David Ray Griffin's "Cognitive Infiltration" is a devastating deconstruction of Cass R. Sunstein's shocking and dangerous proposal to have the U.S. government illegally infiltrate and destroy the 9/11 Truth Movement. Sunstein--a Harvard Law Graduate, President Obama's choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and once described by Elena Kagan (now a Supreme Court Justice) as "the preeminent scholar of our time"--is unmasked by Griffin and shown to be a fascist automaton, eager to openly do the bidding of the enforcers of the official 9/11 myth that is used to justify the government's perpetual wars in the Middle East, and the ongoing suppression of civil liberties at home. Especially horrifying is that Sunstein is now in a position to help implement the very unconstitutional policies he so eagerly espoused. "Cognitive Infiltration" provides an intelligent and measured response to the twisted madness of Sunstein, who as a result of offering his frightening proposal, has revealed himself to be unworthy of holding public office.
In an analysis of the ten theses that form the basis of the Obama appointee's proposal to eradicate 9/11 Truth, Griffin distinguishes between two levels of meaning in Sunstein's essay: the exoteric (surface) and the esoteric (hidden). The esoteric interpretations portray Sunstein in such a favorable light that readers may wonder if Griffin is being serious in his praise or not. The answer is provided in the Conclusion of "Cognitive Infiltration."
Early on in "Cognitive Infiltration," to counter Sunstein's thesis that conspiracy theories in the U.S. are usually both unjustified and false, Griffin provides excellent summaries of no less than seventeen so-called "conspiracy theories" involving the U.S. government that in time proved to be true, including: numerous U.S. overthrows of legitimate governments around the world (Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Panama, Haiti, etc.); the manufactured Gulf of Tonkin incident (which Lyndon Johnson used as a pretext for escalating the Vietnam War); the FBI's illegal counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) which targeted Martin Luther King and the anti-Vietnam War Movement (and which seems to have served as a model for Sunstein's plan to target the 9/11 Truth Movement); Operation Mockingbird, involving CIA infiltration and (ongoing) control of the U.S. "free press;" and the "Deadly Lie at Ground Zero (2001)" initiated by the Bush-Cheney White House which ordered the EPA to tell the public that the air around NYC's World Trade Center following the 9/11 attacks was safe to breathe, even though test results indicated that the air was highly toxic. Trusting their government, 40,000 rescue and clean-up workers dutifully returned to work, unaware of the lies and the danger. As Griffin documents, 60-70% of these Ground Zero workers have come down with various debilitating illnesses, including cancer, and many have already died.
While analyzing Sunstein's primary claim--that those who hold to any unofficial 9/11 conspiracy theory do so because they suffer from `informational isolation' and a `crippled epistemology'--Griffin exposes the absurdity of Sunstein's theory by focusing on the intellectual leadership of the 9/11 Truth Movement, and their impressive credentials. In so doing, Griffin effectively demonstrates that it is Sunstein who is informationally isolated and possessed by a crippled epistemology, as a result of not having done his 9/11 homework.
Similarly, Griffin shows that Sunstein's charge that the 9/11 Truth Movement's evidence is weak or nonexistent would be more appropriately leveled at proponents of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. In refuting this Sunstein allegation, Griffin includes a masterful overview of the existing evidence which proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the government has lied about what really happened on 9/11.
In a draft of his essay published on the internet, Sunstein, an old friend of Obama, let slip that the government enlisted the editors of Popular Mechanics to serve as the government's `independent experts' on 9/11, Griffin reports. Thus, Sunstein's "proposal" may have sprung from an inner-circle knowledge that the 9/11 Truth Movement is already being cognitively infiltrated (which would come as no surprise to many 9/11 Truthers who suspect that there already are trolls, provocateurs, and "limited hangouts" on the internet). In this light, Sunstein's essay can be seen more as a clandestine attempt to legitimize the government's cognitive infiltration that is already taking place.
Whatever the motivations for Sunstein's fascist proposal, the number of 9/11 Truth converts continues to grow, Griffin notes. If the call for illegal infiltration of the 9/11 Truth Movement is the best plan that can be devised by this "pre-eminent legal scholar," Griffin asks, tongue in cheek, might it not be time for the defenders of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory "to throw in the towel?" Synchronistically, just prior to this writing, two mainstream media personalities--Geraldo Rivera and Judge Andrew Napolitano, both on Fox no less--have begun challenging the government's official conspiracy theory, while admitting that the 9/11 Truth Movement could be right in saying that 9/11 was an inside job.
Time will tell how much 9/11 Truth will be allowed to enter the mainstream, and where exactly that will lead. Whatever the extent and direction, Sunstein will have unwittingly contributed to the effort by writing an essay that "has provided such an excellent foil for [Griffin's] laying out of the current nature of the 9/11 Truth Movement, along with the extent and quality of its evidence," as the literary leader of the 9/11 Truth Movement acknowledges at the end of "Cognitive Infiltration," a truly brilliant work.
