Dawson's Grift - Twenty-one years of recycling cold leads

The page where Ryan Dawson's January 9, 2020 denial of Iran shooting down
a Ukrainian airliner was before their government admitted they had done it. By his standards, he has "memory holed" the truth. At least that's how it's supposed to work, right?

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 will forever remain a turning point for those of my generation that witnessed them in school. In one morning a nation that had seemed safe, modern, and optimistic was wounded and in mourning. And of course it didn't end there as a global War on Terror, Great Recession, and unparalleled political division have changed America irreversibly. The investigation of the attacks resulted in the 9-11 Commission Report released in 2004, but many open questions remained that went completely ignored. They included issues regarding the true nature of the collapse of WTC Building 7, whether the Bush Administration had been forewarned of the plot, and the issue of how passengers on United Flight 93 were able to communicate by cellphone. These are only a fraction of the controversies that emerged on that day, and over the years various theories to explain them have emerged, ranging from the far-fetched to the bizarre. Among them is the one known colloquially as the "Dancing Israelis", five individuals sighted on the morning of 9-11 and accused of celebrating during the attacks. 

In a free society even eccentric and offensive ideas and beliefs have the right to be aired. In 2019 I debated one of the main proponents of the Dancing Israeli theory Ryan Dawson on the Halsey News channel. After more than ninety minutes he abruptly quit citing an issue happening with his child, but he never answered major questions regarding his claims of them being a Mossad intelligence cell. Since then I've written articles summarizing gaps in the theory that I believe exonerate the men of their complicity in any aspect of the 9-11 attacks. Those that believe otherwise like Dawson however, remain resolute not only in their guilt but in the existence of a much larger and more elabourate plot involving the Israeli government and its pernicious control of ours.  

My position has never been suppress theories on 9-11, and people can feel free to believe that Israel "did" the attacks. But I also think that allowing allegations without merit against specific individuals have to be answered, and that's why I continue to follow Dawson's pronouncements on the topic. Here's what you get from his latest discussion with Adam Green:

• No new information, just regurgitated talk about the same eyewitness accuser.
• No specific accusation of what the Dancing Israelis are guilty of besides being agents of the Mossad.
• Guilt by association through linking one of the arrested Israelis to former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
• More recent insinuations that Charles Kushner was involved in 9-11 by virtue of his attempts to be involved in the rebuilding of the World Trade Center area. 

Much of the early part of the chat between Green and Dawson was the rehashing of the old discussions about 9-11 and discussing a recent Grayzone article published on the 20th anniversary last year by David Sheen. 

15:30: Adam Green: "What were they doing with a van with a wad of cash..."

RD: "I don't know a lot of minimum wage moving van people that have thousands of dollars". . . "just put in a bank".

He also returns to this theme at 30:38 wondering how these "minimum wage" movers had money to fly to India and South America. To be clear, the men were likely not earning minimum wage, but rather getting money under the table, perhaps much more than minimum wage. They may have been saving up for when they would return home to Israel, or in order to pay for post-military travel. India is a common post-service destination for demobilized Israelis.

20:58 RD - The case does not rest just on Maria's testimony. . . there are other witnesses that testify that they saw the van there before 8:46. 

But the witness testimonies are also contradictory. As I wrote in Part 1 of the Refund Guide, at least one witness claimed the van they saw had "electrical supplies" lettering on it, not a moving van. Also, no person cited in the report sees any of the suspects before 9 AM, only a van. Furthermore, it was acknowledged in the FBI file that their van passed through the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel at 7:48 AM. It is highly unlikely that the van would have been able to reach the Doric Towers by 8 AM. 

21:38 - "We went to the gas station. . . no you went to the gas station at 2 o'clock."

Here Dawson claims that the suspects were lying about filling their van at a gas station prior to the attack. However, according to the FBI file an Egyptian attendant at a Gulf gas station in Hoboken did see the group filling gas on the morning of 9-11, even saying that he was sure it was before the attack, not after. 

31:25 - "He [Bernard Kerik] was deeply involved in the Gambino crime syndicate and a bunch of other things . . . he went to prison for ten years for fraud."

This incident is another non sequitur. Kerik indeed accepted free renovation work by Interstate Materials when he was NYC corrections commissioner, before he was commissioner of the NYPD. However, it is unknown whether he was aware that the firm was mob connected. Kerik was also sentenced to four years in prison, not ten as Dawson says. None of these issues seem to have any connection to 9-11 but for the fact that Kerik was quoted during a press conference talking about explosive vans on 9-11 (see below), one of the "Dancing Israelis" apparently had worked for the Jewish Agency. One of the governors of the Jewish Agency was Eitan Wertheim, who later it was revealed gave Kerik a $250,000 interest free loan. The loan in and of itself was not illegal, only the fact that Kerik did not report it on his tax filings. The insinuation is that Kerik interceded in the case of the Dancing Israelis in order to have them released, yet no evidence has ever been presented that he did indeed do so.  This is a typical example of how Dawson uses guilt by association in order to create an elaborate plot without explaining exactly how it worked. 

32:30 - Ziad Jarrah

This issue is addressed in Part 2 of the Refund Guide. The allegation was that hijacker Ziad Jarrah was not on United Airlines Flight 93 and that he was connected to the Mossad because two cousins of his were later arrested for spying on Hezbollah on behalf of Israel. In an old post on Mike Rivero's website "What Really Happened", Dawson made the claim that Jarrah could not have been in his suicide video because he was clean shaven during the entire period that it was filmed. 

In 2006 Ryan Dawson was claiming that not only was al Jarrah not on United 93, but that
Mohammed Atta had a body double. What changed?! Apparently no one can change their story except him.

The only problem is that the video was dated from January 2000, much before Jarrah's arrival in the United States. Dawson also states that it is suspicious that the other hijackers never mention Jarrah's name while communicating with him on the flight. However within a few sentences he explains that Jarrah, like the other pilots, was much more intelligent and sophisticated than the "muscle" hijackers. The truth is that the muscle hijackers likely did not know him personally, and that for operational reasons this was kept that way on purpose by the planners behind the attack. Jarrah's secular background in Lebanon and university education, used as a reason by Dawson to refute the notion that he was a hijacker, does not refute any of the evidence of his fraternizing with other hijackers years before 9-11, his flying lessons in Florida in 2000, nor his suicide video with Mohammed Atta.

35:20 - Dawson: "But the thing is these moving companies, they gave logistical support to al-Omari. . . that is something else. That's actually spying on local Arabs. That's like your little network is moving around Al-Qaeda operatives directly involved in 9-11. And then you're celebrating the attack. . ."

The incident cited here was addressed in Section 5 of the FBI report where four more Israeli workers with Classic International Movers of New Jersey were used by one of the hijackers Abdulaziz al-Omari. But this lead is another non sequitur that has never gone anywhere. The main nexus between that moving company and the "Dancing Israelis" is that its business card was found in their van. The fact that al-Omari may have used that company for a move from Florida to New Jersey does not establish consistent "logistical support" for al-Qaeda, much less surveillance of him by them, because he would have had to contact them in order to make the hire!

36:00-38:00 "and then there's traces of explosives in your van, there's another separate van packed with explosives according to the whole lab reports that just got memory holed. And there was a van that thepolice and fire department said may have had an explosive device it that was pulled of the parking garage of the World Trade Center. . ."

Here we return to the issue of what various TV stations and Bernard Kerik said on 9-11 and whether indeed there were explosive vans found. A press conference was called that day and the issue of the Israelis' vans stopped by the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, NJ was brought up. The CNN transcript shows that Kerik's first mention of explosive vans was this:

"I just got a confirmation from the Chief of Detectives, he's reach out to the FBI. They have confirmed that someone has been stopped in New Jersey, three men in a van. However, there was no explosives in the van. All right. They're being held for questioning."

Another reporter asks Kerik what about the rumors about the explosive vans and why they began to circulate. Kerik answers "I can't tell you that". So whatever anyone else says about the "official narrative" changing, this was NYPD Chief Kerik's live response explicitly stating that the Urban Moving van did not have explosives. Kerik's denial of the finding of explosives, as well as his cryptic comment responding to rumours thereof have fueled rumors of a cover-up. 

As I wrote in Part 2 of the Dawson rebuttals, the media reports of explosive vans were not "memory holed", but retracted. For believers like Dawson that have long memories of who was caught in which lie (ex. Judith Miller of the New York Times). So it is notable that one of those that had to retract the explosive van reports is Dan Rather, who would later be forced out from CBS for being duped by the fabricated Killian Memos regarding President Bush. He has since joined another network known for reporting fake news: The Young Turks.

Bonus Stupidity

50:00 - Dawson and Green speculate about the connection of various Jewish business tycoons to a plot to destroy the WTC and make money off it, including Ronald Lauder, Larry Silverstein, and Charles Kushner. It's difficult to ascertain which 9-11 theorist came up with this idea, with Chris Bollyn having the most detailed version that I could find. They cast aspersions on Kushner having been a critical decisionmaker in the NY-NJ Port Authority. The one problem: While Kushner was nominated in 2002 to the Port Authority board and put forward by Democrat NJ Gov. James McGreevey as his choice for chair, he withdrew in February 2003. Kushner was also demonized, because his Bergen County, NJ office properties experienced an economic windfall from businesses fleeing lower Manhattan following the attacks. Kushner, the father of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, would later be convicted of  tax evasion and witness tampering. 

Ronald Lauder is mostly tied-in with the "inside job" theory, because he has been the head of the World Jewish Congress since 2007, was allegedly active in privatizing the WTC from the Port Authority, and he is fabulously wealthy. The substance of these accusations against Silverstein, Lauder, and Kushner was that the plot was undertaken so that Silverstein could claim the insurance on the damages. But no one can explain why he would have made more money than from the revenue of simply operating the complex.

51:00 - Dawson mentions the case of five foreign nationals arrested in Tennessee in 2002, insinuating that they were connected to Israel and had worked on the WTC sprinkler system. This is covered by the site WhatReallyHappened that he had written for by a colleague. The main gap in this angle of the plot was that every person named in connection with this story had an Arab name, such as Mohammed Fares of Venezuela where there is a substantial Palestinian population. 

And so I think it's time to ask several questions here: 

• Why is it that there is so much fanfare over the supposed existence of these explosive laden vans, but there's no information on what their target was?
• If the five "Dancing Israelis" were really part of a nefarious plot, would they have been driving around in the aftermath of the attack without monitoring police scanners? 
• If the purpose of their mission was to document the attacks on video, why would Doric Towers have given the "Dancing Israelis" a vantage point better than any of the TV crews that were recording it live the entire day, including from helicopters?
• Why has Ryan Dawson never answered key questions from our debate back in 2019 such as the address where Yaron Shmuel allegedly lived "next door" to hijackers?

It's been more than two decades, but the same use of innuendo and lies continues without anything new being discovered. When will those that have listened to Dawson until now realize that he has done nothing but resurrect red herrings?