MEDIA ROOTS – This is the re-release of a special 2 hour 20 minute episode of Media Roots Radio about 9/11, now fully sourced and transcribed below. In this edition, Abby and Robbie Martin introduce how their political awakenings were prompted by 9/11, and break apart the official government and corporate media narrative of the 9/11 attacks by discussing the foreknowledge, government complicity, and gross inconsistencies regarding every aspect of the events. The show then delves into the aftermath: the psychological manipulation of the American psyche and the significance that this event continues to have in our nation and world.

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Abby Martin (c. 1:12):  “Welcome to Media Roots Radio.  This is your host, Abby Martin, creator of MediaRoots.org.

Robbie Martin (c. 1:17):  “And this is Robbie Martin.”

Abby Martin (c. 1:19):  “We’re really excited about this show today because 9/11 is the thing that woke my brother and I up, really, in the political arena and it’s really what prompted me into activism and investigative journalism.  So, I’m really excited to spend some time going through 9/11 Truth and talking about what damages the movement, what helps the movement, what we find to be the most credible evidence.  And we’re gonna always discern between speculation and fact. 

“So, I think one really important thing to point out before we even begin is to say that my brother [Robbie] and I believed the official story of 9/11 for years.  We didn’t have a reason to question it, really.”

Robbie Martin (c. 2:28):  “Parts of it.”

Abby Martin (c. 2:29):  “Parts of it.  I completely believed the official story for years and years.  So, we didn’t immediately think that 9/11 was an inside job.  We’re not naturally conspiracy theorists.

“So, we just wanted to talk a little bit about the day of 9/11 and what our thought process was.” 

Robbie Martin (c. 2:58):  “So, how did you hear about 9/11?  What was your first memory of it?”

Abby Martin (c. 3:04):  “My memory of 9/11:  I was a senior in high school and it was the beginning of the school year.   I remember waking up; mom showed me the TV.  And I was just watching the plane in the Tower.  And we all thought that, we didn’t know if it was an attack or not yet.  But while I was at home, before school, the other attack happened.  And I just remember thinking that the world was over.   I remember calling my friend, Tiffany, and saying, ‘the world’s over, Tiffany. We’re in World War III.’  And Howard Stern was on the radio at the time and he was talking about it.  I remember it was really, really surreal.  All day at school, everyone was just glued to the television set.  And then when the buildings collapsed it was just really horrifying.  We were all just sitting in the class watching it.  It was very, very scary.  And then that night, I mean, for the next month after that I was just glued to the television set.  And I remember thinking, just being so, so upset thinking about the people who had to make the decision to jump out of the buildings.  That was like the most upsetting part to me, envisioning what they had to go through at the last moments of their lives.”

Robbie Martin (c. 4:10):  “Were you seeing the soldier at the time?”

Abby Martin (c. 4:13):  “Yeah, I was dating Matt, who was my high school sweetheart.  And he was ultra-conservative, neocon.  So, I was coming from a really weird perspective where I was totally, like, ‘America’s been hurt. We’ve gotten attacked,’ like super patriotic.  I even drew a little picture of an eagle and an American flag and wrote a little poem about it at school.”

Robbie Martin (c. 4:40):  “What were your boyfriend’s thoughts on it?  I think you told me that he eventually wanted to enlist because of 9/11, right?  Or was he already in the Military before that?”

Abby Martin (c. 4:51):  “Yeah, he enlisted because of 9/11.”

Robbie Martin (c. 4:54):  “So, kind of, Pat Tillman style.”

Abby Martin (c. 4:56):  “Yeah, totally.  Yeah.  I mean, a lot of people did that, you know.  Yossarian did that, too.  It was like this heroic thing that they wanted to get involved with.”

Robbie Martin (c. 5:06):  “I think Corey Roe did that as well.  So, what led you from believing the official story, having a really patriotic boyfriend who enlisted in the military because of 9/11, what led you from that to believing that the official story was a lie?”

Abby Martin (c. 5:21):  “You know, we talked about this a little bit in the first episode, but I’ll briefly talk about it again.  Well, when I went to college in San Diego, I was totally blown away by the information that I learned in sociology and political science classes contextualising how we operate as a country and what our foreign policy does and how it affects the rest of the world.  So, I began to have a more critical mind of everything.  And when the Iraq war was, I mean, I really was a supporter of the Afghanistan war at the time ‘cos I just thought, you know, ‘Let’s go after and find bin Laden. It’s a justified war. Let’s go to war in Afghanistan.’  But then when we started talking about Iraq, I remember being really concerned.  I remember talking to mom on the phone, almost daily, ‘Why are we talking about Iraq? What the hell is going on?’”

Robbie Martin (c. 6:15):  “So, that was your first inkling that something was being lied about.”

Abby Martin:  “That the media was manipulating our emotions and trying to force us to support this ridiculous notion that we should go after Iraq for no reason.  So, that’s like, I immediately was just like, ‘This doesn’t make sense.’  And then, from my anti-war activism, I started getting information from different activists.  And I remember someone sent me this little video on the Pentagon.  It was only like a seven-minute video clip that just showed—”

Robbie Martin (c. 6:43):  “It was that flash video.”

Abby Martin:  “Yeah.”

Robbie Martin :  “It wasn’t even a video.  It was that one that had the soundtrack from Fight Club in the background.”

Abby Martin (c. 6:49):  “Yeah, exactly.  You have a really good memory.  And I just remember watching it in my dorm room and thinking, ‘This is really weird. This doesn’t make sense.’  It just piqued my curiosity.  I was just like, huh, that’s really weird.”

Robbie Martin (c. 7:02):  “So, in a way, that video, for a lot of people, was kind of like the proto-Loose Change.  It was like the catalyst to get a lot of young people like ourselves interested in finding out more about 9/11.”

Abby Martin (c. 7:12):  “Yeah.  And then I think I didn’t even really think about it for like the next year until you showed me some Alex Jones footage.  And I was just like, ‘Oh, my god, I cannot deal with this right now. This is way too much for me to even, like, deal with.’  It was really overwhelming and really, just, scary.  And I remember his approach was just, kind of, really turned me off when I first saw, I think it was, ‘Road to Tyranny’ or ‘Martial Law.’  I’m not sure which one it was, but then slowly over time I became more open to the information. 

“I saw the GNN documentary, ‘911 – Aftermath: Unanswered Questions,’ and then saw ‘Loose Change.’  And I was just like, ‘Oh, my god.’  And I just threw myself into research.  After watching ‘Loose Change’ and the GNN, then I sat down and watched [‘Martial Law The Road to Tyranny’].  I was just completely obsessed with finding out if everything in there was true or false. 

“My friend Alicia and I threw ourselves into research.  We printed out all the oral testimonies from 9/11 that Dr. Griffin talks about.  We went through every bit of testimony.  We went and printed out every single news article that talked about these inconsistencies and we catalogued them in a giant database, mostly just to try to prove it wrong.  I mean, who the hell wants to believe that this is true?  You know? 

“So, slowly, of course, we realised that it was true.  And we wanted to become bullet-proof in our knowledge.  And we wanted to make sure that this was accurate information.  You know?  It was.”

Robbie Martin (c. 8:45):  “So, how did you get from that point to having your mind blown by all these facts you were learning about 9/11 to actually deciding to go into some kind of activism locally, in San Diego, and on the internet as well?”

Abby Martin (c. 9:01):  “Sure.  Let me back up a couple of minutes.  When I first found out about 9/11 and I was really blown away by the information, I still was really nervous to talk to people about it.  I didn’t really feel inclined to share the information with anyone.  I thought it was really out there; it was really insane-sounding.  I didn’t wanna go there with anyone.  I didn’t really know that many people who were political.  I remember I was working at a coffee shop and this girl, Alicia, and this guy, Jake, who I was working with, I overhead Jake, my manager, talking about 9/11.  And I just kind of went over and just was eavesdropping and he said something about the buildings being blown up.  And I was like, ‘Oh, my god. You’ve heard this information?’  I was like, ‘Have you seen that movie?’  And we just started talking about it.  And then Alicia was like, ‘Wait. What?’ She’s like, ‘What are you guys talking about?’  And that was the first time I’d ever heard anyone discussing it.  And I became extremely confident in knowing that other people knew this and that other people were talking about it. 

“So, that’s when Alicia and I, my other employee there, we just completely threw ourselves into research and became semi-obsessed with finding out the facts.  But it really gave me the confidence knowing that other people knew and other people cared about it.  It really gave me the confidence to go out there and spread the information.  I mean, the more that I learned and the more that I knew how true it was, the more I was inclined to go out there, tell everyone I knew.  I just thought this is the most important thing we need to expose, obviously.  It’s the premise of everything the [G.W.] Bush Administration was doing at the time.  And it could be the catalyst to dissolve the entire government and our entire country.”

Robbie Martin :  “Yeah, you could unspin the whole ball of yarn by going back to 9/11.”

Abby Martin (c. 10:47):  “Yeah.  I initially just started going out and doing individual activism.  I remember talking to people in the anti-war movement and they were just really turned off by 9/11 Truth stuff.  This was around 2004.”

Robbie Martin (c. 11:00):  “So, this was, kind of, the first time you encountered the gatekeeper phenomenon.”

Abby Martin:  “Oh, yeah, big time.  So, then I would just start going to different speakers.  I remember I went to Greg Palast.  I made a little home-made shirt off Café Press that said ‘Question 9/11.  And I’d just go to a bunch of anti-war activism events and I’d just wear the shirt and try to pass out information to people.  I printed out a little fact-sheet and I was trying to spread it around.  And I would go into different audiences at different speaking engagements and try to ask questions about 9/11.  I remember Greg Palast totally was just like, blew me off.  And a lot of people were really turned off by what I was doing, but I felt like it was the right thing to do. 

“And one time, this was like the best day ever, one time I showed up at an event and I saw a little tiny booth that said San Diegans For 9/11 Truth.  And it was like this older couple, Elise and Ted, sitting behind the booth.  And I was like, ‘Oh, my god, there’s other people out here who know that this is like the real thing that you should be, like, pushing for.’  And, so, after that, I became involved with San Diegans for 9/11 Truth.  And then I started the meet-up group.  And then I met Peter [Holmes] and we just put everything into getting out there on the streets and spread information.  And then Truther.org was, kind of, a failed attempt to try to make it cool, try to do something different where we were, like, ‘Dude, the truth is cool.’ 

Robbie Martin:  “Well, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Abby Martin (c. 12:17):  “Live and learn.”

Robbie Martin (c. 12:19):  “It’s in the same way, kind of, the Jesse Ventura news show embraces the term conspiracy theory.  It’s just trying to redefine the language that these enemies of the [Truth] Movement have tried to turn against us.”

Abby Martin:  “Yeah, exactly.  And, so, what about you?  What do you remember about the day of 9/11?  And how did you become awakened politically from 9/11 Truth?”

Robbie Martin (c. 12:37):  “Well, before I go into my little story I think we should let the audience know that if they want to go straight to our discussion about 9/11 skip forward about ten minutes in the broadcast, if you’re feeling bored by our little autobiographical histories here about 9/11. 

“But on the day of 9/11, for me, I was also pretty much convinced by the official story like you were.  On the morning of 9/11, my girlfriend was with me.  I was with my roommate, Ben.  And my girlfriend at the time was a Japanese citizen.  She had kind of broken me a little bit of my paradigm, of having that natural born, you  know, you’re born with this American jingoism that’s instilled in you from cradle to grave, basically, in the United States.  So, she helped me break free of that.  She took me to the Hiroshima Museum in Japan.  She would tell me histories and alternate things that Japanese people would believe about World War II and things like the fire bombings, things like that, things that were very hard for me to actually believe and wanna put myself in the shoes of someone we went to war with. 

“So, anyways, that morning mom called me, probably after she woke you up and she said, ‘Robbie, the World Trade Center’s under attack.’  So, I turn on the TV and it was already when the second plane had just hit the World Trade Center.  So, both towers had a fire on them and within, I think, 40 minutes of watching the television, the second tower collapsed before our very eyes.  And when it collapsed, Ben and I were just, we were horrified, but we were also—”

Abby Martin (c. 14:26):  “Ben was your roommate, right?”

Robbie Martin (c. 14:28):  “—yeah, Ben was my roommate.  And Ben is also, kind of, a guy who’s helped me see things from different perspectives.  He has an interesting background.  He was an altar boy until he was 17.  And he’s just really politically knowledgeable.  He’s got a lot of interesting beliefs.  But we were watching the tower collapse and we just both exclaimed and looked at each other, ‘That looks so much like a movie pyrotechnic effect. How did that look so good?’  I hate to use the term good looking in that sense, but it really did look like a Hollywood-quality pyrotechnic special effects crew practical effect, like the most elaborate one that I’d ever seen, like something out of a ‘Transformers’ Michael Bay movie or something.  So, we were just like, ‘Wow! That looked perfect. How did that happen? That’s amazing that it looked so much like a movie explosion.’

“So, we didn’t really connect that or we weren’t too suspicious about it to the point of thinking, ‘Well, this had to have been blown up.’  We just, kind of, thought it was crazy coincidental.  The building looked so perfect falling down.  But then later that day I remember the media started to pick up that emotional, visceral, rage against, ‘Who are we gonna get? Who do we go after? Who did this?’  You know?  ‘We gotta,’ just like Bush stood on the mound and said, ‘They’re gonna hear from us soon.’  It was all this blood-thirsty—”

Abby Martin (c. 15:50):  “That stupid photo of him with the three fire-fighters with the flag.”

Robbie Martin :  “—yeah, and he basically was saying that we’re gonna get revenge and kill whoever did this.”

Abby Martin (c. 15:56):  “Right.  The evildoers.”

Robbie Martin (c. 16:00):  “Yeah, which is what all Americans wanted to do at the time, including most people that I knew.  I mean, I remember the days after that happened within a week after 9/11 I was getting into arguments every day with people that I knew about why we shouldn’t go into Afghanistan to go after one person.  That was the argument that I was using at the time because I thought bin Laden probably did do 9/11.  I didn’t have any reason to doubt it.  I believed the official story.  But I knew.  I was like, ‘We gotta do somethin’. We have to do something. We can’t let this stand.’  You know?” 

Abby Martin (c. 16:30):  “This will not stand, man.”

Robbie Martin (c. 16:31):  “And it’s like, ‘Well, okay.’  I can understand wanting to do something, wanting to capture and kill the people who did 9/11, but going to attack an entire country and invade an entire country full of innocent people, it didn’t make any sense to me.  And it still doesn’t.  And I think it shouldn’t make sense to most Americans today.”

Abby Martin (c. 16:48):  “One really funny thing, just a side-note about Afghanistan, there was just a poll done in the most war-torn areas of Afghanistan and it was noted that over 90% of Afghanis do not know what 9/11 is.”

Robbie Martin (c. 17:01):  “I’m not surprised.”

Abby Martin (c. 17:01):  “They’re just, like, poor goat-herders that are like, ‘Why the hell have we been getting killed for the past nine years.’  Like, ‘What?’  So, that is interesting, just the detachment that we have from quote-unquote, ‘Winning the hearts and minds of these people.’  I mean, come on, they don’t even know why we’re there.”

Robbie Martin (c. 17:17):  “It really is.”

Abby Martin (c. 17:18):  “So, first you thought this is really coincidental that these buildings just fell in this way.  So, how many years after did you believe the official story?  Or when did you start questioning the official story?”

Robbie Martin (c. 17:33):  “Well, I started questioning the propaganda pretty early on.  I started to become very incensed and very upset at the fact that the media was clearly trying to manipulate us into going to war with Afghanistan and then, later, Iraq.  I mean, that was, just off the bat, that was completely bullshit, totally baseless, the whole speech to the U.N. that Colin Powell did while holding up the little vial of anthrax and showing the mobile weapon labs.  As I watched it on TV I knew that it was a lie.  It was just an elaborate ruse.”

Abby Martin (c. 18:07):  “But you just thought that they were manipulating 9/11 to just pursue—”

Robbie Martin:  “Yeah.  I thought that, and that’s the most cynical belief that most people on the Left have is that they used 9/11 as the perfect opportunity, the perfect storm, to get all this agenda done that they’ve always wanted to get done, which is, kind of, like the Oliver Stone perspective on 9/11.”

Abby Martin (c. 18:25):  “Which is just so funny.  If you believe that, then how come you’re not willing to look at the event itself that they do use?  You know?  It’s just funny.  It’s like, if you’re willing to go far enough to think they used 9/11 to kill millions of people in other countries, why are you unwilling to look at the event that was the catalyst for that?  It’s just interesting.”

Robbie Martin (c. 18:44):  “I think it’s just too hard for people to wrap their head around.  So, I went from believing that our government and our media was totally lying to us, more than I’d ever seen before.  In my whole lifetime I don’t remember another time where the media was so clearly manipulating our emotions by calling everybody that attacked us in Iraq a terrorist, by throwing the word terrorism around every day—”

Abby Martin:  “The chart.”

Robbie Martin:  “—like they did, by telling, yeah, the colour-coded chart, by telling us to get duct tape on our windows.  I was horrified by all that.  I thought it was disgusting.  And it was actually working on me, too.  I was afraid of things, but then after that I think I saw that same video about the Pentagon.  You showed me that video.”

Abby Martin:  “M-hm.”

Robbie Martin (c. 19:30):  “And it really got my curiosity piqued because I remember on the day of 9/11 I was wondering, where was the video of the Pentagon being hit by a plane?  I never saw it and it, kind of, just went off my radar.  I never thought about it anymore.  But that video brought it back for me and it took me head first into the rabbit hole.  I remember after I watched that video I went online and the only 9/11 truth movie I was able to find right away, or I’m sorry, let me back-track. 

“After you showed me that Pentagon video I went to New York City for the first time.  I just happened to be going there.  And I didn’t really know; I thought that the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act was dangerous and I thought that Homeland Security was bad, but I didn’t really know the real life effects of having all this extra security and the chilling effect that it would have until I actually went to New York City in 2003.  And in New York City they had armed guards in the subways with AK-47s, army fatigues, soldiers, like, young soldiers, they looked like Israeli soldiers, like, 19-, 20-year old soldiers carrying machine guns.  And as I walked to the subway, I remember thinking this makes me feel a lot less safe.  This is not making me feel safe.  And it’s actually making me think about what would happen if there was some sort of attempted terrorist attack in the subway with five armed guards—”

Abby Martin (c. 20:55):  “All hell would break loose.”

Robbie Martin:  “They would mow down a bunch of innocent civilians.  It doesn’t even make sense for protection to have something like that.  And I remember, just kind of, for fun, I went up to one of the soldiers and asked them to take a picture.  And they were really pissed off.  Like, they were mad that I even, like, bothered to talk to them.  Like, these were the people that were supposed to be protecting us.  You know?”

Abby Martin:  “Right.”

Robbie Martin (c. 21:13):  “And then I remember, you know, I’m in New York City.  I’m in Manhattan.  I wanna go to the New York Stock Exchange.  I wanna go to the Statue of Liberty.  I wanna go to the Empire State Building, all the generic, touristy stuff that you always wanna do.  I remember that scene from ‘Ferris Bueller’ where they’re sitting up there in the New York, or it’s like the Chicago Stock Exchange or something, but it looks just like what you see from the New York Stock Exchange.  So, I always wanted to go see that floor, you know, see those people doing the symbols and doing all the fast trades.”

Abby Martin (c. 21:39):  “The papers, holding up those coloured things.”

Robbie Martin (c. 21:41):  “Yeah!  And we went to Wall Street and, as we were walking down to Wall Street there was a S.W.A.T. team tank just sitting on the street.”

Abby Martin:  “What year was this?”

Robbie Martin (c. 21:50):  “This was 2003.”

Abby Martin:  “Wow.”

Robbie Martin (c. 21:51):  “And there was like five, like, S.W.A.T., like, special ops, like, military guys, walking around, like, ambulating with machine guns.  And I’m thinking this is not right.  Like, this shouldn’t be happening.  And then when we went up to the New York Stock Exchange.  They were like, ‘Oh, yeah, after 9/11, no civilians are allowed inside.’  And I was like, ‘Okay, well, that’s kind of sad.’”

Abby Martin (c. 22:16):  “Yeah, which is so funny.  They say, ‘Don’t let it affect your lifestyle. Let’s not let the terrorists win.’”

Robbie Martin (c. 22:21):  “Yeah, talk about chilling effect.”

Abby Martin:  “Really?  ‘Cos you guys are, like, totally preventing us from actually living how we want to.”

Robbie Martin (c. 22:27):  “Yeah, and then Statue of Liberty, same thing, I called to try to figure out when their hours were—closed indefinitely, nobody allowed inside.  Okay, so whatever.  Next up, Empire State Building, I wanted to go up to the top of the Empire State Building, generic thing, the end of ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ they’re going up the Empire State Building, you know, whatever.  I call the Empire State Building.  You can pay to go up in the elevator, but you can’t go to the top floor, the lookout point because of 9/11, again.  Every building that I called that I wanted to go to a lookout point on in New York, closed because of 9/11, every clock tower, everything.  I mean I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for buildings to go up and just see the skyline from high up in New York City, not able to happen at all.”

Abby Martin:  “Unbelievable.”

Robbie Martin (c. 23:12):  “And that made me realise that the chilling effect of 9/11 is directly affecting New Yorkers, but they’re not complaining about it openly because they’re, they seem like they feel safer as a result and Americans don’t even know about this in other parts of the country.  And then I remember while I was in New York City, I found a video in a video store, ‘9/11: In Plane Site.’  And it talked about how 9/11 was an inside job on the back of the movie cover.  So, we rented it and went back to my friend’s apartment in SoHo.  We watched it.  And I remember it was filled with a lot of disinformation.  It was, I mean, I’m sure people who’ve seen ‘911: In Plane Site’ know what I’m talking about by this.  But there were several things in it that were irrefutable—“

Abby Martin:  “That were just jarring.”

Robbie Martin :  “—and that I could never forget.  I saw for the first time ever Building 7 collapsing.  And that shook me to the core because you are watching a building clearly being imploded by controlled demolition on the day of 9/11 during a national emergency.”

Abby Martin:  “Right.”

Robbie Martin (c. 24:14):  “And you know that someone had to have wired that building for controlled demolition months in advance.  So, that completely undermines the idea that this was some kind of surprise attack.  ‘We didn’t know it was coming.’  Somebody knew it was coming.  And somebody decided to blow up a building that day.  So, this blew my mind.  From there I just went head first into the rabbit hole and went online to try to get any documentaries I could find.  The only ones I could find readily available at the time were ‘Painful Deceptions’ by Eric Hutching-fiend.”

Abby Martin (c. 24:44):  “Hufschmid.”

Robbie Martin :  “Hufschmid, something like that.  And that one really didn’t help me at all.  It was just really technical.  And it was a little bit weird.  The narration was too jarringly distracting.  And then I think the 9/11 movies that really woke me up was the ‘9/11 Unanswered Questions’ from GNN, which I still think is one of the best 9/11 movies.  It’s only 20 minutes long.  And George Humphrey’s—”

Abby Martin:  “Illusion.”

Robbie Martin (c. 25:14):  “Yeah, ‘9/11: The Great Illusion.’  This movie had more facts and more comprehensive than anything else I’d ever seen.  It had everything, basically, in it that the 9/11 Truth Movement talks about today.  It laid a lot of the groundwork for me to research things. 

“And then, from there, I remember I saw ‘Loose Change’ for the first time.  I didn’t really like ‘Loose Change’ when I first saw it ‘cos I felt like it was taking a lot of the disinformation from ‘9/11: In Plane Site.’  But I still kind of appreciated that it was trying to, kind of, market itself towards young people.  It had a hip hop soundtrack.  So, that’s pretty much how I got to where I am now.  I mean, even watching movies with disinformation helped me get to a point of more knowledge and a better ability to be a critical thinker because I think people have this problem where, if they see something with disinformation in it, they can’t separate it.  Or if they see something with bad information in it, they can’t separate it from the good information.  And that’s a shame.”

Abby Martin (c. 26:12):  “Right.  And it’s easier to just say, ‘Well, it’s disinformation.’”

Robbie Martin :  “Yeah.  I mean there’s disinformation in a lot of stuff.  You know, it’s hard to escape sometimes.”

 

SOUNDCLOUD Musical Instrumental (c. 27:56) – “At The Heart Of It All” (Aphex Twin remix) from the album “Further Down the Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails, 1995. 

 

Abby Martin (c. 28:04):  “9/11 is so important, still.  And people have told me, I’m not really like a 9/11 freak activist anymore; I’m more into media and investigative journalism about a lot of stuff.  But it’s still so important.  And when I talk to people about it, they’re just like, ‘Oh, ‘Well, a lot of people will just be like, ‘It’s nine years ago, get over it, like, it’s not relevant anymore.’  It will always be relevant.”

Robbie Martin:  “Absolutely.”

Abby Martin (c. 28:25):  “It is the turning point into this soft fascism that we are seeing.  It was the crux of everything.  It was the premise of the entire Administration’s aggressive agenda against us and against the rest of the world.”

Robbie Martin (c. 28:40):  “Yeah, I mean, people who say that it’s, you know, ‘Get over it, it’s been nine years,’ I mean, those are the type of people who willingly put their head in the sand.  They don’t wanna, they want to just continue on with their lives unhindered by the media, the depressing events they hear in the media.  It’s the same kind of people who are just like, ‘Why do you read the news? It’s so depressing.’  You know?  ‘Why do you even care?’  It’s like, ‘Well—”

Abby Martin (c. 29:02):  “Because it’s enlightening.”

Robbie Martin:  “That’s reality.”

Abby Martin:  “Yeah.”

Robbie Martin (c. 29:06):  “If you don’t wanna face reality, that’s one thing.  But, I mean, admit it.”

Abby Martin:  “The worst is the positive thinkers who are just like, ‘Dude, just positively think.’ Like, ‘Don’t read the news; it’s depressing.’  All future generations are growing up now in this post-9/11 world where we’re, essentially, living—”

Robbie Martin :  “Where torture is okay.”

Abby Martin (c. 29:23):  “M-hm.  Surveillance is, just, rampant.”

Robbie Martin :  “Where if you’re an activist, you’re asking for trouble.  That’s the new thing.  It’s like—”

Abby Martin:  “You’re asking to get raided, surveilled, tracked.”

Robbie Martin:  “I mean, there’s people all the time.  I remember arguing with a whole message board full of people once where they were just like, ‘Well, these flotilla people, they knew what they were getting into. So, how could you feel sorry for them?’  It’s like, ‘What!?’  It’s like, ‘So, Civil,’ so like, if Rosa Parks was shot by the National Guard—”

Abby Martin:  “Yeah, she knew what she was getting into.”

Robbie Martin :  “—she knew she was breaking the law and staying on the front of the bus.  It’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?”

Abby Martin (c. 29:57):  “Yeah.”

Robbie Martin :  “Has civil disobedience been that devalued in our country to the point where now everybody’s an apologist for the system and the people who defeat civil disobedience?”

Abby Martin (c. 30:01):  “Homegrown terrorism, Robbie.  Homegrown terrorism.”

Robbie Martin (c. 30:05):  “It’s pretty amazing to me.”

Abby Martin (c. 30:06):  “And, if you look at 9/11, it’s been, it’s like the ultimate historical revisionism.  If you’re just looking at the event and you said this yesterday, but it’s like, historical revisionism on two levels.  One level is the official story that’s been propped up by the government apparatus and the media.”

Robbie Martin :  “That time period from 9/11 happening and then the time it was set into stone by the government’s official narrative.  It had been completely rewritten.”

Abby Martin (c. 30:30):  “Right.  And the 9/11 Commission Report was kind of like the icing on the cake.  Like he was here it is, all wrapped up in a tiny package.  It was on the New York Times bestseller list.  It read like a Tom Clancy novel.  It was just like an absurd fictional narrative.”

Robbie Martin :  “Well, it basically holds as much factual weight as a Tom Clancy novel.  None of it’s sourced or none of it’s referenced back to actual criminal evidence, investigative evidence.  It’s just completely a, it’s like a run-on narrative detective story, if you’ve ever read it.  It’s pretty astonishing that people accept that as evidence—”

Abby Martin:  “Right.”

Robbie Martin :  “—that 9/11 was performed by 19 members of Al-Qaeda, directed by bin Laden.  There’s absolutely no proof or evidence of any kind in the book to show that.”

Abby Martin (c. 31:09):  “Absolutely.  And that’s why it’s so crucial for us.  I mean, if we know anything about American history, it’s the fact that we, you know, it’s all revised.”

Robbie Martin :  “Yeah.” 

Abby Martin:  “We learn real histories.  So, why the hell would you take a book that the government wrote and say this is absolute fact.  Of course, it’s not.”

Robbie Martin (c. 31:24):  “And what’s interesting to me is a lot of other people I argue about 9/11, you know, I’ll try to explain to them how the official 9/11 Report is completely debunked.  It’s false.  And I’ll be like, ‘Well, so what,’ like ‘just ‘cos the official story’s been debunked doesn’t mean you know what happened on 9/11.’  It’s like, I’m not saying that I know what happened on 9/11.  I’m just trying to tell you that what we’ve been told happened on 9/11 is a complete lie and used to manipulate us into all these endless wars, perpetual war, and this erosion of our civil liberties.  I want people to find out who did it.  But I’m not a criminal investigator.  I’m not a forensics investigator.  I don’t have the means to do that.”

Abby Martin (c. 32:02):  “Yeah, we don’t have subpoena power.  We can’t actually access the evidence that’s needed to find out what we wanna find out.”

Robbie Martin:  “So, that takes us back to another thing that a lot of lackadaisical people, or even debunkers, like to say is, they say, like, I remember hearing Jesse Ventura on the Dennis Miller show a couple weeks back and, of course, Dennis Miller is such a neocon little twerp, that he’s gonna get into it with Jesse Ventura about 9/11.  So, he asked him, ‘Jesse, now I heard you talk about 9/11, but gimme some names.  Who was in on it?’   

Abby Martin:  “‘Name some names who did it.’”

Robbie Martin (c. 32:39):  “So, basically, you’re putting someone in a position, who has no criminal subpoena power, who’s not an investigator, to publicly commit defamation on the radio and label someone as a mass murderer.”

Abby Martin:  “Right.”

Robbie Martin :  “That’s putting someone in a position that’s not really fair.  That’s not how you start an argument or a debate about how 9/11 was orchestrated.  You don’t ask someone to divulge names.  That’s the end of the investigation.”

Read full transcript of the show at Media Roots Radio – Breaking Apart the 9/11 Coincidence Theory