Mummy Mummy What Does a Hack Look like?

Update below.

Well sweetheart, there are those that come in tins . .

and there are those that don't.

And there are some that come all singing, all dancing.

And it is of the all singing, all dancing, that we are going to take a little look at today.

Now unless you have been living in a MSM newsroom (BBC included) for the last fourteen years, you may have come to your own conclusion, that there is something not quite kosher with the official narrative as to what happened on that world changing day, the day of America's new Pearl Harbour, September 11 2001.  

Far beit for me to set before you examples gleaned from the terabytes of data already writ on the subject, your tent is already pitched in the reality camp, or it is pitched in the official camp,the camp where our two featured hacks are firmly ensconced. What ever you may believe, it is not my purpose here today, to try and convince you otherwise. Rather it is to look at some of research claims, and integrity if you wish, of our chosen hacks, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.

The Truth is Out There

Saturday, September 10, 2011
By Jonathan deBurca Butler

Pile upon pile of files are laid out on the floor or hastily stacked up on the writing desk.

The only dash of colour is the pink and yellow post-it-notes that peek out from the heaving folders. Some carry obscure reference numbers, others recognisable words like ‘Taliban’, ‘Clinton’, and ‘Al Qaeda’.

Stuck to the frame of a large, light-giving window is a pleasant, black-and-white photo of the couple smiling. Below it is the cover of their latest book, The Eleventh Day, with the dramatic picture of the vomiting explosion that followed the crashing of American Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of The World Trade Center at 9.03am on September 11, 2001.

Their study-library is the type of room for which an anxious parent might scold an obsessively studious teenage child. In the case of Summers and Swan, it is the other way around.

“Every night, we come back into the house, sit down at the dinner table [with their three teenage children] and start talking about September 11,” says Swan. “And then Tony looks up at me and says to the children, ‘We’re not going to talk about the book now.’ And they don’t believe us.”

For the last five years, from their base and home near Cappoquin in Co Waterford, Summers and Swan have been investigating and writing about the most infamous day in modern history.

It has been a tough slog. Summers, who was born in London and whose father was from Kerry, has lived in the area since 1973. Having worked for the BBC in war zones, he was offered the opportunity to write a book on the Romanovs in the early 1970s, which he thought “might earn enough to get me a new car.” It topped the bestsellers list and afforded him the choice of his own work. Several successful books followed; later, while researching a book on J Edgar Hoover, in Washington, Summers met Swan, who was then working for The London Independent.

“Well, Tony hired me to be his researcher,” says Swan. “He claimed it was going to be two weeks’ worth of work. And it ended up being two years. And when he could no longer afford to pay me, he offered to marry me.”

Swan, who was born and raised in Connecticut, says that moving from the capital of the USA to the somewhat more easygoing and sleepy Waterford countryside was a culture shock.

“Moving from a big city, where everything was happening, to the back-of-nowhere was hard,” she says. “But now I treasure the back-of-nowhere and I wouldn’t change it. I’m never, ever sorry that I did it.”

The couple’s home is situated opposite an early 19th century castle, on the River Blackwater. In this somewhat idyllic setting, they have worked on numerous books and biographies, including Official and Confidential: The Secret Lives of J Edgar Hoover and The Arrogance of Power: The Secret Life of Richard Nixon.

In the era of 24-hour-news, quick-fix facts and panting, speculative conclusions, Summers and Swan stand out as champions of old-school journalism based on diligence and digging around.

Really?  champions of old-school journalism based on diligence and digging around.

“It’s no longer feasible to spend the amount of time that we would typically spend on a book anymore,” says Swan. “This book we turned out more quickly [than usual], although it still took the guts of five years. But, you can’t have it both ways. And this is a product of the internet. The problem with the internet is that they expect you to turn out beautiful copy that’s new, and breaks news while sitting in your house doing nothing except reading other stories on the internet.

 Quite.

“But that’s not how good journalism is done. We go down the road, we interview people, we read thousands of documents and spend a lot of time on the phone, but at the end of the day we have to think, we produce the goods.”

Ah so! That's how it's done is it?.  But that’s not how good journalism is done. We go down the road, we interview people*

 We go down the road, we interview people* Do you really? I'm glad you've cleared that one up. But pray forgive me if I mark this lesson in good journalism with a small * Should I forget.

As for producing the goods, might you afford me the question; for whom?

In the case of The Eleventh Day, they most certainly do. It is a compelling (and often harrowing) read from start to finish and with 116 pages of notes and sources listed at the end, it is clear that this tome was a labour of love for both writers.

“We saw that all sorts of sane people were actually confused,” says 68-year-old Summers. “And what we do for a living is take controversial cases or people, and as an old friend of mine used to say, pick them up by their ankles and shake them to see what change comes out. So it sounds like a cliché, but we were trying to get at that elusive thing called ‘something like the truth’.”

Confused are they? Poor souls. ‘something like the truth’ But the actual truth?

One of the strongest aspects of this investigation is how it debunks the conspiracy theorists; people and academics who believe that the Bush administration was involved with the attacks. “We thought we’d poke around and see what we got,” says Summers. “And, in the end, we found nothing. And, really, the conspiracy theorists’ theories do not stand up, they’re not backed by the evidence. And it has blurred a whole lot of it that is serious.”

By academics, am I to assume that includes Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth? One of the strongest aspects of this investigation is how it debunks the conspiracy theorists; people and academics But you are probably right, there being only 2,343 of them and two of you.

“And, in the end, we found nothing. Fancy! And, really, the conspiracy theorists’ theories do not stand up, they’re not backed by the evidence. No? But then that's the trouble with conspiracy theorists (and haters) all the trouble they go to, when all they have to do is read one of your books. Aren't they silly?

“We felt that we owed it to these people who were looking at the internet and reading these [conspiracy] books to turn the whole thing upside down and subject it to hard treatment,” says Swan.

 We felt that we owed it to these people who were looking at the internet and reading Your altruism knows no bounds.

That hard treatment does not in any way let the Bush administration off the hook. The administration comes across as incompetent, hot-headed, and, in the case of facing down Iraq but never asking questions of other more-economically powerful Arab states, frightened.

Within hours of the attacks, the administration, much to the disbelief of high-ranking intelligence agents, was targeting Iraq. It was later proved that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks on September 11. Indeed, Osama bin Laden despised the Iraqi leader.

The chapters dealing with bin Laden show him to be a complex character; at one moment intelligent and charismatic, at others a childish bully, but always a religious zealot. The book also reveals that the intelligence agencies knew of the arrival of one, if not two, of the terrorists before the attacks, but failed to act.

There are insights into chief terrorist Mohamed Atta and the other 18 self-proclaimed martyrs and it becomes abundantly clear that their motive was Palestine — something Summers says “people in the States need to understand.”

“We want people to read this book because, to be quite honest, this was a cataclysmic event for the world,” says Swan.

We want people to read this book You don't say? You wanted people to read another of your books quite recently, how did that work out for you?

“It has shaped all of our lives. It has shaped the lives of our children and it will continue to do so. And they should have their lives shaped by the truth, as far as we can know it. People should know what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of, and know what the lessons are from this and not have them peddled by an administration or by fantasists.”

 The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan is published by Random House Irish Examiner

And now a little look at what set the ball rolling. The audio clip I had listened to previously, but it wasn't until my colleague and researcher, Maren, a lady from the Netherlands, came up with the article, did the whole thing come together.

Answers on a postage stamp please.

Sometimes it's what you don't do that speaks volumes. Or in this particular instance, it's not what's there that's telling, rather it's what isn't there that screams from the rooftops.

The blog of Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan Where you will be rather hard pressed to find any mention of:

Odd that.



Update: Where to begin?

Perhaps by stating that when I opined about the rubbish some people write, it was at the time, without association to our chosen subjects, Summers and Swan.

Let me set the tone.

Further our discussion on the properties of aircraft aluminium.

People do write some shite.

In the case of the 757 that hit the Pentagon, one wing hit the building and the other was forced off by the impact with the building’s load-bearing columns. The remains of the plane then entered into the building in a state “closer to a liquid than a solid mass.”

Close to a liquid than a solid mass. Utter shite in fact. It's not a pie tin from the corner shop we are talking about, it's aircraft Aluminium. For want of a better but less technical description, it's as hard as fuckin' iron.

To cut a long story short, the scribbler of said merde, non other than establishment shills for 9/11, Popular Mechanics.

Debunking Popular Mechanics: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth link

Popular Mechanics' Assault on 9/11: Truth 9/11 Research.net link

Although at the end of the piece, I did utter this tongue-in-cheek remark:

 Can’t help but wonder how much of the content of Summers and Swan book is attributable to Popular Mechanics?

So dear reader, if you have managed to guess what's coming and think there may be a prize for doing such? Sorry, we don't give out prizes for easy peasy.

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - The Pentagon

Mete Sozen: Why wasn't the hole as wide as a 757's 124-ft.-10-in. wingspan? A crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University. In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon's load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings. What was left of the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass. "If you expected the entire wing to cut into the building," Sozen tells PM, "it didn't happen." Popular Mechanics

No, but you might expect a few broken widows in the area of impact. Which of course, there were none.

Truthers and Consequences: The Trouble with Dean Hartwell’s “Perspective”

Turning to the crash of American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon, Hartwell complains that we do not say at what time the mangled debris – some with AA markings – “arrived” on the Pentagon lawn. The Eleventh Day, however, contains several eyewitness accounts of an American Airlines plane crashing into the Pentagon, as well as a detailed explanation of the disintegration of the plane on impact by the respected engineering professor Mete Sozen. Even a casual reading of this information makes it obvious that it was after this impact that the debris arrived – to use Hartwell’s word – on the Pentagon lawn. Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan

Nice quote. Nice research.

And you wonder why your work of fiction on Madeleine McCann was pulled to pieces?

Try being less of a hack.

As well as.



A sweeping flourish of the bonnet to Maren. Research.