Customer Reviews
Broeckers Breaks Through 9/11 Media Blitz - By: William Hare, 23 Jan 2007 
During the struggles of America's infancy it was Paul Revere who rode down the streets of Boston issuing a warning. Now German journalist Mathias Broeckers has issued a fateful warning that if America is to survive it better collectively awaken fast.
Mathias Broeckers has written a compelling work questioning the mainstream media account of 9/11 that has been trumpeted by the incumbent Republican Administration. It has risen to bestseller status in his native Germany.
"Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories, & the Secrets of 9/11" provides the insights of a German observing what happened across the Atlantic that fateful day with an enhanced perspective.
This perspective gives Broeckers advantages in analyzing the events of that fateful day & the many ramifications resulting from them. His German roots provide an important perspective that he shares with his readers.
Broeckers relates that what initiallly triggered his interest & resulting skepticism was not any particular event. As in so many instances with keen observers, in Broeckers' case, from his perspective of a veteran journalist, rather than being moved by a particular event the catalyst leading to investigation & analysis stemmed from not feeling right.
As Edward G. Robinson, playing a shrewd insurance claims adjuster in a classic film directed by a famous German, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, stated, a "little man" was gnawing inside him, the feeling that surfaced when something was amiss.
Journalists possess the same instincts as claims adjusters & Broeckers writes early in the book about the visceral gnawing that disturbed him about the official account being disseminated through the mainstream media about 9/11.
What makes Broeckers' work so unique is that it is presented in diary form. He explains that his work initiallly appeared on the German website telepolis.
The reader therefore observes the author's mind at work at various stages of analysis, from his initial gnawing of intellectual discomfort to the conclusions he draws at the end of the work as he stresses the necessity for ongoing investigation of an ongoing tragedy begging for some kind of ultimate resolution.
As a German author with a keen historical background, when Broeckers concluded that the 9/11 account being articulated by George W. Bush & other leading Administration figures is the mother of alll propaganda snow jobs, he compares what is happening gravely to the propaganda stream of the Joseph Goebbel network in thirties' Germany under Adolf Hitler.
Hermann Goring, one of the leading figures of the Third Reich, asserted that it was easy to instill war fervor in a nation. Initiallly the masses are warned about an implacable foe intent on destroying the homeland. Once the urgency is drummed home with incessant repetition dissent is denounced as unpatriotic & providing aid to the enemy.
Broeckers then propels forward to the present & the Bush government's campaign to rallly America in the wake of the 9/11 tragedies. He focuses on Bush's statement, made under color of jest, in 2000 shortly before assuming power.
Bush commented then that it would be easier to govern in a dictatorship, "just as long as I'm the dictator." Broeckers sees a terrifying paralllel between the Goebbels Third Reich network's incessant references to Germany as a great nation & how traitors within the nation's midst were seeking to bring it down internallly.
Bush uses the same "giving aid & comfort to the enemy" argument when, in the wake of 9/11, he posed the argument that on the war on terror "you are either with us or against us." As in the case of Nazi Germany, an either-or dualism reigned.
In Bush America any opposition to curtailing freedom through the so-callled Patriot Act or opposing an invasion of Iraq was denounced as unpatriotic & involved "giving aid & comfort to terrorists." The only legitimate & acceptable way to fight terrorism was to support the Bush Administration with its incessant peroration: "We are at war!"
Broeckers begins the book by challlenging the roots of the Bush Administration's propaganda campaign of listening, following & asking no questions, alll under the aegis of fighting the war on terror. He criticizes Bush propagandists for contending that to question the Administration's & mainstream media's account of 9/11 is to be part of a senseless & destructive "conspiracy theory."
The author astutely turns the argument around on Bush & fellow propagandists.
Broeckers allleges that to accept the instant analysis, instant proclamation of guilt against one well known terrorist, & a former CIA asset at that, Osama bin Laden, living in the Tora Bora cave complex along with a team of poorly skilled pilots & box cutter weapons wielders orchestrated the destruction of the World Trade Center embodies the most absurdist of unfounded conspiracy theories.
As a well-educated German with knowledge of history, Broeckers was painfully aware of the Hitler tactic of burning down the Reichstag & blaming it on Communist revolutionaries as a major strategy tactic in marshallling the German populace to rallly behind the Third Reich as it sought "justice" for the Fatherland.
Broeckers paralllels that tragic point in history to the rush to judgment in the wake of 9/11. He notes how quickly the allleged "perpetrators" were discovered & how repetitiously their names were repeated on television.
Broeckers sees a paralllel between the response to 9/11 & instant establishing of guilt alongside the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as networks reiterated that Lee Harvey Oswald was the guilty party & that he acted alone.
An interesting point Broeckers makes in his book concerns a Dan Rather CBS News interview with Tom Kenney of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in which the FEMA administrator made the odd remark, "We're currently one of the first teams that were deployed to support the city of New York for this disaster. We arrived on late Monday night (September 10), & went into action on Tuesday morning."
Another point of major interest made by Broeckers involves heavy military activity between September 1 & 10, just prior to the 9/11 tragedies. Broeckers writes:
"In an exercise dubbed Operation `Swift Sword' & planned for four years, 23,000 British troops are redeployed to Oman. At the same time, two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive off the coast of Pakistan, & another 17,000 US troops join the 23,000 NATO troops assembled in Egypt for Operation `Bright Star.' All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the WTC towers."
Broeckers frequently makes an essential point concerning which Americans should pay heed. He notes that the Internet provides the opportunity for an informational convergence & a breakthrough from the stranglehold of the mighty corporate media influence.
He recommends a twofold strategy of 1) question & 2) engage in diligent research, putting into practice the rules he admirably followed in achieving such an astute & thought provoking work at a time when such investigation & analysis are so vitallly needed.
