A year later Ryan Dawson is Addicted to Lies, Part 1

 As I'm writing this it is the week after the 19th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the event that defined my generation just as Vietnam defined the generation of baby boomers. It is a bitter day for many reasons. On the one hand there is the largely held sentiment that the almost three thousand victims of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Another reason compounding it is the lack of transparency by the US government and various other governments regarding the events leading up to the tragic attacks. And yet on top of that is the fact that opportunistic hoaxers have taken it upon themselves to take advantage of that lack of transparency and use the available information to concoct lies and canards in order to fit their worldview. In 2019 I debated one such person, Ryan Dawson of ANC Report. Typically I have the urge to find something redeeming in one of my opponents, but with respect to him the longer the exposure to his material the easier it is to see that he just repeats the same story over and over with minor variations that he pretends are new revelations. 

During our debate on Halsey News one can see that I succeeded by using a strategy against Dawson that no one else has used. Most skeptics of the Five Dancing Israelis (DI5) that debate him prefer to play defense and let him make outlandish claims while stating that they are not conclusive. That is the wrong approach, since Dawson's side will make the correct assertion that his opponent has not done the in-depth research like he has and he will continue to spout more would-be factors that he claims connect the five Israeli movers to the 9-11 attacks. The reality is that only by going on the offensive and examining Dawson's statements is it possible to not simply rebuff them with skepticism but expose them as the outright falsehoods and concoctions that they actually are. This is why he quit in the middle of our debate, never came back the following night or thereafter as he said he would, and avoided me from then on. I have previously published four articles on this blog dealing with the false assertions of both Dawson and MintPress News writer Whitney Webb, and have held back more information pending a future debate (which may never happen). Unsurprisingly, a year later Dawson hasn't stopped and is still at it. Here is a breakdown of the lies that he is repeating yet again, this time to the Jackman Twins YouTube channel.

Same location of letters and bombers

8:10  - "The letters had been mailed from the locations of the hijackers' cells". The letters, as shown from the envelope below to Sen. Tom Daschle, came from Franklin Park, NJ near Princeton which is in Somerset County situated in Central New Jersey. The hijackers lived or stayed in towns and cities like Paterson in northeastern Passaic and Bergen counties. Ryan Dawson is wont to conflate the presence of hijackers in the same state as certain persons or events with being in the same location  at the same time. This is something that I addressed in Ryan Dawson Refund Guide Part 1.

Another lie that Dawson commits during the course of this topic was to add that letters had been mailed from Florida. A letter had been mailed to American Media Inc. in Boca Raton Florida leading to the death of tabloid photo editor Bob Stevens on Oct. 5, 2001. The hoax letter mailed to Judith Miller of the New York Times on Oct. 5, 2001 that Dawson mentions came from St. Petersburg, Fl. And if, as Dawson asserts it was part of a plot by spooks to stir up fear, then how can he explain that within days the FBI, which he accuses of complicity in all of these shady dealings, came out rather quickly and by the 14th stated that the powder sent to her was not anthrax? It is not uncommon that during times of public hysteria over various unsolved sensational crimes there are copycats that attempt to gain attention, such as John Hinckley who attempted to murder Ronald Reagan in imitation of the protagonist Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. But for Dawson, the fact that the letters originated in Florida and New Jersey, two states where both hijackers and the DI5 were present at some point in 2001, this is considered proof positive that the anthrax letters were a plot by the Mossad.

No mention of 1993 bombing at the time of 9-11?

9:31: "It was just very odd to me that the media never brought up the '93 World Trade Center Bombing the entire time and still hasn't." Unfortunately the 1993 bombing has been more than overshadowed by the 9-11 attacks, similar to the way that WWI has been overshadowed by WWII and the Korean War by the Vietnam War. He particularly takes umbrage that Pearl Harbour was used as a comparison more than the 1993 bombing. However, it is a gross exaggeration to say that the 1993 attack has never been brought up. Dawson even claims fantastically that "there's orders from on high to say 'don't remind them of any of that'". If so how can the following published press articles and interviews exist?

• Newsweek had a staff article bizarrely dated for 9-10-2001 that was specifically dedicated to the issue.
• On September 15, 2001 PBS's Frontline news TV magazine series interviewed retired FBI agent Lewis Schiliro and discussed in depth with him the attacks that week in the context of the 1993 bombing. 
• On September 23, 2001 former Clinton CIA director James Woolsey published an op-ed in The New Republic that specifically addressed the 1993 bombing in the context of 9-11.
• The Guardian published a retrospective from British journalist Simon Reeve that directly referenced the 1993 attack about which Reeve had published a book in 1998.
• On Sept. 20 CNN's Phil Hirschkorn worte an article discussing 1993 mastermind Ramzi Yousef and his plans to launch a similar airline plot called "Project Bojinka". 
• On Sept. 18 the Washington Post wrote an article concerning the fact that the hijackers had been partly located in northern New Jersey similar to where the 1993 bombers had stayed. This article included mention of the fact that the FBI had raided businesses and apartments in northern NJ locations including Weehawken which is where Urban Moving Systems was located.

The smothering of the link between 1993 and 2001 is necessary for trying to make it seem as if the United States was completely caught off guard by the hijackings. But the reality is that there had been people during the 1990s, sometimes themselves exaggerating in the other direction, who were asking the media to pay attention to the infiltration of the USA by Islamic jihadist operatives. The truth is more simple than Dawson makes it out to be. The CIA did bungle the intelligence operations prior to 9-11, and he even talks about it with his interviewers. But in the interim period between 1993 and the 2001 attacks the different organizations that were calling for jihad were coalescing. Al Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad would only merge in 2001. Dawson's rendition of events implies that because the failure was so egregious, only willful malpractice could have allowed the 9-11 attacks, and that it was completely orchestrated without any semblance of incompetence. Journalist Steven Emerson created the documentary in 1993 called Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America for PBS. He published The Terrorists Living Among Us in 2002 that asserted that he had warned America of this outcome prior to 9-11 and was ignored. The New York Times reacted by labeling him a crackpot only taken seriously by some conservatives and Jewish organization. But because Emerson is a stalwart opponent of political Islam and a pro-Israel journalist Dawson would likely never mention him. 

"All Jewish Zionists"

17:25: Dawson discusses the founding of the Weekly Standard by Bill Kristol and other neo-conservatives and asserts that their staff was "all Jewish Zionists" pointing at Fred Barnes and Gary Schmitt as two examples. While Schmitt's religious background is unknown, Barnes is an Episcopalian Christian and has even been interviewed about his Christian beliefs. If his support for Israel as a Christian Zionist qualifies him as a "Jewish Zionist" according to Dawson then a lot of American evangelicals have a hard truth to wake up with. The believers in the DI5 narrative might consider this splitting hairs, but even they should be able to admit that being Zionist does not make one a Jew and vice versa.

Israelis living "next door" to Mohammed Atta

19:33: This is a gross conflation and exaggeration of the truth that Dawson has cited many times with no real substance to it. In Part 1 of the Ryan Dawson Refund Guide I delved into the actual locations of the suspects, none of whom were living near any of the DI5 suspects or the "art students" at the same time. The root of this issue is an article by Oliver Schrom in the German daily Die Zeit from 2002. It's German title is "Tür an Tür mit Mohammed Atta", and the only available English translations have it as "Next door to Mohammaed Atta". But the more accurate meaning of "tür an tür" in English is "door to door" and from the language of the article it is clear that Schrom was using it as a figure of speech.  However, Schrom's article largely sustains the view, with poor evidence, that Israel did try to warn the US intelligence agencies of the attacks based on its knowledge of Atta associate Khalid al-Mihdhar who perished on American Airlines Flight 77. Whether it is true or not that as Schrom contends (and Dawson disagrees) Israel had warned the US with specific information about al-Mihdhar, this hijacker never set foot in either Hollywood, Florida, Phoenix, Arizona or Oklahoma City which are the three locations referenced by Schrom's article. In the actual "art student" file none of the incidents and persons mentioned pertain to New Jersey which is the only place where al-Midhar is confirmed to have visited according to documents disclosed from USA v. Moussaoui. But since Dawson never is challenged or asked about the specific locations and identities of any of the people he is referencing he can easily get away with convincing his interviewers and the audience that he is providing exclusive information and connecting dots that no one else will. If Israel did tip off the USA about al-Midhar the information likely came from a surveillance operation happening either in New Jersey (which is not what the article discusses), San Diego where he lived from January to May 2000, Virginia where he bought fake ID's in 2001 or in Malaysia, Afghanistan or Yemen where he visited during that period.

James Woolsey - Mega-Zionist? 

26:19: "He's not just CIA, he's the head of the CIA at the time, [a] hardcore Zionist". Dawson now focuses on the warmongering of Woolsey against Iraq in 2001 in the run-up to 9-11. He attempts to then characterize him as an Israeli stooge. But history suggests a more complicated role. In 1993 as Clinton's CIA chief Woolsey warned the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that Israel is sharing military technology with China. This is an aspect of the Israel-US relationship that supporters often downplay and opponents like Dawson constantly discuss. It is true that Woolsey is a board member of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a pro-Israel lobbying group. But a profile of Woolsey from the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs from 2003 exhibits two contradictory narratives, namely that 1) Woolsey was an implacable war hawk and Israel partisan and 2) that he was so unpopular within the Clinton Administration that he resigned in 1995 out of frustration for the lackluster role that the president gave him within the administration. Woolsey had previously served under President Jimmy Carter as Under Secretary of the Navy, and had had roles in Carter's negotiations for arms reduction with the USSR. Characterizing Woolsey as being merely a "hardcore Zionist" ignores the broader context of his career. He has at times, such as in 2011, been critical of the lax US approach to Russia under Barack Obama including divulging missile defense information.

So was James Woolsey an Israeli stooge? Even if so, he was a pariah within the Clinton defense constellation and was out of office years before 9-11. But between his resignation in 1995 and the attacks there were two other CIA directors, John Deutch and George Tenet who was still serving under Bush on 9-11. In October 2001 less than two months after the attacks Woolsey was interviewed by PBS Frontline and grilled about the failures of the CIA in anticipating and addressing the threat of Islamic terror. Woolsey's answers during the interview mostly hyped a purported Iraqi connection to the 1993 attacks and to the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. But he was speaking both out of his depth and only based on information that he consumed from the press. So here, once again, is an example of a prominent person referencing the 9-11 attacks in the context of the 1993 bombing, yet Dawson glosses over it. Moreover, the connection has never been established between his actions and those of the suspected DI5. To be sure, Woolsey's statements about Yousef's connections to Iraq and furthermore Al-Qaeda's links to Saddam were at best the words of an incoherent crank and at worst willful fearmongering. He was, as Dawson correctly asserts, a signatory of the pro-war Project for a New American Century and would later be vice president at top defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. His role in supporting the run-up to the Iraq War is not in question, but that does not sustain the premise either that he was connected to the DI5 or to an "inside plot" to stage 9-11.