious 9/11 researchers, consider Dick Cheney a prime 9/11 suspect, Paul Wolfowitz a potential suspect, and Philip Zelikow at the very least a probable accessory after the fact, given the demonstrable mendacity of the official report he authored.

Chayes lumps all these people, together with Edward Luttwak, as those I have allegedly "accused of planning, conspiring, condoning, and cheering the terrorist attacks." In fact, I accused nobody--least of all Luttwak! (There is a crucial difference between considering someone a suspect and accusing them of a crime, and by blurring that distinction Chayes may have committed libel.)

Luttwak, apparently responding to a false or misleading statement by Chayes, responded:

"This is slander of the worst kind...How come a public institution will accord any kind of job other than cleaning the bathrooms to a person who says these things? What were the people who appointed him thinking?"

I never even called Luttwak a suspect, much less accused him of anything. I simply pointed out that his book Coup d'Etat has been called a blueprint for 9/11 by Italian journalist Maurizio Blondet, author of September 11th: A Coup d’Etat (Effedieffe, Milan, 2002), and Who Really Governs America? (Effedieffe, Milan, 2002). Even if Blondet is right--and I am not entirely convinced that he is--the fact that Luttwak's well-known book served as a blueprint for 9/11 would not implicate Luttwak directly.

I did, however, say that investigative journalists ought to interview Luttwak about his associates. Since Luttwak is the leading neoconservative military strategist and coup d'etat expert, he might be able to help elucidate this quote from Senator Bob Dole's former Chief of Staff, Stanley Hilton:

"I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject [on] how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years."

Sincerely,

Kevin Barrett

PS Hilton's quote has been widely circulated and never denied. Here is one link:
http://www.flybynews.com/cgi-local/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1096150098,54045

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Subject: kevin barrett supports professor jones, academic freedom
Date: September 8, 2006 8:06:59 AM CDT
To: letters@desnews.com

To the Deseret News,

It is crystal-clear, and universally agreed-upon in the American academic community, that university instructors cannot be sanctioned for free speech activities conducted on their own time. That is why outspoken "Holocaust denier" Dr. Butz is still teaching at Northwestern University. While I certainly would not equate 9/11 truth with Holocaust denial -- it is in fact the denial of our own leaders' proven complicity in 9/11 that is comparable to denial of the Holocaust -- my own experience as an academic and an outspoken 9/11 truth activist may be relevant to Dr. Jones' case.

I have made literally thousands of statements about 9/11 far more radical, inflammatory, and potentially offensive to public sensibilities than anything Professor Jones has said, and I have repeatedly made these statements on national television and radio, and been quoted in the national print media. I have called for a revolutionary uprising (a peaceful one if possible) against the illegitimate leaders in the White House, the Pentagon, and the National Security community who were actively or passively complicit in the 9/11 attacks:
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/revolution.htm

I have even written and published a satirical letter to the United States Secret Service predicting that President Bush would one day be executed for high treason, and speculating about the specific manner of his execution:
http://www.mujca.com/secretservice.htm

My own university, recognizing that my free speech activities were protected under the US Constitution and by prevailing norms of academic freedom, conducted a ten-day review of my teaching record, concluded that I was a competent teacher, and allowed me to teach.

Professor Jones, for his part, has shown remarkable restraint in his public statements about the enormous moral and political consequences of his research.

The AAUP position on academic freedom, the current gold standard for US university teachers, states:

The AAUP statement says teachers are entitles to “full freedom in research and in the publication of the results.” Publication refers not only to printed materials, Reno said, “but to dissemination of that in classroom and other public forums for discussion.”

If BYU tries to violate this clear-cut, long-established norm of academic freedom, it will set itself up for a very unfavorable place in history, immediately trigger the wrath of virtually the entire US and world academic community, and soon become a target of the righteous wrath of the American people.

Professor Jones is walking in the path of the prophets, who faced even worse trials than the one he now faces, yet continued to speak the truth.

Sincerely,

Kevin Barrett

* * *

9/11 conspiracy theorists multiply
Many Americans suspect U.S. government involvement or complicity

Helayne Seidman / The Washington Post
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14723997/
• Did 9/11 hijackers have helpers?
Sept. 8: Many believe the 19 hijackers had accomplices inside the United States. NBC's Lisa Myers reports on the theories.

NEW YORK - 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. He wondered why Bush listened to a child's story while the nation was attacked and how Osama bin Laden, America's Public Enemy No. 1, escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora.

He wondered why 110-story towers crashed and military jets failed to intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian official was reprimanded, much less cashiered.

"To me, the report read as a cartoon." White-haired and courtly, Griffin sits on a couch in a hotel lobby in Manhattan, unspooling words in that reasonable Presbyterian minister's voice. "It's a much greater stretch to accept the official conspiracy story than to consider the alternatives."

Such as?

"There was massive complicity in this attack by U.S. government operatives."

If that feels like a skip off the cliff of established reality, more Americans are in free fall than you might guess. There are few more startling measures of American distrust of leaders than the widespread belief that the Bush administration had a hand in the attacks of Sept. 11 in order to spark an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

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.

Distrust near Ground Zero

Distrust percolates more strongly near Ground Zero. A Zogby International poll of New York City residents two years ago found 49.3 percent believed the government "consciously failed to act."

You could dismiss this as a louder than usual howl from the CIA-controls-my-thoughts-through-the-filling-in-my-molar crowd. Establishment assessments of the believers tend toward the psychotherapeutic. Many academics, politicians and thinkers left, right and center say the conspiracy theories are a case of one plus one equals five. It's a piling up of improbabilities.

Thomas Eager, a professor of materials science at MIT, has studied the collapse of the twin towers. "At first, I thought it was amazing that the buildings would come down in their own footprints," Eager says. "Then I realized that it wasn't that amazing -- it's the only way a building that weighs a million tons and is 95 percent air can come down."

But the chatter out there is loud enough for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to post a Web "fact sheet" poking holes in the conspiracy theories and defending its report on the towers.

Yeah, as if . . .

The loose agglomeration known as the "9/11 Truth Movement" has stopped looking for truth from the government. As cacophonous and free-range a bunch of conspiracists anywhere this side of Guy Fawkes, they produce hip-hop inflected documentaries and scholarly conferences. The Web is their mother lode. Every citizen is a researcher. There's nothing like a triple, Google-fed epiphany lighting up the laptop at 2:44 a.m.

Did you see that the CIA met with bin Laden in a hospital room in Dubai? Check out this Pakistani site, there are really weird doings in Baluchistan . . .

The academic wing is led by Griffin, who founded the Center for a Postmodern World at Claremont University; James Fetzer, a tenured philosopher at the University of Minnesota (Fetzer's an old hand in JFK assassination research); and Daniel Orr, the retired chairman of the economics department at the University of Illinois. The movement's de facto minister of engineering is Steven Jones, a tenured physics professor at Brigham Young University, who's studied vectors and velocities and tested explosives and concluded that the collapse of the twin towers is best explained as controlled demolition, sped by a thousand pounds of high-grade thermite.

‘Possible war criminal’

Former Reagan aide Barbara Honegger is a senior military affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. She's convinced, based on her freelance research, that a bomb went off about six minutes before an airplane hit the Pentagon -- or didn't hit it, as some believe the case may be. Catherine Austin Fitts served as assistant secretary of housing in the first President Bush's administration and gained a fine reputation as a fraud buster; David Bowman was chief of advanced space programs under presidents Ford and Carter. Fitts and Bowman agree that the "most unbelievable conspiracy" theory is the one retailed by the government.

Then there's Morgan O. Reynolds, appointed by George W. Bush as chief economist at the Labor Department. He left in 2002 and doesn't think much of his former boss; he describes President Bush as a "dysfunctional creep," not to mention a "possible war criminal."

You reach Reynolds at his country home in the hills of Arkansas. His favored rhetorical style is long paragraphs without obvious punctuation: "Who did it? Elements of our government and M-16 and the Mossad. The government's case is a laugh-out-loud proposition. They used patsies and lies and subterfuge and there's no way that Bush and Cheney could have invaded Iraq without the help of 9/11."

They are cantankerous and sometimes distrust each other -- who knows where the double agents lurk? But unreasonable questions resonate with the reasonable. Colleen Kelly's brother, a salesman, had breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on Sept. 11. After he died she founded September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to oppose the Iraq war. She lives in the Bronx and gives a gingerly embrace to the conspiracy crowd.

"Sometimes I listen to them and I think that's sooooo outlandish and bizarre," she says. "But that day had such disastrous geopolitical consequences. If David Ray Griffin asks uncomfortable questions and points out painful discrepancies? Good for him."

Griffin's book, "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11," never reviewed in a major U.S. newspaper, sold more than 100,000 copies and became a movement founding stone. Last year he traveled through New England, giving speeches in whitewashed churches and gymnasiums. He came to West Hartford, Conn., on a rainy autumn evening. Four hundred mostly middle-aged and upper-middle-class doctors and lawyers, teachers and social workers sat waiting.

‘Domestic terrorists’

Griffin took the podium and laid down his ideas with calm and cool. He concluded:

"It is already possible to know beyond a reasonable doubt one very important thing: The destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by domestic terrorists," he says. "The welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed."

The audience rose and applauded for more than a minute.

"Reality is a thin line between denial and paranoia."

-- Author unknown, but often quoted by the 9/11 truth movement

"Me?" You've asked the Rev. Frank Morales, the bohemian Episcopalian minister with the hipster goatee, where he stands on the nature of the conspiracy. We're standing in the ancient graveyard of St. Mark's Church in the Bowery on Second Avenue. "I lean to LIHOP."

The 9/11 truthers share a lieutenant colonel's love of acronyms. They divide themselves into LIHOPS and MIHOPS and differences are not trifling. LIHOP stands for "Let It Happen On Purpose," which means someone inside the U.S. government intentionally let the terror conspiracy go. MIHOP means "Made It Happen On Purpose," and its gradations center on whether Bush was in or out of the loop (a surprising number believe he was clueless) and whether the Mossad or British intelligence was dealt into the deal.

Morales, 57, who came out of the Lower East Side housing projects, spent days at Ground Zero performing last rites for the dead, many little more than a collection of body parts.

"I didn't presume to know who did it," he says. "There was a lot of shucking and jiving. I wonder at what point massive incompetence crosses over into negligent homicide."

To make sense of the truth movement's anger, you need to hit the rewind button to early 2001, with the hindsight of today. There was, as the 9/11 Commission hearings made clear, a bad moon rising. Warnings kept coming of a "high probability" of a "spectacular" terrorist attack. A national security adviser warned Condoleezza Rice there were terrorist cells, probably al-Qaeda guys, in the country. CIA chief George Tenet said the "system was blinking red."

A presidential bulletin on Aug. 6 had a catchy title: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Bush did not discuss it again with Tenet before Sept. 11.

So give the truth movement, many of whom are based in New York City, their props. They may be paranoid, but something nasty came our way. They pore over the paper trail with a Sherlock Holmesian intensity, alert to intriguing discrepancy.

Such as:

Former transporation secretary Norman Mineta told the commission he arrived in the presidential operations center -- under the White House -- at 9:20 a.m. on Sept. 11 and found Vice President Cheney. When an aide asked Cheney about the hijacked plane fast approaching the Pentagon, Mineta says the vice president snapped that the "orders still stand." Mineta assumed the orders were to shoot the plane down. Conspiracy theorists interpret this to mean: Don't shoot it down.

Cheney later said he was not in the operations center until after the plane hit. The commission never mentioned Mineta's contradictory version.

In September 2001, NORAD generals said they learned of the hijackings in time to scramble fighter jets. But the government recently released tapes claiming to show the FAA did not tell the military about the hijackings until three of the four planes had crashed.

That would mean the FAA repeatedly lied. It would also mean, as Griffin points out, that the entire military chain of command stayed quiet about huge inaccuracies for four years "even though . . . the true story would put the military in a better light."

More mysteries pile up. The 9/11 Commission says Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37. But Honegger says clocks stopped at the Pentagon at 9:32. Then there's the collapse of the twin towers, which Jones, the physics professor, timed at just short of free fall. Griffin cites firefighters, including a captain, who said in hearings and on tapes from that day that they saw flashes and heard the sound of explosions before the collapse.
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"It's like the Nazi-facilitated Reichstag fire," Honegger says from her home in California. "They guided and secretly protected it to justify their global agenda."

Let's put aside the could-anyone-do-something-that-spectacularly-twisted? question and touch on practicalities. Isn't the problem with big ugly conspiracies -- from the Gulf of Tonkin to My Lai to the 1961 Pentagon plan to provoke a war by attacking Americans and blaming it on Castro -- that they are too big and ugly to keep secret?

Griffin shrugs. History is littered with government black-bag jobs. "How do you know they can't keep big secrets? Can you be sure you know what you don't know?"

There is a "morning after" quality to the conspiratorial romance. One moment you groove on the epiphanies and the next moment you're lost in a dull haze of "this cannot be a coincidence," "perhaps significantly" and "if so . . ."

What of incompetence? Or the raw absurdity of life? The truth movement makes much of a 2001 BBC report that a half-dozen of the hijackers were still alive. They mention Waleed al Shehri, a pilot who still flies commercial runs in Morocco. But the BBC retracted that.

It turns out the live guy and the dead hijacker spelled their names differently.

Then there's the theory that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon and United 93 did not crash in Shanksville, Pa. But, like, what happened to the passengers? (Among the passengers on Flight 77 was Barbara Olson, wife of former U.S. solicitor general Ted Olson).

‘They don’t do their homework’
"Why should any of us know where it went?" Griffin says. "It could have been it crashed in Kentucky. We don't need a theory where it went."

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a Boston-based left-leaning think tank, is no fan of the 9/11 Commission. He believes a serious investigation should have led to indictments and the firing of incompetent generals and civilian officials.

But he has no patience with the conspiracy theorists.

"They don't do their homework; it's a kind of charlatanism," Berlet says over the phone. "They say there's no debris on the lawn in front of the Pentagon, but they base their analysis on a photo on the Internet . That's like analyzing an impressionist painting by looking at a postcard."

Now comes a loud sigh.

"I love 'The X-Files' but I don't base my research on it," he says. "My vision of hell is having to review these [conspiracy] books over and over again."

Let's move on to Eager of MIT. "Demolition experts say, 'Ohhh, it's all science and timing.' Bull!" Eager says. "What's the technique? If 200,000 tons gives way, where do you think it's going? Straight down."

In the days after Sept. 11, experts claimed temperatures reached 2,000 degrees on the upper floors. Others claimed steel melted. Nope. What happened, Eager says, is that jet fuel sloshed around and beams got rubbery.

"It's not too much to think that you could have some regions at 900 degrees and others at 1,200 degrees, and that will distort the beams."

The truth movement doesn't really care for Eager. A Web site casts a fisheye of suspicion at the professor and his colleagues. "Did the MIT have prior knowledge?" notes one chat room. "This is for sure another speculative topic . . . "

"It is no measure of health to be sane in an insane society."

-- Krishnamurti

Nico Haupt, a gaunt fellow in black sneakers, black socks, black jeans and black T-shirt, stands up in St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. He holds aloft two blue Oreos boxes taped to resemble the twin towers. A pen juts out, kind of like a Boeing airplane.

For an hour he's shown videos of planes hitting the towers. If you note the glinting sunlight and angle of wings and you're honest about vectors and maybe the hashish is kicking in, you'll realize there were no planes .

Truth movement veterans distance themselves from Haupt, who has a bit of a temper. But Reynolds, the former Labor Department economist, also is a "no-planer."

"There were no planes, there were no hijackers," Reynolds insists. "I know, I know, I'm out of the mainstream, but that's the way it is."

But what about all those New Yorkers who saw airplanes hitting the twin towers? A chuckle rumbles down the phone line. "I don't believe anyone in Lower Manhattan," he says. "You hire three dozen Actors' Equity dudes and they'll say anything."

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.

Where are we going here? There's a Journal of 9/11 Studies, documentaries, CDs and DVDs. Is conspiracy thought getting codified?

"That's our worry, of course," Griffin says. "I want my life back. But 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?"

You reach Honegger a few nights later. She'd like to give it up, too. "I am sitting here in my little office trying to figure out what happened to my country on this day. I wouldn't be a patriot if I didn't try to prove the government's story is preposterous."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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http://www.nysun.com/article/39334?access=286054

Scholars Say Neocons May Have Planned 9/11

By MATTHEW CHAYES - Special to the Sun
September 8, 2006

A prominent military strategist says he is considering "some kind of action" to defend his reputation after conspiracy theorists suggested that his work might have led to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"This is slander of the worst kind," Edward Luttwak, who has advised the State Department, the National Security Council, and several branches of the military, said.

"How come a public institution will accord any kind of job other than cleaning the bathrooms to a person who says these things? What were the people who appointed him thinking?" Mr. Luttwak added.

A September 11 conspiracy theorist, Kevin Barrett, had mentioned Mr. Luttwak's name when asked by The New York Sun to name those who could have been responsible for the attacks.

Mr. Barrett is among dozens of academics who have concluded that 19 Islamic hijackers did not hijack American aircraft and crash them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11. While they say they cannot be sure exactly who or what was responsible, they say they suspect that members of the American establishment planned the attacks.

"The most probable hypothesis is that it was a psychological operation to launch somewhere from 50 to 100 years of aggressive warfare against Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries," Mr. Barrett, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Sun yesterday afternoon, shortly before his introductory course, Religion 370 — Islam: Religion and Culture.

The conspiracy theorists speculate that neoconservatives, many of whom have occupied senior positions in the White House, had long hoped for an attack on American soil comparable to Pearl Harbor that would justify a retaliatory action in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

With the fifth anniversary of September 11 approaching, the small but growing band of academics and conspiracists are trying to counter the conventional account of the history of September 11 as "essentially a Hollywood script."

"I can't swear that's God's truth, but that seems to be where the evidence is leaning," Mr. Barrett said.

If the 3,000 deaths were not the result of knife-wielding Al Qaeda terrorists, what is the explanation?

According to Mr. Barrett — along with a physics professor at Brigham Young University, Steve Jones, and an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, James Fetzer — the standard account is part of a cover-up. Mr. Barrett called the 9/11 Commission report "a 571-page lie."

The academics are part of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, and the people they suggest could be blamed for the attacks on America five years ago include President Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger; President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski; Vice President Cheney, and the president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. Even the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, could have played a role, Mr. Barrett said.

A spokesman for the White House did not return a call seeking comment. Most of the officials, scholars, intellectuals, and politicians accused of planning, conspiring, condoning, and cheering the terrorist attacks also did not respond to requests for comment.

Although Mr. Luttwak — now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies — said he is disgusted by the September 11 conspiracy theories, he said they come from a feeling of powerlessness in parts of the Middle East. Theories of this type, which he said often have a patina of anti-Semitism, were common long before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"There's nothing one can do about that. You cannot go around changing people's belief systems," he said.

"You cannot describe" Mr. Barrett "as a lone madman," Mr. Luttwak added. "His conspiracy theories are widely believed in the Muslim world."

* * *

BYU places '9/11 truth' professor on paid leave

Copyright 2006 Deseret Morning News

By Tad Walch
Deseret Morning News

PROVO — Brigham Young University placed physics professor Steven Jones on paid leave Thursday while it reviews his involvement in the so-called "9/11 truth movement" that accuses unnamed government agencies of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

BYU will conduct an official review of Jones' actions before determining a course of action, university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. Such a review is rare for a professor with "continuing status" at BYU, where Jones has taught since 1985.

Jones was teaching two classes this semester, which began Tuesday. Other professors will cover those classes, and Jones will be allowed to continue to do research in his area of academic study, Jenkins said.
Jones became a celebrity among 9/11 conspiracy-theory groups after he wrote a paper titled "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Collapse?" The paper was published two weeks ago in the book "9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out" and lays out Jones' hypothesis that the three towers fell because of pre-positioned demolition charges — not because of the planes that hit two of the towers.

When Jones began to share his demolition theory publicly last fall, he politely declined to speculate about who set the charges other than to say terrorist groups couldn't have been the source.

Then, later, he started to speak publicly about research conducted at BYU on materials from ground zero. He said he found evidence of thermite — a compound used in military detonations — in the materials.
In recent weeks, after becoming the co-chairman of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Jones seemed willing to go further, implicating unnamed government groups but not President Bush.

The Deseret Morning News requested a statement from the university Wednesday afternoon for a story it was preparing on Jones and his high-profile role in the 9/11 truth movement. University officials informed Jones of the decision to place him on leave Thursday afternoon and released a statement to the newspaper Thursday night.
"BYU has repeatedly said that it does not endorse assertions made by individual faculty," the statement said. "We are, however, concerned about the increasingly speculative and accusatory nature of these statements by Dr. Jones."

Last fall, BYU faculty posted statements on the university Web site that questioned whether Jones subjected the paper to rigorous academic peer review before he posted it at physics.byu.edu. Jones removed the paper from BYU's Web site Thursday at the university's request.

Efforts to reach Jones Thursday night were not successful. Jones told the Deseret Morning News on Wednesday that his paper had gone through an unusual third round of peer review in what is now an apparently unsuccessful effort to quell concerns on campus.

"BYU remains concerned that Dr. Jones' work on this topic has not been published in appropriate scientific venues," the university statement said.

Jenkins said BYU's reputation was a consideration, too.

"It is a concern when faculty bring the university name into their own personal matters of concern," she said.
Jones, also known for his cold fusion research, provided academic clout to the 9/11 truth movement. C-SPAN repeatedly broadcast a conference that featured Jones this summer. Recent articles about Sept. 11 conspiracy theories that focused at least in part on Jones have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian in London and other publications.

Recent rebuttals to the demolition theory have been released by the State Department and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which published a 10,000-page report on the towers' collapse.
A modified version of Jones' paper was scheduled to be published this week in the online Journal of 9/11 Studies. Jones is a co-editor of the journal.

BYU does not grant tenure, generally regarded as a permanent position, to professors. However, it does give continuing status to professors found worthy after six years on campus.
"Continuing status," Jenkins said, "grants the expectation that faculty members will have continuing employment at the university, although it is not a guarantee. They still need to meet satisfactory performance levels for scholarship, citizenship and teaching."

The review will be conducted at three levels by the administration, the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the Physics Department.

E-mail: twalch@desnews.com

Religious Leaders Outreach Program MUJCA-NET can help arrange for a 9/11 Truth outreach person to speak to a priest, imam, rabbi or minister in your area. We can also help arrange for a speaker to visit your church, synagogue or mosque and/or meet with members of your religious group (all religions welcome). We can also provide 9/11-related educational materials as finances permit. Click here for more information	Media Interview Requests MUJCA-NET may be able to arrange media interviews with, and guest appearances by, its founders, endorsers, and supporters in your area. It's an amazing story--Jews, Christians and Muslims uniting to fight for 9/11 truth and put an end to the bogus "war on terror" along with the escalating violence between the Abrahamic faiths. Click here for more information.
Eminent Theologian David Griffin Sparks 9/11 Truth Groundswell David Griffin, one of America's most eloquent and influential theologians, has summed up the overwhelming evidence for US government 9/11 complicity in in his bestseller The New Pearl Harbor. (Read Marc Estrin's review.) (Listen to Pacifica radio interview.) Dr. Griffin's follow-up book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, demolishes the last shreds of doubt that 9/11 was an inside job, and the official story a transparent cover-up.	Day of Prayer for 9/11 Truth Jews, Christians and Muslims from around the world are uniting to pray for 9/11 truth every Friday afternoon. (Muslim congregational prayer occurs shortly after noon on Fridays.) Muslims are asking God to end the nazi-style persecution aimed at them, and related political violence perpetrated by all sides, by helping reveal the the truth about what happened on 9/11. All are invited to join. Click here to find out how.
Please Support MUJCA-NET MUJCA-NET needs your support. We are a non-profit organization and the scale of our activities depends entirely on your generosity. We would like to get copies of David Griffin's two 9/11 books (see above) into the hands of every religious leader in America. And we would like to push 9/11 truth onto the front pages of every newspaper in America. But we can't do it without your help. If you would like to donate to MUJCA-NET, click here.	Book-in-Progress: The Myth of 9/11 MUJCA-NET co-founder Kevin Barrett is writing a book entitled The Myth of 9/11: An American Muslim Speaks Out. Dr. Barrett, an Arabist specializing in the analysis of myth, literature and folklore, argues that the official story of 9/11 is a myth, both in the popular sense of an untrue story, and the scholarly sense of a founding narrative legitimizing a particular social order. Preview and comment on The Myth of 9/11.

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Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth Who We Are

Physics and Truth (will set us free)

Physics and Truth
(will set us free)