PROFILE OF A STOOGE – ALBURY SMITH

PROFILE OF A STOOGE
A CASE STUDY IN ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM

By Willy Whitten

“If it’s not in the 9/11 Commission Report or NIST or ASCE, it’s not part of the official story. If it’s not part of the official story it must be wrong.”~First stage in the assumption of an appeal to authority.

“[1] The FDNY is not in your “truth movement,” [2] and they disagree with your “piddly little ‘Office Furnishings Fires’” crap, as do the videos and other eyewitness accounts. [3] Are all of them in on the plot too, along with 200+ NIST engineers and countless others? [4] You have no evidence except for a column cut with an oxyacetylene torch, [5] no perp or plausible motive, so you resort to misrepresenting the owner’s PBS statement, [6] and secretly blowing up hi-rises in Manhattan is so absurd that it’s beyond impossible.”~Government Stooge [Albery Smith]

Here we have a quick procession of 6 separate points in one single paragraph, mixing a blend of contexts and blurring it all together as if it actually makes sense as a whole.
This paragraph is presented as the “summation” of three previous paragraphs, which will also be deconstructed here. I will show the miss-framing of the ‘summing’ paragraph first, as it is most clearly the weakest link in this ‘argument’ whereas it should be the final stroke if the argument had any merit.

Now to address these 6 points:

NOTE: “Argumentum Ad Verecundiam” is Latin for an argument that is an “Appeal to Authority”, and falls under a general category of fallacy in argumentation known as ‘Reductio Ad Absurdum’ – reduction to absurdity.
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Now to address the 6 points:

[1] The FDNY is not in your “truth movement,”

– What is the context for the use of the term, FDNY {New York Fire Department}?
Agent X seems to mean the official organ itself. But in a larger context the “fire department” is composed of thousands of individuals that may have such a variance of opinions as to make the assertion that they have no sympathies, spoken or reserved as to the veracity of the official story, that such an assertion becomes an example of a sub set of Argumentum ad Numerum. This fallacy occurs any time the sheer numbers of people who agree to something is used as a reason to get you to agree to it. As it is used here, these “sheer numbers” have no statistical proofs, and one is left to assume that all of the members of the fire department toe to the official story line. Thus the logical fallacy.

As to the FDNY itself as a department of the New York City government, there is a conflict of interest, as it cannot officially disagree with the employer due to complex and powerful political considerations. The FDNY then, is part of the structure of the system of authority being appealed to in Agent X’s argument. This argument is a proclamation that it is proper for an authority to police itself. As is shown and will be shown, there is evidence that destroys the official story, which means that at some higher level at the interface between the FDNY and the political apparatus of the city government there are indeed those willfully covering up the truth.

This then introduces us to the issue of “peer pressure” and the tacit ‘conspiracy of silence’ from the fear of loosing ones personal livelihood. It is well known that there were implicit gag orders put upon the members of the fire department and other first responders in the aftermath of the event.

But the peer pressure assumes itself in most instances simply do to the assumption of a ‘standard line’ being taken from the top authorities. Some testimonies taken of the first responders have such dialog as, “well, at first I thought I had heard a bomb go off. But now I realise it must have been other concussion sounds in the collapse…”
It is rare in such institutions for someone to insist on being the ‘odd-man-out’, or to speak up and become the dreaded ‘whistleblower’. Most people have a very well taught understanding of the personal troubles that can ensue if one does not ‘go along to get along’. Culturally this is one of the strongest lessons one learns in life.

[2] “and they disagree with your “piddly little ‘Office Furnishings Fires’” crap, as do the videos and other eyewitness accounts.”

– This is a mixed conundrum of assertions. As illustrated in the discussion of [1], the “they” who “disagree” are an unknown quantity. The “official” stance of the FDNY would certainly qualify as “they” who “disagree”, but their veracity is in question for the reasons stated above.

As for the “videos and other eyewitness accounts,” this is an assertion based on a cherry picked selection of videos and eyewitness accounts. Taken as a whole, ALL of the videos and eyewitness accounts shows there is a controversy presented, that when taken together shows evidence that overwhelms the accounts chosen by Agent X and the sources he relies upon.

[3] “Are all of them in on the plot too, along with 200+ NIST engineers and countless others?”

– This rhetorical question falls squarely into the class of ‘Argumentum ad Numerum’. Plus it asserts the false assumption that “all of them” have any knowledge beyond their particular job description that would give them the perspective of the higher authorities for whom they work. This is one of the attributes of a technological system based on compartmentalization of knowledge and access to it. This is very much the same sort of system of hierarchy used in the military and the system of “the need to know”. If it is outside of ones department there is no compelling ‘need to know’ and such knowledge is considered a ‘distraction’ from the subject’s job description. The same sorts of penalties are implied here as in the situation of not ‘going along to get along’. This is all well understood within a corporatist system, whether articulated within this context or not.

So, essentially Number 3 is a rhetorical trick of inserting cognitive dissonance into the argument.

[4] “You have no evidence except for a column cut with an oxyacetylene torch..”

– This assertion is directly contradicted by the prior FEMA report:

The FEMA report, in an appendix written by three professors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This appendix reported that a piece of steel from WTC 7 had melted so severely that it had gaping holes in it, making it look like a piece of Swiss cheese.

When asked whether it had carried out tests for explosives on 911, NIST said it had not. When a reporter asked NIST spokesman Michael Newman why not, he replied:

“Because there was no evidence of that.”

When the reporter asked the obvious follow-up question, “How can you know there’s no evidence if you don’t look for it first?”

Newman replied: “If you’re looking for something that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time . . . and the taxpayers’ money.”

This argument put forth by Newman is not only circular logical fallacy , it is obviously disingenuous and a willful lie. It is pure propaganda.

What explains the chemical evidence of thermite, an incendiary material found on the
ends of steel beams and in the leftover dust? FEMA documented in Appendix C of its
BPAT Report “evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel,
including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting.” This is
clearly not a feature of gravitational collapse, or of hydrocarbon fuel or office fires.
NIST summarily dismissed this key evidence when they took over the investigation.

[5] “no perp or plausible motive, so you resort to misrepresenting the owner’s PBS statement,”

This is a reference to Larry Silverstein the owner of WTC 7 who declared intention to ‘PULL it” on an interview on PBS. The controversy over this statement has run deep, but the simple assertion that the Agent’s opponent in the debate this dialog is drawn from, is a ‘misrepresentation’ is a bold one which must ignore very clear and common usages of syntax and twist them into strange forms to deny that Silverstein did say what he said in clear language. Claiming it has been ‘misrepresented’ is the actual stretch in interpretation.

Exact quotation:

“I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”~Larry Silverstein

Agent X has made the argument {with myself personally} that the “they” in the last sentence of Silverstein’s statement is “obviously” the FDNY. I have already addressed the contextual problems of this argument in my previous remarks. But would further point out that the only people identified positively in this phone conversation is Mr. Silverstein himself, and the fire department commander. The fire department commander may indeed ‘represent’ the FDNY as a top official, but it does not identify who the “they” were who “made that decision to pull”. Who was involved in this decision other than the commander and Mr. Silverstein?

Let’s pause here and be very clear and specific at this point. The ONLY people identified by Silverstein as to this telephone conversation is, himself and the “fire department commander”.
Therefore any assumptions as to who “they” were who “made the decision to pull”, are just that, any other assertions than that are merely HEARSAY.

Whereas Agent X will continue to insist that “they” are the FDNY it is simply not proven. And as far as the “reasoning” we have thus far seen by this agent , there is little evidence for any confidence that such is warranted to accept that the “they” that Silverstein refers to are simply the unknown quantity, the FDNY.

Whereas Agent X will continue to insist that “they” are the FDNY it is simply not proven. And as far as the “reasoning” we have thus far seen by this agent , there is little evidence for any confidence that such is warranted to accept that the “they” that Silverstein refers to are simply the unknown quantity, the FDNY.

We surely aren’t being led to believe here that a consensus was drawn from all of the firefighters in FDNY. Surely there were merely key people making this decision, and the fact is they are not identified. We might suppose that the mayor and other high political players were involved, perhaps even the technicians who planted the explosives used to “pull” the building.

It should be mentioned here that as a further ‘clarification’ Mr. Silverstein’s pubic relations spokesperson claimed that what Silverstein meant to be pulled was not the building itself, but the firemen in the building. The problem with this is that there were no firemen in the building for several hours before “we watched the building collapse.”

Further, if we look carefully at the linkage of, “they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.” It is clear to any lucid mind that the “pull” had to do directly with “the building collapse.” Thus any dispute over the term “pull” as one used or not by demolition experts is based on rhetorical gamesmanship.

Clearly Mr. Silverstein inadvertently let the cat out of the bag in this PBS interview. What has followed has been an attempt to erase this admission by all manner of scurrilous techniques of language manipulation.

Now, as per who “they” were who made the decision to proceed with the demolition of Bldg.7, further research by Kevin Ryan would indicate the following individuals as possibly having been involved in that decision, as they are known to have been together as a group that day [Sept 11, 2001] as per eye witness testimony:

Rudy Giuliani
Richard Sheirer
Richard Rotanz
Bernard Kerik
Pasquale J. D’Amuro
John Odematt
{and perchance even the fire department commander}

SEE: http://911review.com/articles/ryan/demolition_access_p4.html

\\][// – 2012