Towards the end of 2007, WeAreChangeLA reached out to the SImon Wiesenthal Center regarding the testimony by Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center before Jane Harman's Congressional Committee. Mr Weitzman gave a presentation to the committee in support of H.R. 1955 where he positioned the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth website as an "incubator of 9/11 conspiracies and disinformation."

In an interview with WeAreChangeLA.org, Richard Gage AIA, founder of Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, responds powerfully to the insinuations and defamations put forth by Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center during his powerpoint presentation in Jane Harman's congressional committee hearing last fall. Among making other powerful points, he calls for an apology, a retraction and a meeting with Mark Weitzman and/or representatives from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

There is more of this interview to come.

This official response was e-mailed and mailed via the U.S. Post Office to Mark Weitzman (certified) and the noted individuals in the CC.

Thank you to all for your support regarding this matter.

Note and FYI: Mark Weitzman's response e-mail regarding this matter that was forwarded to us last month is posted below our letter.

This response has also been posted on our website on the front page: www.ae911truth.org

December 8, 2007

Mr. Mark Weitzman
Simon Wiesenthal Center
1399 South Roxbury Drive
Los Angeles, California 90035
310.553.9036
310.553.4521 (fax)

50 East 42nd Street, Suite 1600
New York, NY 10017
212.370.0320
212.883.0895 (fax)

Via: Certified US Mail & Email:

Re: SWC testimony 11/6/07 before the Homeland Security
Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment

Dear Mr. Weitzman,

Thank you for responding in your email form letter to a couple of the many important concerns raised recently by other members of the 9/11 Truth & Justice Movement to your presentation at the House Committee on Homeland Security - "Using The Web As A Weapon: The Internet As A Tool For Violent Radicalization And Homegrown Terrorism" on 11/6/07 before Representative Jane Harman. Your clarifications, however, offer no correction or retraction for the irresponsible and false statement "Incubator of 9/11 Conspiracies and Disinformation" the heading that you placed over our science-based website "AE911Truth.org" – Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which bears my name, Richard Gage, AIA, an architect of 20 years.

Also, you made no apology, explanation, or correction for your words which you stated precisely during the time in which you displayed the 911sharethetruth.com and AE911Truth.org websites:

"And then finally we end with a site that literally talks about the bombing of - 'soon, soon, soon the attack on Manhattan'."

This part of your presentation can be reviewed at the 45:50 mark in the video located at:

http://homeland.edgeboss.net/wmedia/homeland/chs/internetterror.wvx

The C-SPAN Archive version of the video is in two parts. The sentence above occurs at the 28:20 mark of the second portion of C-SPAN's version.ⁱ

I am aware of no page on our site ever having contained this sentence or any sentence like it. Our staff has researched the matter, and the phrase appears nowhere on our site, nor was it found by an internet search. Curiously enough, we find the phrase only when you are being quoted.

(Contrary to PhoenixRising's comment below, I don't think it's asking too much to have people NOT send anti-semitic emails to the SWC. Please don't. Leave that up to the COINTELPRO types who no doubt will. -rep.)

I don't know whether this is more offensive, silly, stupid, and/or just sad. (sometimes mixing and matching is called for)

Now, before I get into the meat of the matter, if you will, I would like to encourage people to respond to this information maturely, intellectually, and with decency. That is, try to keep the negative, derogatory, hurtful, attacking, anti-semitic, etc., e-mails to the SWC and Mark Weitzman down to a minimum. Zero would be nice, but I know that's probably asking too much. Be that as it may, it never hurts to ask.

I should also point out that I am a "supporter" of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, though not a card-carrying member, if you will, and I have visited their Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles several years ago and enjoyed it. I encourage everyone to go. I am not Jewish (heritage / ethnicity / nationality), nor Judaic (religion), not that that should matter one way or another.

28 November 2007

Dear Mr. Weitzman,

Thank you for your prompt response to our request for clarification of your remarks to the House Committee on Homeland Security on 6 November 2007. As per your recommendation, we have shared your response with interested parties and in so doing we have discovered that it is identical to your response to other groups and individuals with similar requests and concerns. While we fully appreciate the difficulty of individually responding to the many inquiries you have received, your “canned” response falls far short in addressing the misconstrued associations in your remarks to the House Committee and sadly, adds to the confusion about your motives regarding the selection of websites contained in your PowerPoint presentation.

Managed to take a few screen shots from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5MeGSlINMc&feature=related

Simon Wiesenthal Center presents 9/11 sites alongside radical Jihadist sites to House Hearing on "Terrorism and the Internet"
http://www.911blogger.com/node/12505

EDIT: Revised title and inserted video. -rep.

From: Boston 9/11 Truth
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 01:48:04 -0500

Subject: CLARIFICATION WANTED FROM WIESENTHAL CENTER


25 November 2007
Mark Weitzman
Simon Wiesenthal Center
59 East 42nd Street, Suite 1600
New York, NY 10017

Dear Mr. Weitzman,

It is with deep concern that we are requesting both a clarification and a retraction regarding several remarks you made at the Homeland Security sub-committee hearing on Terrorism Risk Assessment held on 6 November 2007.

In reference to the content of your PowerPoint presentation, you stated, “The presentation begins with a look at how 9/11 is viewed in some eyes online, including those who applauded it as well as some conspiracies sites. The presence of the conspiracy site is significant, since so much of what passes as fact online is actually based on some form of conspiracy.” You later went on to say, “These people are constructing their own version of reality, full of conspiracy theories, full of doctored videos, that will recruit or inflame the emotions.”

(Digg is for the OpEd News version)
The Committee on Homeland Security will soon begin to flesh out more bills that will affect everyone on U.S. soil. It's important to make it clear to Rep. Harman's Subcommittee that testimony which has no basis in fact will be challenged every step of the way, before legislation is drawn up that makes outlaws out of what one Committee considers "conspiracy theorists". I urge anyone who has questions about 9/11, anyone who wants to see a new investigation, to write to the Subcommittee and let them know, if I may quote the Big Lebowski, "This agression will not stand... man."

November 16, 2007

U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Homeland Security
176 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Att: Jane Harman, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment.

Dear Jane Harman,

As Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment (Committee on Homeland Security) I want to bring to your attention what appears to me a troubling tendency by two of the witnesses that testified at the November 6, 2007 Hearing, “Using the Web as a Weapon: the Internet as a Tool for Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism”. I hereby submit this open letter to you, cc'ed to the Subcommittee.

Nov 17, 2007

A Response to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Mark Weitzman
— Richard Gage, AIA and contributors

AE911Truth.org is extremely concerned about the recent portrayal of our peaceful organization and website by the Simon Wiesenthal Center alongside Taliban militant websites at the recent "Homeland Security Hearing" hosted by Congresswoman Jane Harman. By implication we and other 9/11 Truth organizations are branded as terrorists. We are therefore actively pursuing non-legal and legal remedies. The following letter written to the SWC by John Stevenson is posted in order to also express our concern. We will post updates as events unfold. Thank you for your overwhelming show of support!

Richard Gage, AIA

(edited slightly for spelling, punctuation, formatting...)

From: Nila S.
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:48:07 -0800
To: All
Subject: A brilliant letter

Written, by a friend, to Mark Weitzman at the Simon Wiesenthal Center re: his efforts to equate 9/11 Truth with Terrorism. Should you need to, feel free to forward it verbatim to Weitzman, here:
mweitzman@swcny.com

Better yet, send it to every newspaper or media outlet you know. This really nails it dead center...

Dear Mr. Weitzman,

While I respect your efforts to prevent terrorism in all its forms, your suggestion that the 9/11 Truth Movement is in any way related to terror organizations, or could foment such interests, is ridiculous and dangerous.

The 9/11 Truth Movement is a non-violent effort by thousands (if not tens of thousands) of highly respected professionals in numerous areas of expertise (and potentially millions of other concerned citizens) to demand a legitimate and impartial investigation into the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks. There are countless weaknesses, flaws, and overt misrepresentations in the official account that are painfully obvious to those who actually KNOW something about the Systems and Material science involved in building collapse, as well as the numerous suspicious activities by government and various other domestic groups to suppress and even destroy evidence involved in this crime, for reasons at this point unknown. There are far too many important questions unanswered that can be answered with a legitimate investigation, rather than simply sweep this tragic crime under the rug. Is that what you suggest we do?

Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford (USMC, Ret) of Pilots for 9/11 Truth will be my guest on Dynamic Duo tomorrow, Thursday 11/15, 4-6 pm CT on http://www.gcnlive.com network 4.

Here is his letter protesting the misleading presentation made to the Homeland Security Subcommittee by Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center: http://www.911blogger.com/node/12505 :

[from Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford]

I am writing to protest the testimony and Powerpoint presentation by Mr. Mark Weitzman before the committee in which he conflated the presence of sites on the internet that question the U. S. Government-provided explanations for 9/11 with those you identify as associated with terrorism and Islamic extremism.

You very pointedly reference the site established by architects and engineers as an exemplar of such a site. In doing so, you have tarred with a very broad brush thousands of patriotic American citizens who have legitimate questions that have gone unanswered about events of that day and the Official Conspiracy Theory of the 19 alleged hijackers used to explain them.

Infowars Digg: http://digg.com/world_news/Wiesenthal_Center_presents_9_11_sites_alongside_radical_Jihadist_sites

CORRECTION: Bruce Hoffman is a former, not current RAND employee. Text corrected below.

On Tuesday, November 6, 2007, a House Homeland Security Subcommittee had a hearing on "Terrorism and the Internet".* The hearing featured presentations from several groups, including a former employee of the RAND Corporation, and Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The hearing was chaired by Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, and ranking Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert.

Toward the end of the hearing, Weitzman rolls out a PowerPoint presentation that presents a few 9/11 truth sites sandwiched in between websites that offer training in terrorist tactics, and a website that glorified the attack of 9/11. Among the websites presented under the heading "Internet: Incubator of 9/11 Conpiracies and Disinformation", are Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and other sites, such as Killtown's, who brought this Hearing to our attention.

Now, we wouldn't want anybody getting the wrong idea here. Here at 911blogger we are opposed to any and all terrorist activities, including STATE SPONSORED TERRORISM. Don't really care who the state is either. It's all bad.

Californians, if Harman is your representative, please set her straight. Washington state, if Reichert is your critter, don't let him absorb this crap with no static.

CSPAN has been more than fair to 9/11 skeptics. Last year they broadcast Alex Jones' American Scholars Symposium, in 2005, they broadcast David Ray Griffin, and they will probably listen to feedback regarding this broadcast.

View the hearing as a video stream here -- the pertinent section begins at the 43:31 mark, but I recommend watching the entire program, because there is so much disinformation in the broadcast itself, it's hard to know where to begin unraveling it.

Homeland Security - Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=202123-1

Please ask the Simon Wiesthenthal Center (Mark Weitzman in particular) to stop conflating terrorist violence with 9/11 truth, and even though he has not extended the courtesy to us, be polite;

mweitzman@swcny.com

* Exact Hearing title: "Using the Web as a Weapon: the Internet as a Tool for Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism"