Berlin-based journalist and writer Matthias Broeckers is the author of two best-selling books in Germany: Conspiracy, Conspiracy Theories, and the Secrets of 9-11, and the more recent book Facts, Forgeries and the Suppressed Evidence of 9-11. A speaker at the International Citizens Inquiry Into 9-11 (Phase 2: Toronto, May 25-30, 2004), Broecker’s topic was “Welcome to Brainwashington.” ( http://www.broeckers.com ) Interview transcribed and edited by Snowshoefilms.
Snowshoefilms: When did you first question the official story?
Matthias Broeckers: I started researching the case the very first day, posting an internet commentary. After a year it appeared as a book. In Germany, especially, there are a lot of people [who are] critical of the official version of 9-11.
Snowshoefilms: Part of that skepticism has to do with your books, along with Gerhard Wisnewski and Andreas Von Bulow’s, doesn’t it?
Broeckers: Yes.
Snowshoefilms: In your second book, you focus in part on the purported hijackers…
Broeckers: …on the anomalies and facts which seemed to me the most important points where the official legend does not fit with reality. The very first chapter is on the identity of the 19 which is totally unclear [to this] day. The names and the pictures of these guys appeared 48 hours after the attacks — but since then, no more real information on these suspected hijackers has appeared.
After they were named, six people turned up [in Saudi Arabia] saying, ‘Hey, there must be a mistake. I was not in the US on September 11. I [was working] here in Saudi Arabia. How does it happen that I appear on this suspect list?’ The identity of these 19 up until today is still unclear and unsolved. The official version is, ‘Yes, there were some difficulties in the beginning but the FBI published a corrected list on September 27 and since then everything is cleared up.’ This is the official version but if you look today after three years, you still find that there are reasonable doubts about the identity of these men.
And also, you find that there are still nine unidentified bodies from the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania flights which are still at a military facility on ice — people which are not identified. So, if the FBI really knows who the people are, what cars they rented, what hotels they frequented, what bars they visited in the days before — as the FBI is telling us it knows — there must be, there should be a possibility of identifying these people. And that has not been done yet. And this shows me very clearly that there must be something wrong with the identity of these 19 guys.
If they are really are those fundamentalist Islamistic terrorists, we would have seen a very hard investigation and prosecution and we would know today everything of their individual lives, not only in the days before but in the weeks and months before — and if you look [at] what we really know, there is some information that these guys were at Hamburg University, used to live there, but that’s it. If you look at the 19, you see about half of them we know nothing at all, and of the other half, we know a lot — but what we know of them, it is not convincing that these guys were terrorists.
A DRUG AND MONEY-LAUNDERING OPERATION
For me, it’s more convincing that each was a kind of agent. They were allowed to move freely in [and out of] the U.S. They were allowed to take these training lessons. The FBI field agents who were [watching] them were stopped. So these guys must have had some protection from above.
The reason why we have not seen court cases against the main suspects, like there was a court case against [Jack] Ruby and [Lee Harvey] Oswald in the Kennedy case, the reason we have not seen this with 9-11 has to do with the fact that the official legend must be untrue. If it were true, we would have seen a court case clearing all this up. And my suspicion is that there is something behind it…and what is behind it, in my opinion, is a drug and money laundering operation where Mohammed Atta and these guys were involved. That is why they were protected. Not because they are Islamistic fundamentalists planning a terror attack. This was not the reason they could move so freely — but because they were agents in a clandestine, illegal business which was protected by the CIA like in the Iran-Contra case. This is also the reason why nobody is [officially] looking closely into these individuals and into the flight school they trained at in Florida [and] into their owners who are very, very dubious….This might not be the only reason there is no investigation but in my opinion, after looking into the case for the past two-and-a-half years, I suggest this is one of the main reasons there is no investigation.
Snowshoefilms: Why would the CIA et al use such compromised people if they were going to link them with Osama bin Laden in order to motivate their so-called war on terrorism? And to what degree is the Bush-Saudi connection a red herring?
Broeckers: [Regarding ‘compromised people’,] I don’t know. I have no idea. I’m not even convinced they were on the planes. The original passenger lists nobody has seen. No video evidence that they were at the Boston airport. No fingerprints on the boarding cards. Nothing at all showing that these guys went into the planes and were able with their box-cutters simultaneously to hijack four planes. Why they were used as patsies, I don’t know. Who chose them, I don’t know. But I think they were in a way connected with Osama bin Laden. Not because they were terrorists, but because they were agents in the drug business. Osama bin Laden was from 1996 on was in control of 80 percent of the world’s opium supply. He was the chief of Afghanistan which is the country where most of the opium-heroin is produced. So I think there must be some business connections. And one end of the business chain is in Afghanistan-Pakistan and the other end of the business chain is in Florida and the U.S. In this field, Mohammed Atta and these guys were active. And I still do know in detail how it was planned and worked out. But for me there is no real reason for the U.S. administration not to investigate this. Initially, you could think, ‘Okay, they do not investigate because they want the blame for [failing to protect] the U.S.’ But after two-and-a-half years, this argument doesn’t fit anymore for me because there would be some real hard facts on these 19 guys — that they were terrorists trained in Afghanistan, that they did this and that, but if you look, there is nothing. We know something of Atta, Alshehri, Al-Midhar and two or three others, but of the rest we know nothing. Why is there no investigation? What is the reason? It is not, in my opinion, the business of the Bush family with the Saudi’s, because if this were so, the Democratic Party would have made this a partisan issue. So there must be a kind of business where both parties are involved or profit from, like the Iran-Contra case. There were Democrats and Republicans being fed out of that business. This seems to me to be the same now.
FOOLS INSIDE, FOOLS OUTSIDE
Snowshoefilms: In your talk here, you used Plato’s cave parable to comment on our current predicament…
Broeckers: Yes, Plato looks at the way we perceive, the way we see the world [through the metaphor] of a people who are chained inside a cave. Shadows from a [unseen] fire are projected onto a wall. These chained people in the cave can see only the shadows. They hold on to these shadows for their whole reality. Plato asks what would happen if a man was unchained and could see the fire and the [projected] shadows. He wouldn’t understand at first. And if he escaped the cave, he would understand nothing; he would be dazzled by the light but after a time of adjusting and becoming familiar with the new world, he would be able to perceive the reality of the sun and of the landscape and seasons. Then Plato asks, what would happen if this man were to return to his chained companions, telling them about the truth outside. They wouldn’t believe him [Plato says]. And if he tried to unchain them and bring them up, they would, if they could get hold of him, kill him because they could not stand this unbearable truth.
I compared in my lecture this parable with our situation in the information age. We are chained in a cave, not with shadow plays but with multi-media displays on the walls and we see it and take this as the only truthful reality. People who are looking around — who are able to escape the cave and see the whole world — become objects of mockery and scoffing if they come back because it’s unbelievable what they are telling.
I chose this example to show not only the problem of the fools down in the cave, but also the problem of the fools outside. Because if you look at the very complex case of 9-11 which has so many details and facets, we are in danger of falling into a kind of self-delusion [by] not becoming real, objective detectives, gathering every fact, but are in danger of being led by our own theories and our own prejudices… We have to accept, in my opinion, every fact which appears and to try not to perceive reality with tunnel vision. It might be nice to kick Mr. Bush out of office. I would love it. But this will not solve the 9-11 case. So we should not use 9-11 to kick Bush out of office. We should solve 9-11 and then Bush will go — pfft! — by himself, you know? If we come to discuss the “truth” of 9-11, we must be careful that we are not doing the same propaganda as the brainwashers in Washington do, only from the opposite side. I have talked to a lot of people [who say], they are 100 percent sure, ‘they did it.’ But this will not help solve the case. We have to do the first steps first. And this means to try to indict these 19 suspects like [New Orleans district attorney] Jim Garrison in the JFK case did over 30 years ago. We need a courageous attorney general who brings the 19 suspects into court. If not, the whole case of 9-11 will never be solved because if we only have hearsay that these guys might have done it, and this is going into the history books. This is incredible. We must prevent this. We must try everything we can to bring the people who conducted these terrible attacks to court. If we have no court case, we have no responsibility, no one punished. And at the moment, this is so. We have no one — no politician, no secret agent, no CIA, no military man, nobody at all who is in any way or any kind responsible. And what the [official] 9-11 Commission is doing is not to ask ‘How could 9-11 happen and who has done it?’ — but rather, ‘how can we prevent it in the future?’ So, they take the 19 hijackers, the suspects, as a fact, as history already…
Yesterday [May 25, 2004], I heard a politician saying, ‘Yes, we should not blame anyone for 9-11. We should work [so] that this never happens again.’ And this is incredible… If we don’t find the real perpetrators — the real people who did this — we will not be able to prevent anything like this in the future. This is the on-going brainwashing operation [which says] to the people, ‘Yes, we have to prevent it in the future, but let’s not look into the past. This has happened. Nobody could have prevented it. No one is responsible. Not the CIA. Not the military. Not the government.’ And that’s it. My work, and I think the work of all the people here speaking at this conference, is to not let them get away with this.
Snowshoefilms: We sense Plato’s metaphor as especially apropos to our 21st century; what did Plato have in mind in nearly 2400 years ago?
Broeckers: The parable is generally interpreted as an example of Plato’s idealism, that there is a material world and there is an ideal world — and that it is very difficult for anyone who has perceived something of the ideal world to communicate it to the material world.
I use this example to show that we are inmates of the media cave. We depend on the information coming out of the TV channels. We might know it is not the truth, but in general we forget and we take it as reality and as truth, what is projected by the media. The people who are critical or skeptical, I compare with the one who [escaped] the cave and saw that reality is much more than what is shown on the screens down below. And if anyone like me and others who research and investigate 9-11, and try not to take this TV screen as the reality, they face the same problems as the guy in Plato’s story who wants to come back and to free, to liberate, his companions down there, saying, ‘Hey, you are brainwashed! This is all untrue!” What I and a lot of researches experienced in the past is that we were beaten by the press, by the mass media, the mainstream TV channels, ‘telling lies! telling conspiracy theories! talking bullshit!’ etc. And this is comparable to the situation in the old Greek cave.
I do not go [as far as] Plato goes as he said it’s impossible to write about this. Plato had the strong belief that you cannot communicate properly through writing books… The only way [says Plato] is a personal way — by talking, and through your personal life. You can show it. But you cannot communicate it by writing. This was one of his main points. I do not go so far. I would say, Yes, we have the possibility of [communicating] via writing, radio, other media — if we avoid the gatekeepers of the mainstream and do our own distribution of information, we will be able to communicate and we will be able to make a difference. It’s not useless, what we are doing.
In general, I think it’s our task to repeat it over and over and over again to the people down in the cave — and these people, let’s say, are the regular TV public and newspaper readers. In Germany and also here in Canada, we see that the majority of the people are not convinced at all of the official story. The people feel that they have been lied to. They feel that the American administration is not telling the truth and every day with Iraq and the ongoing war, they feel it even more. We have a huge majority of the regular, normal people behind us, I think. They do not trust the politicians and the Bush regime any more. And this is a huge advantage for us. I worked for alternative media for 25 years and I know that the situation was most of the time the opposite. We did not have the majority of the people behind us. We had a minority, and we tried to convince the majority… But now it’s only the mainstream media repeating the same lies every day.
Yesterday [May 25, 2004], the New York Times apologized for the lies about the weapons [WMD] in Iraq. They had an article, ‘Yes, we did not follow our duty as critical investigative media and so we apologize.’ But that’s it. They will not kick out their correspondents. They have one apology and pfft!, that’s it.
So, we have to go further with our investigations. If the state and the police do not investigate, and the mainstream media [will not], we have to do it. I’m not sure we can solve the 9-11 case. I worry that it will become a case like JFK which is still being discussed 40 years after [JFK’s execution], or Pearl Harbor.
On the other hand, we have the new media today. We have the internet which makes our work possible. I think if I had no internet connection, I wouldn’t have been able to come out of the cave. So, the internet is a very good tool for us. But we have to reach the mainstream media, to the print media and into television because only 10 to 20 percent of the people rely on the internet and all the rest is still [watching] TV and the traditional media. So we have to convince our colleagues there that we haven’t done bad research but the opposite, we’ve done good research and raised questions which are very, very important — not only for our personal future but for the future of the planet.
9-11, THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, AND THE WRONG WAY
Snowshoefilms: You use Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as another caution for us…
Broeckers: Werner Heisenberg and Einstein had a lot of discussions in the 1920s on perception and cognition in the quantum world — because Heisenberg said (and Einstein avoided following him) that always the observer is deciding what reality becomes manifest — that there is no reality in the quantum world, that there are only possibility clouds, and that the moment the observer comes in, then he decides what becomes reality in the quantum world. Einstein didn’t accept this. He said, ‘No, no, no. This is not possible. God doesn’t play dice.’ — his famous quote. I chose this example because I think we must be clear about our own role as observers. Everyone who’s observing the case of 9-11 has his own history, has his own imagination of how politics and reality and everything should be and so his view of the case is filled with possible prejudices and possible failures which might prevent an objective view of the thing [9-11].
I chose this example to make clear for us, for the community which is researching the case, that we must not be so certain that we are now the holders of the truth. Even if we have found some very important particles. None of us is able to know the truth at this moment. I try to make this little warning [so we might] avoid self-delusion and become so sure, so 100 percent convinced [e.g.] that Bush knew it. I don’t know if Bush knew it. There is a lot of evidence that the administration had some information about what was going on, but we have to say such and so, and not [draw hard and fast conclusions]…. We must be always aware that we come from a certain position and that we tend to not perceive data which is not coherent with our views and that it is important, if we really want to clear the case, that every data comes on to the table and then we take every piece and look and say, ‘Is this fact or is this rumor?’ and not going beforehand and putting out this and putting out that and only have this data which fits our theories. This would be the wrong way.
Snowshoefilms: In your research, you’ve come across a good number of red herrings. Which are the most egregious?
Broeckers: There was German intelligence, American intelligence, and Israeli intelligence behind these 19 hijackers. The story which came out the first day that 4,000 Jews didn’t come to work at the World Trade Center [on Sept. 11, 2001]. This is a classic red herring — disinformation — put out on the internet to provoke these anti-semitic slanders, which worked perfectly. In all of the Arabic world, you hear this story of the 4,000 Jews not coming to work. If you go to Egypt and every other country, you will hear this story everywhere. And this is fake information because [on the face of it], if you are the planner of an attack like this, you will not involve 4,000 people beforehand. If you do, you can be sure that your plan will not work. So, this was the perpetrators of 9-11; they planted this information, knowing what it will do. This will feed the classic anti-semitic hysteria — and it did, in the Arabic world especially. And also in Germany we have some right wing Nazis telling, ‘Yes, yes, yes – the Jews are behind it!’
I never believed for a minute this story… This is not the way to make a successful criminal action, if you have 4,000 people who know, so this is bullshit. This was planted to make this hysteria.
Snowshoefilms: And to be able to discredit you and the other critics with ad hominem, to dismiss you as anti-semitic…
Broeckers: Yeah. What I’ve said just now, I wrote in my book. I’m very critical of this thesis [which] was perpetrated by a secret service [agency] to provoke hysteria, and the German media turned it around, saying ‘Mr. Broeckers is telling the story — 4,000 Jews did not come to work! ‘ I sued one television magazine for this allegation because it’s totally wrong. I wrote the opposite — and they tried to smear me as a typical anti-Jewish German Nazi and this is the way they try to dismiss and shut up critical voices. Also, Andreas Von Bulow, the former secretary of the Social Democratic government — he was also blamed as anti-semitic. This is a way they try, but they were not successful.
There is still this rumor, also, in Germany. Sometimes when I give lectures I get angry when I hear of it [the red herring 4,000 Jews story] and say to people, ‘Hey, don’t let yourself be fooled by information like this. This is made to make you — this is not real information. This is disinformation, propaganda. I do not know how much the Mossad was involved in the story behind the hijackers, but what I do know is, if you look at the Iraq war, Israel is very well-informed about Iraq and they have the field agents who speak Arabic. They have very good information on Saddam Hussein. They should have been the first knowing that he has no weapons at all except some old Kalashnikovs — and they didn’t communicate [this] because they were interested in the Iraq war, so… To be smeared as anti-semitic is the worst thing you can get, in Germany. But I sued successfully. Meanwhile, the media is quiet. They tried it, but failed.
Snowshoefilms: The use of ad hominem fits with the story of the cave…
Broeckers: Yeah, you become an object of mockery and scoff and if they get you, they beat you to death. This is always [the story]; the messenger is killed because of his unbearable or unbelievable message. And that’s why they tried to kill me. No really, but [professionally, emotionally, socially] and also the other guys — Andreas Von Bulow and Gerard Wisnewski who published books in Germany. We all received the same blame. It [continues] but now, since the majority of the people believe what were saying — and this is not because we are perfect keepers of the truth — this is mainly because the administration and the mainstream media is telling the same lie, day after day after day after day, and the people feel it. The people, they have strong feelings and they know when they are lied. And that’s why people like me are so much heard and are books become huge best sellers. And guys like Michael Moore are, in Germany, meanwhile. I think Michael Moore sold more books in Germany than in the U.S.
source: http://www.snowshoefilms.com/filmmakersnbcontbroeckers.html
Broeckers webpage: http://www.broeckers.com
