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Different words Kerry Tremain’s article “A faith in words” (September) was wonderful, but I’m afraid you have gotten the linguist’s middle name wrong. It is John Peabody Harrington. I have worked with his archives at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and am quite familiar with his life and work. There is no mistaking Harrington--he was one of a kind, as is his middle name. Dinah Houghtaling Petaluma 9/11 reconsidered Many thanks for Peter Dale Scott’s superb analysis of the shortcomings of the recent 9/11 Commission Report (“How to fight terrorism,” September). While Scott gives praise to the Commission where it is due, he is straightforward in critiquing those aspects of the report where slipshod reasoning and outright omissions occur. It must be noted that in blaming all facets of the military and law enforcement for the calamity that struck the World Trade Center, the 9/11 Commission blames nobody. Indeed, no one has been taken to task for dereliction of duty in the wake of the horrific event. For the official investigation of the most shocking event in recent American history, our government spent less time and money than it spent investigating Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky. Scott is to be commended for his erudition, his insight, and his common sense. Our lawmakers would do well to heed him. Joe Martin Seattle, Washington I am not against all conspiracy theories, but I am shocked that you ran the ludicrous 9/11 conspiracy article by Peter Dale Scott. Printing that article causes harm because it gives the craziest 9/11 theories respectability; an article like Scott’s previously could be found only in a leaflet or some supermarket tabloid alongside articles such as “Gorilla Gets Girl Pregnant.” I am a new member of the California Alumni Association. Will we soon be seeing articles here by anti-evolution campaigners, Holocaust deniers, and flat Earth promoters? Howard Shryock Oakland Finally, more and more “credible” people are speaking out about the possibilities of what happened on and around 9/11. Since the U.S. government and the media are not pursuing a search for the truth in detail, what about a consortium of university political science departments presenting its own inquiry? Julianne Jones ’61 San Francisco Professor Scott’s article omits many important facts. As revealed in two new books, Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert and The Complete 9/11 Timeline by Paul Thompson, there were five separate war games that occurred on the morning of 9/11, all under the control of Vice President Cheney. Moreover, while Professor Scott accurately states that experts believe WTC-7 was brought down by controlled demolition, he fails to mention that many experts (such as Dr. Van Romero) and many reporters stated immediately after the Twin Towers collapsed that they were also demolished with explosives. The inquiry concerning 9/11 has to be re-opened, because the Commission completely ignored many significant areas of investigation and focused almost exclusively on the intelligence question. To be fair, the Commission was hamstrung from the start. It had less funding than the investigation into Bill Clinton’s sexual life. And 9/11 was the first major crime scene in history where the evidence was shipped away before investigators had a chance to examine it (specifically, the debris from the trade centers was whisked away and shipped to China). Moreover, whole lines of inquiry were summarily vetoed by the Commission’s executive director, a gentleman with a slight conflict of interest, since he served in the Bush administration’s transition team and was a very close associate of the national security advisor, Dr. Rice. It is time for a full and complete inquiry into 9/11, one that does not tie the investigators’ hands behind their backs. Alex Franklin Walnut Creek I am certain that Peter Dale Scott’s essay ruffled some feathers. I have followed Scott’s writings for many years and never cease to feel rewarded for reading him and confronting his arguments. Not that one agrees with everything Scott writes, including this article; but the important thing is that he concerns himself with big questions and is not afraid to ask them. In this sense, his work on the aftermath of 9/11 builds on solid scholarship, offers debatable hypotheses, and requires a rethinking of first principles in current policy on security and terrorism. Whether the Bush administration was complicit in the attacks of 9/11, as Scott avers, is an important question. That he raises it, along with the other issues, underlines the role of dissent as the highest expression of patriotism in a free society. Geoff Smith, M.A. ’65 Kingston, Ontario, Canada A major function of a university, certainly one as prestigious as Cal, is to seek the truth. Peter Dale Scott’s story should have been reviewed by relevant faculty members in the College of Engineering (and elsewhere), particularly with respect to the demise of World Trade Center Building 7. Robert E. Tumelty, MPH ’52, DrPH ’69 Seal Beach I am disappointed by the last issue of California Monthly for selecting Peter Dale Scott to review the 9/11 Commission Report. With all the fine scholars of the Middle East and international affairs at work on this campus, why would the Monthly select a Noam Chomsky acolyte who has devoted the last four decades to weaving conspiracy theories that blame the U.S. for virtually all the world’s evils? What appalls me is his failure to address the central conclusion to which ten prominent Americans unanimously came (in the Report’s pivotal chapter 12), that the safety of the American people is threatened by a “stateless” enemy that lacks “all respect for life,” draws “on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam,” and is intent on acquiring “the world’s most dangerous weapons” in order to destroy Western civilization and the “tolerance, the rule of law, [the] political and economic openness, [and] the extension of greater opportunities to women” it begets. The Commission calls for exercising our military might to deny Islamist terrorists sanctuaries, time, and financing. At the same time it urges we use our “soft power” of economic aid and democratic ideas to cure the Middle East of three centuries of retrogression. Those recommendations deserve analysis and debate in a magazine whose mission is to augment the stock of information available to the alumni of the world’s best university. William K. Muir Jr., professor emeritus of political science, Berkeley Before we even get to the disturbing evidence that Professor Scott has carefully reviewed, the prima facie case that the administration displayed a “conscious failure” to prevent the attacks rests on two things: their marked lack of enthusiasm for an investigation of the tragedy, and of course the cui bono issue, the enormous benefits they reaped from this “new Pearl Harbor”--exactly what their Project for a New American Century had said they needed. Without it, they would never have been able to carry out their agenda of the last four years: moving the United States closer to a totalitarian regime, overturning decades of international agreements, and tightening the noose of neocolonialism on much of the world. Indeed, the strongest argument against complicity, namely that it is unthinkable, wobbles a little under the weight of this astounding agenda. What is unthinkable to those who would launch attacks upon our Constitutional rights and even our voting system, the heart and soul of American democracy? What is unthinkable for an administration that invaded Iraq on the basis of lies? What blindness cannot be attributed to those who address the looming end of world oil production (estimated to peak in 2010) by planning to consume more oil instead of less, even though most of it will have to be taken from people who already hate us? Michael Nagler, professor emeritus of classics and comparative literature, Tomales RSVP I didn’t attend UC Berkeley. Nevertheless, as a 78-year-old son of California, I am deeply concerned about the threat that state budget cuts pose to the University’s future. What will help? A rigorous endowment effort from the graduates giving back some of what they gained as a result of the fine education they received at Berkeley is the long-term answer. I have decided to help, and I may give more in the future because I have felt throughout my life that I was empowered just by the University of California being there. Let the people of California--and especially the sons and daughters it has sent forth--respond in its time of need. Morgan Flagg Atherton Reginald Zelnik I am sure I am not the only one who was dismayed to read the misspelled headline on Leon Litwack’s fine appreciation of my late colleague, Reginald Zelnik. Margaret Lavinia Anderson professor of history, Berkeley Editor’s note: We offer sincere apologies to the Zelnik family and to his former colleagues and students. A corrected and expanded version of Leon Litwack’s tribute is available at www.alumni.berkeley.edu/alumni/Cal_Monthly/september_2004/In_Memoriam.asp. |
 November 2004
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