Why are we, as actors and artists, speaking out for 9/11 truth?

People in our professions sometimes avoid expressing their views about controversial issues, because doing so might endanger their careers.

In some cases, however, the issue is so important, and the public discussion of it so distorted, that speaking out is morally mandated, regardless of the possible consequences.

We believe that the question of what really happened on September 11, 2001, commonly known as “9/11,” is such an issue.

The official account of 9/11 has been used:

·        to increase military spending enormously and thereby to withhold needed spending for health, education, welfare, infrastructure, the environment, and the arts;

·        to indict Islam as an inherently violent religion, to allow discrimination against Muslims, and to justify wars of occupation in Islamic countries---wars that have killed and maimed millions of innocent people; and

·        to curtail human rights and even to justify torture, extraordinary rendition, and the indefinite detention of people without trial.

 And yet independent investigations carried out by physicists, chemists, and professionals in many relevant fields — including architects, engineers, firefighters, intelligence officers, pilots, and former military officers — have shown virtually every part of the official story to be false, including the explanations of:

·        why the airliners were not intercepted;

·        why the World Trade Center buildings came down;

·        what caused the damage and deaths at the Pentagon;

·        what happened to United Flight 93.

These independent investigations have even undermined the claim, allegedly supported by phone calls from passengers and crew, that the airliners were taken over by Middle-Eastern hijackers.

Unlike these investigations, the official reports about 9/11 were not independent, in the sense of being free from the control of the Bush-Cheney administration. The 9/11 Commission was run by its executive director, Philip Zelikow, who was closely associated with the Bush-Cheney administration (as documented in New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, The Commission). The official reports on the World Trade Center were produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department. These reports, therefore, were written by employees of the Bush-Cheney administration. 

The enormous contrast between the official account of 9/11 and the evidence provided by these independent scholars has thus far not been brought to the attention of the general public in the United States and allied countries. The mainstream media, like the governments of these countries, have failed to report this evidence. They have even implied that it can all be dismissed out of hand as “kooky conspiracy theory.”

The desire to help overcome this deplorable situation led us to form Actors and Artists for 9/11 Truth, partly because we have a special interest in exposing false interpretations of events that are employed to restrict civil liberties. Being aware that the freedom of artists to express themselves is the litmus test of free speech in any society, and that totalitarian societies always curtail this freedom, we are concerned to reverse the movement toward authoritarianism that began with the Bush-Cheney administration’s story about 9/11.

We have also formed this organization because of the special ability of actors and artists to cast light on issues that would otherwise remain in the shadows. This ability has been demonstrated in relation to 9/11 by a few members of our professions, who, when they publicly raised questions about 9/11, received considerable press coverage.

Thus far, however, this coverage has been almost entirely negative, implying that these people were aberrant members of their professions, whose idiosyncratic beliefs could be dismissed as ludicrous. This negative coverage has often been followed by pressure to recant.

The creation of Actors and Artists for 9/11 Truth is intended to dispel the illusion that the official account of 9/11 is rejected by only a few members of our professions, and to reveal, instead, that a significant percentage of the world’s actors and artists actually reject the official account as a false myth. With this organization behind us, we will no longer be speaking out as solitary individuals who can be dismissed as aberrations, but instead as representatives of an organization that includes some of the most respected members of our professions.

Membership in our organization is open to all professional actors, whether they have performed on stage, film, or television, and to professional artists of all types, including (but not necessarily limited to): musical composers and performers, dancers, painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, script writers, directors, film editors, and comedians.

Becoming a member entails no duties beyond the act of calling for a new investigation by signing our petition.