C-SPAN
Washington Journal
Host: Brian Lamb
Guest: Dr. Michael Shermer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp8vldOeI28

Host: At the top of the hour on your screen is Michael Shermer in Denver good morning Professor Shermer:

Shermer: Good morning what how did you get interested in all these conspiracies from 9 11.
well I'm the publisher of skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American uh forced the skeptic and we
investigate weird claims I mean sort of things that are out there on the fringes and about two years ago when I was doing a public address I was approached by one of these 911 conspiracy theorists that wanted to ask me about a couple of things and I'd have not heard much about it other than there was this weird French book the big lie and this guy want to know about uh about explosives that brought down the World Trade Center I said what are you talking
about and uh so I never for the life of me imagined that this conspiracy theory would get legs in America I mean
Americans like conspiracy theories for sure I mean the whole JFK conspiracy theory uh never seems to go away but
this one is particularly odd because on the one hand most of the people who formulate the 911 conspiracy theories
think bush is an incompetent boob that can hardly tie his shoes let alone be the president and on the other hand he's
supposed to have been so competent he pulled off the greatest conspiracy of all time orchestrating all these
different events and just perfectly pulling it off uh that that to me just seemed absurd and yet uh here it is this
week I've probably done two dozen interviews on this subject people seem to want to know something about it
there's this video that's been getting a lot of play so it's out there it's become part of Pop Culture

1) Host: now any of those theories that you've heard of that all have any credence?

Shermer: uh well no frankly uh you'd think there might be something useful in it other than as an education to those of us that don't know much about say the demolition of buildings um and why buildings fall for example um you know that that's other than that no there's no Credence to it at all of their claims are spurious I mean they start off saying that the World Trade
Center was brought down by demolition bombs but in fact demolition experts have done an analysis of this and
other architectural experts have done an expert analysis of why the buildings fell buildings fall in demolition
explosions from the bottom up this is how it's done they start the explosives in the bottom and they work
their way up and the thing collapses straight down in its own footprint the World Trade Center building it started
its collapse at the very point of impact where the planes hit so clearly there was no demolition bombs going off and
they had this video showing well we all have seen the videos of the buildings collapsing but they claim if you blow it up you can see little puffs of smoke
that look like a little squid explosions well in fact what it is that the building is coming down and the air
pressure inside is pushing puts of smoke out and so that's what causes it to look like that

2) Host: what gives you uh the authority I'm not sure you're asking for Authority but what gives you uh an insight to all this that you debunk all this versus uh the people that are in favor of the uh the idea of these conspiracies?

Shermer: oh well this is you know what I do for a living is investigate conspiracy theories and fringes that are on the
claims that are on the fringes and I'm not an expert on any of the particular subjects that are involved with this but
you know I can do research and that's what we did we talked to you know explosive experts and
um and others that that have done a lot of research on this like the Popular Mechanics folks who also have a book out
now about this 911 conspiracies and um uh you know that's so say for example they take it and it isn't rocket science you don't have to be all that smart to figure this out like one of them is that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon well what happened to the plane uh the American Airlines flight that hit that that disappeared at the moment that the explosion was seen at the at the Pentagon well so to get around that the conspiracy theorists say well the flight actually went on to uh Cleveland where it landed or it was Chicago it landed in Chicago they said the passengers were taken off and then gassed in a gas
chamber I mean just simple logic tells you what's more likely I mean at the very moment that the explosion happened
the plane disappeared off the radar screen so they would have had to use some stealth technology to make the
plane disappear up the radar screen and then uh and then fly it uh continually and no one ever saw that it was
continuing on to Chicago and then Landing without anyone noticing and then gassing all those passengers and uh in
any case think of all the people that would have to be involved to pull off even just that particular part of 9/11
not one of them wants to go on Larry King Live or uh the evening news or come out with a best-selling book or go to People magazine with the scoop of the century not one of them this is the problem with all conspiracy theories is the leakage problem people can't keep their mouth shut yeah.  You see from all the political pundits that you know half the people that are yakking on about the Iraq War on these talk shows are former Bush Administration people so it's people can't keep their mouth shut they can't wait until after they leave they can't wait to come out with a book and a tell-all story about what they heard and saw on the inside it seems so unlikely that some something like this could have been pulled off and then everybody who is involved kept their mouth shut that's just absurd

3) Host:: what one of the big uh conspiracy charges is that Tower seven up there at um uh in New York at the World Trade Center came down five something in the afternoon and there was no reason for it to come down what do you say about that one?

Shermer: Right tower seven is one of the big sticking points for the 911 conspiracy people well in fact uh the firefighters and police and rescue people and demolition people and so on were all there watching it burn it burned all day long they knew it was going to come down they in fact moved everybody away from trying to fight the fires because they knew that it was going to come down and they sat there and watched it come down it came down just as predicted from the damage of the fires burning all day uh you know the falling debris from the World Trade Center towers one and two caused considerable collateral damage to the buildings around there including the building seven and this in fact counteracts their previous claim that the World Trade Centers one and two came down in a perfect footprint no they didn't in fact had been a demolition uh bottom up explosives collapse they would have come straight down but they didn't quite a bit of the debris flew off to this side as the part top part of the building came down and met resistance in the middle floors which did collapse but there they uh the debris flew out to the sides and caused collateral damage then that caused eventually building seven to fall so it actually wasn't there was nothing unusual at the time nobody thought how unusual it was for that building to fall they knew it was going to fall

4) Host: Our Guest is was a college professor for 20 years a little taught psychology Evolution and the history of the science of Occidental College in California he's got a book out and that's part of the reason he's in Denver right now on a book tour it's called why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer the case against intelligent design but that's not why we have him on the program this morning he also is a graduate of Pepperdine University where he got a BA in Psychology a master's in experimental Psychology from California State University at Fullerton and a PhD in the history of science from Claremont Graduate School  Let me go to the phones, Professor Shermer and we'll find out what our audience wants to talk about and we encourage people who are those who believe in the conspiracy theories to give us a call and ask Michael Shermer why you're not correct let's go first up here to Fort Lauderdale Florida you're on the air.

Caller Florida: good morning uh Professor Shermer thank you for being on the show I wanted to ask you just commented about uh World Trade Center seven but first I wanted to ask you just in your opinion you talked about the puff of smoke or the squibs I saw pictures and videos showing the old columns being launched underneath the collapse of the building and I just wanted to ask besides the air pressure what would cause that because the what the 

Host: what to happen?

Caller: there were Columns of Steel when building was coming down that were launched actually hundreds of yards away from the building I've never seen that

Shermer: I've never seen that no there are there the this film that everybody's
downloading uh Loose Change they do show some objects flying out they're people that jumped
it's not pieces of Steel.  they got that they got that wrong 

5) Host: Deer Park Deer Park Illinois a Democrat go ahead please

Caller Deer Park: hi good morning uh I would just like to say where is the proof for the official story they hustled all the evidence all the steel out any crime scene uh they examine things were hustled out uh it won't profits from
a crime is the military industrial complex and if the biggest the biggest thing is if they if America was under
attack by unknown forces Bush was at a well-publicized event why did the Secret Service not hustle him immediately away from the scene he was there for like 30 minutes I mean it's ridiculous it's called the dog that did not bark thank
you

Shermer:: there's a lot to unpack in that one well first of all the debris at World Trade Center one uh was not hurried out and sent off to China as uh this movie says this is where this guy's getting this stuff uh in fact it was it took as
we all remember it took months and months and months to clean it all up uh all the debris was gone through by
experts none of the experts including demolition experts that helped with the cleanup none of them found any squibs or
explosives or anything like that there was no evidence at all not a shred evidence that there was something unusual in the collapse there and if there were don't you think one of these firemen would have said something or one of the police or any of the  other people that were there not one of them noticed something unusual and or let's say they all saw something unusual and they all kept their mouth shut this is the absurdity of this and as for Bush, you know he was uh you know at this little school reading doing a a reading program thing and he was informed initially of the first impact as we all were on the news and we all thought the same thing it was just some freak accident and it wasn't even clear that it was a 747 initially so the idea that he should have been hustled off within minutes is hindsight and this is what's largely going on with all these claims the hindsight buys since we know even with normal criticisms of bush for 9 11. it's the hindsight bias that since we know what happened we can look back and say why didn't they know back in August that Osama Bin Laden was going to do this and why didn't they anticipate this and why didn't they shoot down the jets that morning and so
on this assumes perfect knowledge of what we know now on that particular day in fact not just that day that morning that hour that minute that the news started to come in through that they would know everybody would know everything that was going on that we know now and of course they didn't

6) Host: Pittsburgh Pennsylvania for Michael Shermer you're on the air

Caller Pittsburgh: good morning to both of you I'd like to recommend a good book uh titled the terror timeline and a documentary called hijacking catastrophe and another one 911 pressed for truth but there are several questions that I want answered that everybody has forgotten uh who warned members of the Pentagon not to fly Newsweek reported that they were warned and they canceled their reservations uh the on September 10th who warned Salmon Rushdie not to fly
who also told Willie Brown not to fly which was reported the San Francisco Chronicle we can talk about missiles and
and the buildings you know and control demolitions all day there are some simple answers for the questions I just
asked who sold stock short on before 9 11 and hasn't been tracked or prosecuted when we can find the 16 year old hot internet hacker I want these things answered I'm tired of the obfuscation just like the 911 whitewash commission was guilty of thank you

Shermer: wow okay I can see everybody truly has been watching this video uh this is all coming straight out of this video uh is a general counter to this let me recommend that viewers go to skeptic.com where we have on our home page they're a big analysis of 911 and all of these particular claims and even more thoroughly Popular Mechanics has a complete 911 analysis and the editors of Popular Mechanics have a book out about this that addresses every one of those claims in general here's the story that um most of these things are not true that is certain members of the Pentagon we're
told uh not to fly or even worse that the Jews were told to stay home that morning the salmon Rushdie thing is just particularly bizarre uh I mean he has uh you know a death sentence put on him by uh by the Muslim Community why would they spare him uh and if it's not them why would the Bush Administration care about Salmon Rushdie deeper gosh sakes Willie Brown was told not to stay home what Willie Brown of San Francisco who cares what has this got to do with anything and most of these things turn out not even to be true I mean the put options on airline stock not true there
was nothing unusual at all somebody looked into this and uh but it's not true so a lot of the things that are put
out on this video and some of these books I'm sorry to say they're just outright lies or falsehoods or they're
just untrue facts so that's part of the problem fueling The Conspiracy Theory

7) Host: we covered the terror timeline author Paul Thompson earlier of the week at the national Press Club I want to run a clip of what he has to say and get your comment on that

Paul Thompson at NPC: there was a Newsweek story it came out just after 9 11 saying that there are a number of high-level generals that were going to fly that next morning and that they were given a warning and told not to fly on the morning of September 11th and then the Newsweek article went on to say you know doubtless this is going to become a big issue because you know why is it that these people were warned but uh you know the people on the planes that were hijacked weren't given the same warning and there was no such debate and then the next issue of Newsweek they basically repeated that exact same story and again kind of said that in the doubtless this will lead to some kind of debate and again kind of just completely fell on deaf ears so you know this is not you're not a conspiracy theorist if you just look at the newspaper and you said I read this in Newsweek I read this in you know the New York Times and so forth and I want answers. I want the 911 Commission for instance to have looked into that Newsweek story and tried to figure out what was going on there but that was just one of the 70 of the questions that the that the victims relatives asked and never got answers to

Host: Michael Shermer?

Shermer: Okay well um first of all the News Press Stories the news coverage of the events as they unfolded and in the weeks after and so on they don't necessarily always get the story right I mean there's rumors and rumors of rumors and perhaps I mean obviously on any given day people cancel flights plans change orders are given not to fly here but go
there or stay there for some other reason don't forget there were some military training exercises and programs going on 9 11. so these could have easily had any of these plans could have easily had something to do with those and then after the fact we look for anomalies and then try to fit them into a conspiracy theory here's what happens in general is that no theory of anything explains all the facts in science this is called the residue problem there's always a residue of unexplained anomalies that the primary theory that everyone accepts can't explain when people do on the fringes is they take those anomalies and they try to construct a whole new Theory but the new Theory doesn't explain all the old facts that the old Theory explains just fine so we've got there's sort of a principle parsimony here that the the most Salient theory that explains the most facts is the one we should accept even if there are still some Unsolved Mysteries which is perfectly okay we have to have a certain tolerance for ambiguity we can't explain everything but the fact is that for example Al Qaeda and Osama said that they did it.  They already tried to blow up the World Trade Center building in 1993. why don't we take them at their word that this is in fact indeed what happened?  not only are they not denying it they're proud of it they do it again in a heartbeat they're trying to do it again so I think that's the obvious most parsimonious explanation

8) Host: Michael Shermer in Denver this morning we go next to Jackson Ohio you're on the air

Caller Denver: good morning my question is about Flight 93 the story is that that aircraft was shot down by the Air Force on the orders of President Bush and my single question about that is why was one of the engines found almost two football fields
away um no theory that I've ever heard other than having shot it down could explain
that fact

Shermer: Well the debris field of course is going to be somewhat scattered actually I'm surprised to hear you say that a couple hundred yards is nothing the official conspiracy theory is that the parts of the plane were found miles away which is not true the refill was not miles long but a plane going 550 miles an hour when it hits is of course going to be scattered somewhat and uh and where does most of the debris go it disintegrates the plane most of what a plane is made out of is aluminum which if it burns it melts and or if it doesn't burn it fragments into millions of little pieces I know a friend of mine was at the Pentagon uh when the plane hit and he walked out there were pieces of American Airlines flight he picked up tiny pieces there weren't much left there wasn't much left except for the big pieces of the engine that were on the line I mean some of the conspiracy theories say there was no parts of the American Airlines flight at the Pentagon yes there were there's pictures of it you can see it in fact if you go to the Popular Mechanics they have a picture of
the of the uh engine sitting right there on the line and where all the bodies go you know we couldn't find any bodies
there are no bodies left after a plane crash it's a rather gruesome subject to cover but basically bodies just disintegrate into uh just thousands of little pieces of you know meat basically protein chunks of me I mean it's just it's pretty disgusting it's why people have the forensic people have to do DNA analysis to figure out who the subjects are in a plane crash like that it's very tragic but that's why the refill looks like it does

9) Host: Our Guest is the founding publisher of Skeptics magazines done that since 1991 also has been a professor let's go to Washington DC next you're on the air

Caller DC: hey how are you doing uh good morning to all um what I wanted to do is make an observation and ask a question um what I'm observing is that instead of calling this the uh him debunking the 911 theories what it sounds like is him making excuses and poking fun at everything that's being brought up um he says that um you know the World Trade Center number seven went down because of fire and everybody knew it therefore there was nothing there to see but I would like to know what other building and you know maybe two buildings have ever went down because of
fire also I would like to say that um that because Operation Northwoods which is a well-publicized um uh operation that went on it I think in the 60s um why is it so ridiculous to believe that this is out of the realm of
something that can be done being as though it is an actual fact um what is what he's actually doing is just saying oh well why would somebody do that or this is crazy or getting that from the film

Host: Thanks caller got the point. Mr. Shermer?

Shermer: sure well okay so the 911 conspiracy theorists say that uh no buildings ever collapsed due to fire not true it's just simply not true that's a lie there's plenty of buildings that have collapsed due to fires um and the video that they show shows the building on one side and it doesn't look like much of it's burning and they go look hardly any of it's burning yeah but if you look at the video from the other side the whole thing is Up in Flames uh so that's also deceptive and
then finally I'm not just poking fun of it I'm asking a serious question I'm asking a what's more likely question
that the building fell due to damage caused by fires which have happened before and all the people who were standing there knew it was going to collapse and moved away in fact or that people went into that building and planted bombs and brought it down and not one of those people has come forward like if you're out there now give us a
call right now and tell us yeah I'm the guy I planted the bombs and uh and then and then see what happens uh I mean this is this is indicated indicative clearly that there is no conspiracy because people can't keep their mouth shut I was much on uh once on G Gordon Liddy show a radio show in Washington DC there and uh this is for my first book white people believe weird things and I have some stuff about conspiracy theories in there I said well let me ask you you're the man who knows a lot about conspiracies it's not that conspiracies are impossible they do happen I mean Watergate was a conspiracy and he said the biggest problem with conspiracies particularly government conspiracies is government bureaucrats are not very competent and they can't keep their mouth shut so imagine and that would be for a small conspiracy look what happened like with Watergate this is just a handful of guys it's a very quiet tiny little thing just a break-in to get some information that's the collapse of the World Trade Center and that whole thing blew up and everybody found out about it what are the chances that something a hundred-fold greater than the Watergate could have been pulled off and nobody noticed?

10) Host:  We are talking with Michael Shermer. Bob Novak Will Be Our Guest at the top of the hour we go to Orlando Florida George Bush supporter good morning.

Caller Orlando: Good morning.  Thank you for C-Span. One of the things that concerns me for  long time is whether it's a politician professors if you talk to students today everyone whether they're four against the president of the war 9 11 whatever everything is so emotional and with all the knowledge out there we have seemed to have abandoned logic and reason do you see that as a trend
and if cells what in the world can we do to change it thank you.

Shermer: yes thank you that's an excellent question and that's
spot on correct uh it's the biggest problem we encounter I mean we are a skeptic society as a science
organization and the whole problem of critical thinking is huge in this country people are swept up by emotions
particularly with when it comes to religion and politics people are emotionally invested in in their positions and beliefs people on the left and the right Christians Jews Muslims everybody uh are committed to their positions that makes it very difficult to think critically and clearly about evidence we don't we are not natural scientists we are natural pattern seeking animals we look for and find connections we connect the dots like constellations in the sky we find the constellations of meaning in in our complex chaotic world and it's discomforting for us to think that say 19 people could pull off this incredible thing there's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance like if I can make an analogy with the JFK assassination here's the leader of the Free World the most powerful man in the world is killed by some nobody some nutcase some wing nut living in the nooks and crannies of society and no one noticed him and the answer is yeah that's the very person in fact the only person that could pull off something like that because he's invisible in a free Democratic Society like that you can get away with it a huge FBI CIA Mafia Castro so on conspiracy could never be pulled off too many people too complex too much incompetence the whole thing is too visible and would fail same thing here but you know orders of magnitude bigger what's more likely that a huge government agency could pull this off or 19 guys invisible living in the nooks and crannies of society and we have all their flight records of them training and so on only after the fact no one really noticed at the time what was coming uh that that's who could pull this off that's the very people that could pull us off invisible in a free Society that's how it happens

11) Host: Your experience uh do people start out skeptical in the first place about things like 911 and they've find the
theories that help them uh you know with their own basic attitude toward it or do they wait for films like the one you
were talking about?

Shermer: yeah I think what happens is uh these things get root usually through some
alternative media and thanks to the internet uh it fuels these things I mean look you know we have to be in favor of
free speech the internet's the greatest things at the printing press but we also have to put up with the fact that goofy stuff is going to get printed as well and passed down as fact so I watched this video you know it's about an hour and a half it's a bit of a commitment to sit there and watch it and it gets so many things wrong but it's compelling enough that you did if you didn't know much about this stuff and who does I mean I didn't know anything about why buildings fall and what happened happens to people's bodies when the planes hit the ground why should any of us know
anything about that and so but when you look into it you realize oh well they lied or they got this wrong or they or
more what happens is they string together a series of anomalous facts that on the surface look rather peculiar
and so you'll notice what most of your college are doing is asking I want facts I want explanations I want to know
what's the answer to these questions so they don't the documentary that everyone's talking about doesn't have
any answers really doesn't have very many answers they're mostly questions their ultimate answer is you know Bush
did it and you know as I said at the top I mean this is the guy that's supposed to be the most incompetent boob ever be in the White House and at the same time he's supposed to be the most incredibly genius orchestrator of the greatest conspiracy of all time? I mean you can't have it both ways you can't be a bush critic and then also say he's that competent

12) Host:  Glen Arden Maryland you're on the air

Caller Arden: yes we can be that way both ways because the Great Deceiver will be just that the
Great Deceiver and he's going to fool everybody and it's been written my conspiracy theory though goes along with
that I didn't see that film you said um 9-1-1 whatever it was online but uh I did have a question about the stock put that uh no one has been bought in because that shows prior knowledge also but my conspiracy theory is those helicopters that were stationed at different angles around that uh to give us the Hollywood production showing those planes coming in before they knew how did those helicopters know not to be in the flight path for the well either of the planes but when the first one hit and then the second one was coming in that it seemed as the helicopters were filming from three two
different angles and there was a camera on the ground and you know somebody had prior knowledge this is all I'm saying so and one other thing people keep saying we weren't attacked after 9 11. well we
were in a month later there was the anthrax attacks no one has ever been caught which means there's a terrorist
loose in this country uh it was traced back to Fort Detrick which means the government had a course the government had to let this stuff out so it is if to further in uh terrorize the American public I think that that has something to do with the 911 along with the helicopters being there waiting to see these planes come in.

Host:  Thanks caller Mr. Shermer?

Shermer:  Yeah I always like this one about uh what's the motive of the Bush Administration it's to orchestrate the American people to get behind the war  well we saw how well that worked the country's completely divided over the war in any case um recall that the only video we have of the first plane impact is a camera crew
who is with a fire crew uh in New York and the guy is filming the firemen
standing there and you can hear the jet flying right overhead and the camera swings over and barely catches it as it
impacts it was just a complete lucky uh a video clip and that's the only one
we have of the first impact after the first impact of course everybody scrambles their news crews and
Camera Crews and helicopters and so we have uh you know multiple angles not
the best but multiple angles of the second impact in fact if you wanted the perfect in uh video angle for the
second impact we don't have that uh there's usually what we see is the one from the opposite
side the north side in which you see the plane coming in from behind and then it comes out the other end there's only one
halfway decent one from the actual impact side and it's not even that good so your caller's statement is just I'm
sorry it's just not true the you know in any case the chances of the
helicopters being hit by the plane coming in are you know pretty slim the airspace is quite open so that that
answers those I think

13) Host: Birdsboro Pennsylvania you're on the air

Caller Birdsboro: good morning Mr. Shermer, I just want to give you one factual note that I want to make in one name this concerned the Pentagon Theory I want to mention one name Barbara Olsen okay what about her but what about
Barbara Olsen he was on the plane that was the solicitor General's wife at the time Ted Olson
and what does that have to do with uh what do you think that means well where is he now she used to come on TV she
used to be a pundit on certain television shows so where is she hasn't yeah surfaced at all what's the point excuse me is it is you are you someone that doesn't believe in it the conspiracy theories do you think she has something I really don't I mean it's just a bunch of hog wash okay

Shermer: oh okay. I see where he's going okay yeah and this does bring up another
issue is uh what happened all the people if the planes weren't actually shot down or they were again Bush is
criticized for not shooting down the planes if they knew that it was coming and yet on the other hand he supposedly
shot down flight 93. um but what happened to all those passengers okay well they or it was a
it was a jet a missile that hit the Pentagon and the plane went somewhere else but wait where did all the people
go well they were gassed or whatever but what about those cell phone calls on both on all those flights and um
particularly flight 93. uh so according to conspiracy theory and here's where it really gets goofy is
that the CIA has technology to take somebody's voice a recording and then duplicate if you have enough of it if you have a few minutes of the person's voice duplicate it through this machine and then construct entire conversations of that so are we to understand that somehow the CIA got recordings of all those people on the plane and then
constructed conversations and then called their family members and held entire conversations and not one of the
family members has come forward to say you know it didn't really sound like my John or my Mary nothing of that has
happened so that's just really weird.

14) Host: next call Fort Ann New York a Democrat for Michael Shermer you're on the air

Caller Fort Ann: good morning Mr. Shermer I'm um I'm a little skeptical about your rebuttal you're pretty much just saying it would be hard to do and sounds crazy I'm new at looking at some of these theories and
one thing that struck me I read about um some of the supposed hijackers are alive so I went to the BBC website and indeed there are three of them there that have been interviewed by the BBC and the FBI or CIA or whoever would do
it has never changed their information that these are the
part of the 19 who did it and three of them are alive in the Middle East
is relatively a legitimate source

Shermer: certainly uh I've heard this I've checked with the BBC this is as far as I know this is absolutely not true in fact
supposedly a Mohammed Atta gave an interview after 9 11. impossible he was
on the plane uh where is he where are these guys and this film and these
references to the BBC claim that they've given interviews to the BBC but why
have we not ever seen this in the media why is this why have these interviews never been broadcast where are these
people I've heard the stories like what you just said I've never seen it myself I've gone to the BBC site I didn't see
that I know people that have called the BBC to ask them they've said no absolutely not there were no interviews
like that so I think this is one of those urban legend type tales that have been told and retold without any factual
basis

15) Host: Are these conspiracy theories um theories are they more than they normally are on events in this country or how does this how do for instance how does this uh compare to the John F. Kennedy's conspiracy Theory group

Shermer: well it's similar in the fact that you know the people involved are emotionally
committed I think because 911 is orders of magnitude bigger than well anything that's happened since Pearl Harbor uh
that people are especially emotionally invested but since I mentioned Pearl Harbor let's not forget that immediately
after Pearl Harbor there were conspiracy theories about how Roosevelt knew about the attacks Churchill knew about the
attacks Churchill and Roosevelt orchestrated the attacks or they allowed the attacks to happen to Galvanize the
American people into the war very similar kinds of arguments uh it's almost like an archetype of conspiracy
story construction this is what you are to say this is what you are to do I don't think anybody's orchestrated that
of course but it's part of how the human mind after the fact goes back and reasons how it should have been anticipated since it wasn't they must have known secretly that it was going to happen but we but we always have to remember that in the present time it's so difficult able to know you know as Yogi Berra said the predictions are hard to make especially about the future uh it's absolutely true the world's a very complex chaotic place there's a lot of different things going on only after the fact can you go back and reconstruct some simple linear pathway of how we got there uh the pathway to 911 and so on but that's only after the fact we're really good at that I mean like in our own lives we look back at how we got to where we are in our lives and we construct this simple linear path but at any given point you don't know what's going to happen and therefore it's so hard to predict.

16) Host: The Skeptic Society what is that?

Shermer: The skeptical Society is the 501c3 nonprofit organization to publish skeptic magazine we have the web page
skeptic.com we're a science education organization we're based out of Caltech in Pasadena California and we put on
lecture series we sponsor scientific conferences uh like we had one this year on global warming and the greenhouse
effect environmental skepticism should we be skeptical? what about peak oil overpopulation so we deal with a lot of
topics not just the Fringe paranormal kind of stuff but also these kinds of loaded political uh issues that is where
science and politics meet is a is a particularly hot area for us our next conference at Caltech next year is probably going to be on a war and terrorism I mean there's a lot of interesting scientific research now on
why people fight why groups attack each other? why terrorists did it? a lot of research on the psychology of the
terrorists by the way I mean they talk about you know it could have been the terrorists who did this of course they
did it I mean we have a lot of terrorists that have been caught a affiliated with well not only with 911
but with all the attacks in the 1990s that Clinton had to deal with and a lot of those guys are in jail and they've
been interviewed there's a Harvard Professor that wrote a terrific book "Terror in the name of God" who talks about why they do this why they hate us the idea that that um that Bush was motivated to us and the and the
al-Qaeda uh Islamic fundamentalist terrorists would not do it is ridiculous listen to their own words they
would do it they would do it in a heartbeat they were delighted when they heard about these captured prisoners were delighted when they heard about 9/11 that this was terrific they wish they could have done it so I mean we should take these people at their word if they you know that if the motivation is there it's there and they say it is.

17) Host: There's a new book out called why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer he is on the road he's in Denver this morning on a book tour we go to Seattle Washington you're on the air

Caller Seattle: Dr Shermer I'm glad I'm thrilled to talk to you guys thank you good morning I had a specific question about you were asked about where the planes went and you mentioned the gas Chambers I wondered where did
you hear anything about that?

Shermer: Oh one of the early conspiracy theories had the plane going either to well the first story was that the plane was flown into Canada somewhere and the
passengers were gassed then the second story The more current one now that's in this film is that the flight actually
landed in Chicago at Chicago O'Hare no less and that the patients were then uh
hustled off into a holding chamber and there they disappeared so in the new
conspiracy it doesn't say gas but just disappeared well you know what are you going to do with them I mean the people are gone the family members obviously of these people are mourning their death so where are they I mean surely they didn't fly him off to Siberia somewhere they would have had to be killed and the people who did the killing somebody has to do it right.  Not one of them is coming forward to say man if I got a story for you Larry King Live I'm the guy who did it I got the orders from the Bush Administration or something like that again you see that um that people that used to work in the Bush Administration that have now left or were fired have gone on uh typically every one of them they go on these talk
shows they write books they're on the lecture circuit just telling the whole story everything they know about who
said what to whom and when don't you think that would happen if these guys were involved in something orders of
magnitude bigger than the controversy over say the invasion of Iraq

18) Host: Mr. Shermer would you share your political leanings with us?

Shermer: Oh well as I like to say I'm not a member of any organized political party
I'm a Libertarian and uh the problem with Libertarians is uh we don't
generally like big organized political parties that's part of our uh our shortcomings I'm afraid but I'm
fiscally conservative uh and socially liberal would be the right way to say that.

19) Host: Did you vote for George Bush?

Shermer: I voted libertarian in both of the elections actually I voted libertarian the first election and the second election I decided uh to vote for Kerry simply because I didn't think the libertarian candidate had a chance I didn't want to throw away my vote

20) Host: Jacksonville Florida you're on the air

Caller Jacksonville:: I don't have a conspiracy theory I'm just skeptical of the official version uh and you Mr. Shermer can't have it both ways either you keep saying that how could they keep it quiet in this great big bureaucracy but you also say that it was done by 19 people so you know it didn't have to be the whole government doing it but what my question is about why are the uh passenger lists from the airlines why are they classified and why did they pick up the uh I mean the uh film from the gas station across the street things like that and classify that and where are the pieces of the airplane I know
when that plane went down off of Long Island they went down under the ocean got out every piece and reassemble it in
a hanger and it was all over the news and we saw it where's the where's the plane where are the pieces?

Shermer: Right that when a plane hits the impacts the water that's bad enough but at least um it doesn't shatter into a million little pieces if you hit a concrete structure like the Pentagon which is a pretty uh high integrity uh sturdy building uh the plane just disintegrated in a million little pieces again I mentioned earlier I had a friend that worked there he was a he's in the military and he ran out to the lawn and he was holding pieces in his hand of the of the airplane identified clearly identifiable pieces and don't forget we have eyewitness accounts of people that said I saw an American Airlines logo on the tail of the plane that came through so admittedly the footage that the government has released is not helpful all you see is just a one frame of a little tube-like thing and then the explosion but the eyewitnesses
themselves said they saw what was a you know a passenger jet they saw American Airlines logos on it I mean it's not like they're going to mistake something else for that you can hardly miss it and um and it turns out that there is a long flat clear area leading right up to it and at that speed you could easily knock down light poles no big deal not going to rip the wing off and go straight into the building and then and then just centrally disintegrate.

21) Host: Michael Shermer where are you from originally?

Shermer: I'm from Southern California born and raised and my home is in Pasadena it's a lovely area to live I went to school in Southern California and uh yeah so that's it

22) Host: Fairfax Virginia good morning

Caller Fairfax: Good morning.  I voted for John Kerry I guess you already wasted your boat but anyway I think all this guy I suppose this all goes back to Bill Clinton looking in the camera lying to the world and the Democrats just won't let go of it and don't do anything they can say anything come up with any concocted idea so that they can try to get after George W bush now I admit this war is a joke but you know let's not give too much fuel to that book that liberal thinking is a mental illness thank you

Shermer: I'm afraid I don't know that book but I haven't heard that one well so uh I mean I think this is one of the things that's sort of disturbing about the 911 conspiracy theories is that in fact there's plenty of room for legitimate
criticism of the Bush Administration on any number of fronts uh in including the business about the warnings that we might have had in the summer of 2001 and including that famous memo uh from
Condoleezza Rice that Osama Bin Laden will strike on American soil uh on that
I think it was August 8th so I mean those are the kinds of things that I think are legitimate criticisms that
should be discussed it's when you take it to the far extreme that it just becomes absurd.

23) Host: Our next call is Charlotte North Carolina good morning

Caller Charlotte: Good morning Mr. Shermer um going back to the uh suspects I'm looking right now at the BBC News World Edition yes looking at an article right now where it shows uh some of the uh suspects and um I suggest people to go there and look at it at the end of the article it says the FBI director Robert Mueller our knowledge on Thursday the identity of several other suicide hijackers is in doubt so I wonder who were the um people that you were talking
BBC denying uh article that they actually display on the website

Shermer: I don't know let's check that out I'm not sure I don't know what you're looking at there so I'll check that out later

Caller Charlotte: It is http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
so they're saying that uh Muhammad Atta is still alive no they saw they're showing um like I say they show I think is Waleed Al Shehri left the US a year ago he says uh but it's actually two of them in the uh actually 19 uh suspect because of
them are actually showing there as actually being alive one of them shows that he's in Casablanca Morocco
all right but I suggest people to go to the BBC News and re look at it and read it

Shermer: Well I mean if our forces are trying to find Osama Bin Laden and we have a hit list of all the top Al Qaeda people we're trying to get and if
that were true if the BBC had published you know here they are this is the guy and he's living in Morocco go get
him why is this not happened see that's why I suspect there's something else going on here some sort of mistaken
identity or uh you know the new story didn't get it right I just I don't know I haven't seen that particular story
you're looking at so anyway.

24) Host: Bob Novak will join us at the top of the hour from Urbana Illinois. We go to Ashland Oregon
good morning

Caller Ashland: Yeah good morning um boy there's so much to this uh I love your magazine and I'm also a libertarian uh let's let me con make this concise each floor of the World Trade Center weighed 3 million two hundred thousand pounds and gravity pulling at 32 feet per second per second that means that the one that was hit at the 95th floor if
that's five floors would have exerted upon a 50,945,274 foot-pounds of energy every second the other one would have 1,180,905,480 foot pounds of energy every second.  So it the fire is incidental it doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned because once a structure has been damaged by a plane going X miles per hour which probably hit with a billion foot pounds of energy we know that it caused uh the seismographs to be reacted 20 miles away so when you do the science this this guy that com you know that says he's a physics professor and doesn't come up with this basic stuff that I learned as a hobby doing ballistics when I was 12 years old can't understand why the building came down with the force of gravity this is really absurd as far as thank you I mean it's nuts and I watched that film it was insensitive to the people that suffered it was horrible I in fact I have a TV show I'm sending a copy of Community Access I'm sending a copy of what I did to the to BYU for Brigham Young University as soon as I can get a copy of it because these people need to know this kind of a person does not need to be teaching children about science when he doesn't
even apply it himself.

Host: Are you talking about Stephen Jones?  uh yes yeah go ahead uh Mr. Shermer?

Shermer: Yeah.  I mean his point is well made that uh the demolition experts that uh
have published on the why the buildings collapse point out that if it were a controlled demolition when
they when they bring a building down they bring down from they bring it down from the bottom up and if you look
at the videotape you'll see the building uh collapses right at the point of impact and there was a terrific Nova
program last week in which they and this is a tribute to the to how science Works they said we were wrong when we
did the first program two years ago why the buildings fell we thought that the um the supporting beams uh had weakened and caught and sagged and caused the bolts to snap that held the supporting beams to the side of the building in fact that's not what happened apparently the bolts did not snap that the building that the supporting beam sag because of the heat of the flames never did melt that they didn't break they just sagged pulling in the sides of the building five feet on each side at the point where the plane impact that point where the building was being pulled in that's where the collapse occurred
and you can see it clearly on the videotape when you show it slow motion it happens exactly at that point there
are no explosions below that there are no squibs going off and then it goes down it goes down right at that point
where the plane hit which is exactly what you'd expect and as the caller said all that huge amount of weight above it
Cascades down and the floors collapse one after another at real time speed.

25) Host:  Michael Shermer is our guest he's the publisher of Skeptic magazine. By the way how do people get that?

Shermer: People can get skeptic well it's carried it uh all Barnes and Noble and borders and books a million all bookstore as Carrie a skeptic or of course you can just go to skeptic.com  and order it there it's a Science magazine but we also deal a lot with these kinds of Fringe issues politically loaded religiously loaded uh controversies all related to science and
and conspiracies.

26) Host: Manhattan New York you're on

Caller Manhattan: Good morning my um question has to do with the idea that um it's more likely the conspiracy theory that um could possibly happen it's not that bush himself or the government orchestrated the attacks which I think is very far-fetched but that bush actually had some knowledge prior to the attacks that a terrorist attack was imminent and he used and ignored the information um similar to the um I think the best example would be the Presidential Daily
Briefing of August 6th where it said Bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S. and he didn't raise security levels
in New York or Washington do you think that the conspiracy theory that he allowed it to happen as a pretext to
implement foreign policy indicated in the project for the Project for a New American Century is a legitimate one and has any um cause of validity?

Shermer: No I don't um again I think we have the problem with the hindsight bias going back after the fact knowing what happened and looking at all the clues that they should have seen at the time uh why can't we today know where the uh
terrorists are going to attack next when they do we'll go back and after the fact go oh
dang we should have seen that coming look there was that clue of that clue but at the time you don't see it again
with the Pearl Harbor analogy um after the fact when we know that they struck Hawaii you can go back and kind
of figure out oh yeah we should have seen that coming but really at the time all the clues pointed to the Japanese were going to attack somewhere in the Philippines that they were going to go south not East and um and so again it's the it's the
problem of the hindsight bias we hold people accountable for uh for foreknowledge that they could not have possibly have had it's a and we have to remember it's a very chaotic complex world we live in it's not simple and linear like it is in history when we go back and reconstruct it then it looks simple and linear.

27) Host: Here's an email that goes through three different points from an M Walters of Valparaiso Indiana
Dear Mr. Shermer what I wanted to know is one since our Administration has insisted it was a plane that hit the Pentagon why did the FBI remove the surveillance tapes from the surrounding buildings near the Pentagon and instead keep them to show exactly what hit the Pentagon.  Yes I do wonder where flight 77 would be had it not been uh it hit that
it hit the Pentagon but the FBI removing the surveillance tapes is rather odd not to mention where were the pentagon's
defense mechanisms?

Shermer: Right, well um the Pentagon doesn't have defense mechanisms for shooting down passenger planes uh in fact it wasn't even clear that the Rules of Engagement for dealing with passenger planes could have been handled within that one hour time frame in which all this unfolded that morning as for the surveillance tapes how do these people know that there are surveillance tapes from the mall next door and from the gas station and so on that people talk about how do they know that there's these video tapes where do they get this information I've never seen anything about that to then conclude that the Pentagon ran over and took the tapes and they're not showing them I mean it's possible they have tapes and the Pentagon is holding them for national security reasons uh who knows? I mean we have to remember does the government ever cover things up and not tell us everything yeah of course.  It happens all the time but that doesn't mean there's something nefarious going on same thing like with the Roswell UFO story that somehow the government's covering something up well they work covering something up that in fact we were conducting a high altitude
experiments to test what to detect whether the Soviets were exploding nuclear bombs in the upper atmosphere that but they're not going to tell the American people that 1947 so they made up a story so yeah sometimes stories are made up but they're usually made up for very mundane reasons that have little to do with grand conspiracies of UFOs and 9 11 attacks by the Bush Administration

28) Host: Fort Dodge Iowa you're next..

Caller Fort Dodge: Yes, good morning.  On another subject uh there's a book
which I thought had a good case written by Jana Davis, an Oklahoma City news lady, who speaks of the third terrorist in Oklahoma City John McVeigh's missing uh oh a Latino type person that we were searching for immediately after that as
being an Iraqi and throughout her books she makes a pretty strong case that there were lots of Iraqis associated
with McVeigh. 

Shermer: Yeah Timothy McVeigh yes I have heard this as well and I am a bit curious about that that seems possible to me that uh McVeigh could have had some input some help some direction from uh Islamic professional terrorists uh
maybe for his own motives maybe they were using him uh I don't think this has ever been proved but I also don't think
it's been pursued very deeply I think the law enforcement agency's concluded probably rightly that McVeigh I mean for sure rightly that they did it because he said he did it uh but that there may have been other people involved and they perhaps closed that case a little too soon so I do think there's a legitimate inquiry there

29) Host: Mr. Shermer where does uh the Skeptics Society get its money?

Shermer: We're a non-profit so we do accept donations primarily we're funded however through subscriptions to the magazine we keep all the back issues of the magazine in print so people buy them uh each issue has a particular theme to it like conspiracies or global warming or uh UFOs or whatever uh so we're funded by that we have a lecture series at Caltech every month the once or twice a month and annual conferences so we videotape or tape film those and those are all available at Skeptic.com so I mean we've had a terrific lineup of speakers over the last 15 years some of the greatest scientists in in the world have spoken for us and so that's how we do it.  We also carry we have a catalog of books really interesting books sort of Skeptics books but you know science books on any number of topics You Know
Carl Sagan's books and James Randy's books and Bill Nye the science guy's
books and you know so that that's primarily our source of funding.

30) Host:  To calls and we'll uh change topics we go next to Rochester New York you're on the air.

Caller Rochester: Mr. Shermer there are two specific questions about the Pentagon
uh why was there no wing damage on the building of the of the Pentagon? and two if the plane at the Pentagon
disintegrated without leaving a trace how did it maintain the structural Integrity to punch three clean holes to
reinforce concrete Steel

Shermer: Okay these are good questions um the reason people are asking about the why there's no wing damage is because they saw the wing damage in the World Trade Center which had glass so the wings could punch through the
glass before they disintegrate upon hitting the metal structures inside.  In the case of the Pentagon this is
concrete so when the wings hit the wings are aluminum they're super lightweight these are composite materials inside and
they just disintegrate into a million little pieces and again I've mentioned this several times now my friend who
worked at the Pentagon ran out there and there were pieces of the plane all over the place he held him in his hand and so
it's not true that there's no debris. There was lots of debris it was just fragmented into tiny little parts
and yet there were some holes punched clearly where the part of the fuselage
which is a more uh much stronger reinforced composite material and of
course the engines also helped Drive the hole a little bit deeper.

31) Host: Last call for Mr. Shermer we go to Bethlehem Pennsylvania good morning

Caller Bethlehem: Good morning Mr. Shermer I was wondering um how you what you think of Flight
800 over Long Island and also the plain that exploded over Rockaway right after
9/11. thank you

Shermer: Right I don't know about the Rockaway one I've not looked into any of that the
flight 800 I mean I've seen what everybody else has seen all the documentaries on it and uh
you know it's on it appears that the fuel tank the empty fuel tank with the fumes in it that a spark ignited it that
does seem to be the cause there was some conspiratorial thinking around that that
perhaps a missile shot it down um and but there seems to be no evidence of that I mean obviously the people investigated it considered that hypothesis and looked into it and found no evidence of a missile impact or anything like that um and why anybody would you know the American government would want to shoot down a airline like that is you know what's the motive um so that that doesn't make sense to me.