Remember what is at stake in discussions about exactly who is responsible for state crimes against democracy. On these investigations rest our republic’s political culture, our liberties and our rights. Our republic could disintegrate if we make too many mistakes. These discussions are not parlor games. Let no citizen open to the truth suggest that people involved in research ought to get over it, that their desire to uncover what actually happened in these crimes is beneath our attention. Our lives together as citizens of the same republic, under one Constitution, depends on our answering these questions correctly: “What happened at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001?” “What happened at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963?” “What happened at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001?”

Consider Kennedy’s assassination. If persistent researchers had not determined, as best they could, what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963, don’t you think we would be in even worse trouble than we already are? We owe a lot to the people who discovered even part of the truth about Kennedy’s murder. Similarly, if we do not determine what happened at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, we will find ourselves in a situation that is immeasurably worse than the current one. Finding the truth about these crimes may appear risky, but whatever happens cannot be worse than the direction we are headed now.

We are not sheep and we do not panic. We are shepherds who husband our republic, and we do not believe it when a would be master comes along to say a wolf has stalked and attacked our country. We go to the site of the attack to find out what happened. If the would be master tries to prevent us from going to the scene of the attack, we ask “Why? Why would you try to prevent us from looking at this evidence, to see what happened?”

To take another example: suppose you arrive home in the morning to find your wife lying on the kitchen floor. You might check for a pulse before you call 911. Suppose she is not alive. Based on past experience, you do not trust the police or the coroner to conduct an adequate investigation into the cause of her death. Sure enough, when they arrive, they jump to conclusions, ignore or misinterpret clues, work backward from premature conclusions to construct inaccurate narratives from misconstrued evidence. You can see this poor reasoning, shoddy forensics, and officious behavior of the investigators right in front of you, but you cannot do anything about it. They assure you that they will take care of everything. They remove your wife’s body from the house, along with her computer, your computer, and your children. They even take your dog, “for testing.”

You have no confidence in these hacks, based on what you observed, and on your interaction with them. Later in the day, you call to find out what progress the detectives might have made. The police say they have identified the killer. You decide not to ask when they made the identification, or why they waited until you called to tell you the information. Instead you ask them what they have learned. They say they’ll let you know as soon as they have made an arrest. You ask who the killer is, and the police are evasive. You start to wonder if they plan to arrest you. What should you do?

Of course, this set of circumstances forms the plot line of more than one movie. You have to figure out what happened in your house before the police lock you up for the rest of your life. You have to figure out what happened, because no one else wants to do it. What is your first step? You must not proceed half cocked, as the police did. They have already confiscated critical evidence. They won’t tell you what they know and what they don’t know. You ask about results of your wife’s autopsy, and a curtain drops down. You ask how they identified the person they plan to arrest. You receive doubletalk, silence, and more doubletalk. You have to figure out what happened to your wife without benefit of complete information, without access to your wife’s body or to any other evidence that you would start with in a normal investigation. What would you do?

You would not give up, that much you know. You would not let strangers and incompetents block you from finding out what happened to your beloved wife. You would proceed with the resources you have. You would save yourself in order to find the truth, which the police would not tell you. You would do your best to learn who committed the crime, before they lock you up.

Similarly, you would not let criminals who hold high office destroy your beloved country, to remove your freedom such that you become an inmate of a giant prison camp that extends from sea to sea. Before you let that happen, you would try to learn who killed your president. You would try to learn who brought down World Trade Center 7. You would do what’s required – for justice, and for your own protection.