Among the Truthers (41 page)

World Health Organization (WHO), 80

WorldNetDaily, 121–23, 128, 170, 240–41, 247–48, 304

World Trade Center, xxi, 2–14, 17, 20–22, 48–49, 66, 88, 96, 103, 108, 152, 154–56, 168, 211, 228, 248–50, 255–56, 283, 287, 316, 327

World Wide Web, xvi–xvii, 228

Wray, T.J., 209–10

Wright, Jeremiah, 157, 324

Wright, Lawrence, 20

 

Yale Law Journal
, 279–83

Yale Law School, 40, 279–80

Yale University, 279

Yousef, Ramzi, 228

YouTube, 254, 258–59

 

Zamyatin, Yevgeny, 36, 51–53

Zapruder, Abraham, 254

Zarathustra, 209

Zarembka, Paul, 50, 51, 190, 194

Zelikow, Philip, 258–59, 287

Zinn, Howard, 102, 167

Zizakovic, Lubo, 8–9, 12–13, 15, 114, 163

Zuma, Jacob, 312

Zündel, Ernst, 182, 219, 288

Zwicker, Barrie, 94, 97, 190, 191

1
There is, however, at least one recorded instance of a Jewish man being lynched: Atlanta, Georgia, factory manager Leo Frank, who in 1915 was accused of murdering a girl in his employ.

2
The impulse toward conspiracism seems to be triggered only when the public figure in question actually
dies
. In 2003, Royal Holloway University of London researcher Patrick Leman reported a study in which people were read a story about a president being attacked by a would-be assassin. Leman found that people were far more likely to embrace conspiracy theories about the event if the president were presented as having died as opposed to having been merely injured—a phenomenon described as the “major event-major cause” heuristic.

3
Kolar's various theories include the notion that 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was actually “a pilot in a very lucrative heroin trafficking operation” involving all manner of celebrity arms dealers and criminals.

4
Amazingly, many modern conspiracists remain obsessed with Masonry. To this day, I still get emails like this one, which I received in 2008: “Dear Mr. Kay, Show me a picture of an airplane in the Pentagon Building. Any part of a real airplane will be enough. When a picture of this kind can be shown I will take the trouble to admit I have been wrong about the Masons and their friends trying to manipulate the population. Masons, those lovable people who believe in SLAVERY. They are the problem. Finding surrogates like yourself to get paid to promote their dirty handiwork is easy for them. They have a history of understanding your kind.”

5
It's worth noting that—despite the superficial similarities between Northwoods and the supposed neocon conspiracy to blow up the World Trade Center—the 1962 episode actually helps demonstrate why Truther theories are so far-fetched. Northwoods was conceived in a climate of perceived urgency: Fidel Castro's regime was an obsession in Washington, and preventing the spread of communism on America's doorstep was properly seen as an urgent, life-and-death foreign policy challenge. Yet even under these conditions, the plan was rejected as unnecessarily risky by JFK—despite the fact that the schemes contained in the Northwoods memorandum were orders of magnitude less complex and deadly than bringing down three Manhattan skyscrapers.

6
The convoluted nature of the Northwoods schemes—involving drone planes, passengers shuffled from one plane to another, and repainted airplane tail numbers—may help explain some of the especially otherworldly “no-planer” Truther theories of 9/11, which suggest the four passenger aircraft that crashed that day were somehow not what they seemed, but instead were drones, or had been emptied of passengers at some indeterminate location in the northeast United States, or even that they were not real aircraft at all.

7
The notion that FDR knew about—or knowingly provoked—the Pearl Harbor attacks is refuted in chapter 15 of Conrad Black's definitive 2003 FDR biography,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
:
Champion of Freedom
. When I asked the author (who happens to be a
National Post
colleague) what he thought of Stinnett's thesis, he had this to say: “The idea that Roosevelt would have been aware of an attack on the Pacific Fleet and under-warned his local commanders is outrageous. He loved the navy, and he would have had just as much anger and unanimity behind his war policy from the US public if the torpedo nets [around the harbor] had been out, the air force airborne, and the damage had only been 2 percent of what it was. This is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories [I've ever heard].

“I don't buy any of the conspiracy theories about 9/11 either,” Black added. “It was another intelligence bungle by the United States, but God knows we are accustomed to those, such as unawareness that there were already 140,000 Red Chinese troops in North Korea while Truman and MacArthur were meeting at Wake Island; and of the presence of nuclear, immediately attachable warheads and 40,000 Russian soldiers in Cuba before Kennedy made his speech and imposed his quarantine in 1962.”

8
In 2008, an email correspondent sent me this anecdote, in response to a column I'd written about 9/11 Truthers: “While at dinner with a well educated (lawyer and building contractor) Serbian immigrant couple we befriended in the late 90's, I mentioned the surreal experience of watching the initial attack on Dubrovnik live on a BBC feed to Canadian television, a man walking his dog down a path alongside the seaside hotels as Serbian naval missiles slammed into them with the trailing wires visible on the screen. They immediately informed me that this, and all the other TV coverage of atrocities like the market mortar attack, was faked in Hollywood. We remained friends but never discussed politics and I concluded that there are simply limits to what one can believe evil about one's [own] group.”

T
his book is dedicated to my father, Ronald, whom I followed into the study of science and engineering; and my mother, Barbara, who passed on to me her love of books. He gave me the tools to understand how the world works. She gave me the tools to put that understanding into words.

This book would not exist without the support I received from my employer, Canada's
National Post
newspaper—and, in particular, publisher Doug Kelly and editor Steve Meurice. I also received important assistance from Mark Dubowitz and his team at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which provided me with logistical support during my trips to Washington, D.C. Over the last two years, I have been very proud to call myself a fellow at the FDD.

Additional thanks go to Michael Levine, for his tireless efforts to promote the project before I'd written a single word; my researcher, Timothy Mak; my editors at HarperCollins—Jennifer Lambert and Alex Schultz in Toronto, and Adam Bellow in New York. I would also like to express appreciation to my friend Michael Ross, who trusted me to help edit his 2007 book,
The Volunteer
. It was thanks to that collaboration that I first realized how satisfying and enjoyable the act of creating a book could be.

Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Jennifer, who set me free to travel across North America, interviewing the people discussed in this book. Jennifer also endured many evenings of my droning on about the various flavors of Trutherdom. Never once did she say, “If you don't mind, I'll wait for the book.”

JONATHAN KAY
is a managing editor, columnist, and blogger at Canada's
National Post
newspaper. His freelance articles have appeared in such publications as
The New Yorker
, the
New York Times, Harper's Magazine, Commentary, Salon, Reader's Digest
, and
Newsweek
. He is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

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Jacket Illustration by Josh Cochran
Jacket Design and Author Illustration by Jarrod Taylor

AMONG THE TRUTHERS
. Copyright © 2011 by Jonathan Kay. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

“Endgame” words and music by Dave Mustaine. Copyright © 2009 by Mustaine Music. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kay, Jonathan

    Among the truthers : a journey through America's growing conspiracist underground/ Jonathan Kay.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

    Summary: “America is awash with conspiracy theories, and the shared view of reality we once took for granted has been permanently shattered. Jonathan Kay uses the 9/11 Truth movement as a springboard to examine this fragmented national mindset.”

—Provided by publisher

    ISBN 978-0-06-200481-9 (hardback)

    1. Conspiracy theories—United States. 2. Political culture—United States. 3. United States—Politics and government—2009- I. Title.

HV6275.K39 2011

001.90973—dc22

2011006813

EPub Edition © May 2011 ISBN: 9780062079343

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ID/RRD
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