The Pentagon’s B-Movie
Looking Closely at the September 2001 Attacks
by Graeme MacQueen
The author at the Toronto Hearings, 2011
Copyright © 2006-2009, 2011, 2014-2022 Graeme MacQueen
Cover art by Sadia Shahid
Copyright © 2023 rat haus reality press
All Rights Reserved
Graeme MacQueen received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University and taught in the Religious Studies Department of McMaster University for 30 years. While at McMaster he became founding Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster, after which he helped developed the B.A. program in Peace Studies and oversaw the development of peace-building projects in Sri Lanka, Gaza, Croatia and Afghanistan. He was a member of the organizing committee of the Toronto Hearings held on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, was a member of the international 9/11 Consensus Panel, and was co-editor of The Journal of 9/11 Studies.
We have been told that the truth will set us free. Less emphasized is how the truth will stalk, haunt and disquiet us along the way. Few of us really have the tenacity to dwell for any length of time with those sorts of truths. Doing so is like dwelling in deep waters where it’s dark, cold, and the temptation to surface too quickly threatens us with a kind of spiritual bends. Fewer of us still try to give elusive truths their full account under the scrutiny of peers and public. Among these fewest of few, Graeme MacQueen stands out, making this remarkable collection of essays, spanning 15 years of epochal shifts in world affairs, one for the bookshelf of the ages.
As I reflect on how I managed to penetrate the multi-layered shield of propaganda concealing the crimes of 9/11, I realize that two things were most important for me. On the one hand, there was the physical evidence, such as the free fall of Building 7, and, on the other hand, there were the writings and lectures of Graeme MacQueen.
Graeme MacQueen clothed the skeleton of physical evidence with a living body. His rigorous approach to evaluating available evidence is an outstanding example of the overwhelming power of science.
To read these works from across the years is to revisit an era of overwhelming darkness, to make our way again through the choking clouds of demolished concrete and disintegrated flesh. But this time we have a guide who lights our way.
There is no more incisive writer on the origins and upkeep of the Global War on Terror than Graeme MacQueen. Wielding elegant prose and irresistible logic, he parses eyewitness accounts and scientific absurdities, “failures of imagination” and National Security special effects. He is equal parts journalist, philosopher, media critic and political historian. Archivist
par excellence Dave Ratcliffe has made these essential essays available just when we need them most, as the world comes to grips with yet another hideous agenda from the “pitiless oligarchs” that author them.
Read Graeme MacQueen and take strength.
Dr. Graeme MacQueen is one of the most knowledgeable researchers I know on the events of 9/11 and their sequelae. Besides his own deep, original research, he contributed tirelessly and effectively to the unique consensus project, the 9/11 Consensus Panel, from 2011 to 2018.
This volume draws together sixteen years of research documenting and analysing the multiple anomalies which lie at the heart of the official 9/11 narrative and other related events. The abundance of evidence presented here leads us toward dark and unpalatable truths about the events of 11 September 2001, and the extent to which our democracies have been subverted by nefarious actors. We are living through an age dominated by propaganda, deception and coercion. MacQueen’s contribution, characterised by tenacity, integrity and intellectual rigour, provides us with the possibility of escape.
This new digital book from Graeme MacQueen is a most welcome addition to the body of knowledge about the crimes of 9/11 and related events. MacQueen’s unique perspective and his careful analysis of events, processes, and language allow possible explanations for such historic events to be evaluated equitably and intelligently. The articles collected here demonstrate how future events of historic and political impact must be analyzed if we are to understand the truth behind crimes that facilitate war and government overreach.
Graeme MacQueen is one of the foremost and consistent critics of the official narratives of 9/11. This event, under-investigated still today, remains a key landmark in the evolution of neocon orthodoxy and its global footprint. To unpack 9/11 is to stoke a fire beneath the ramparts of the orthodoxy of uncritical silence that pervades almost the entirety of western mainstream media and universities.
MacQueen’s work leaves future generations of researchers a legacy of profound importance. His meticulous analysis enables deeper understanding and ultimately the re-interpretation of pivotal but fraudulent events that were used to shape narratives and so to mind control (a mostly western) public into today’s increasingly dystopian reality. His broad sweep of work is a wonderfully accessible and honest account of some of the most important events of recent decades; events such as 911 whose corollary has been further escalation of death and conflict as, for example, the ‘War on Terror.’ Since witnessing him deliver his analysis of New York firefighters speaking of ‘explosions’ in the Twin Towers, and reading ‘The Toronto Hearings’, I have great admiration for his work.
Those responsible for the crimes of 9/11 could not have anticipated the extraordinary commitment of Graeme MacQueen and others like him to interrogate the official story promoted by the Bush White House. Today it is fashionable for purportedly educated people to sneer and scoff about “conspiracy theories.” Regarding 9/11, many simply do not know the facts. Others, however, appear afraid to confront the smoldering reality that this meticulous work has done so much to uncover.