The chapters

THEY
don't want you to read
This whole doc is ©Brian Dunning
www.briandunning.com
Welcome to the missing parts of my book.
Hello, Brian Dunning here, author of Conspiracies Declassified (2018) from
Adams Media, a Simon & Schuster imprint.
The publisher was making a series of books: 50 of this, 50 of that. They wanted
one on 50 popular conspiracies, so they called me, as I have some currency in
that field, having hosted the Skeptoid podcast now for over 13 years.
The book became Conspiracies Declassified, with 50 of the most common
conspiracy theories. One of the first questions they asked me during
development was whether I'd be able to think of 50. "Well, let's see," I said,
and did an export from the Skeptoid database of episodes in that category. That
produced over 200 results; 200 conspiracy theories I'd already done podcast
episodes on. It was going to be an exercise not in coming up with 50, but in
whittling down to 50.
The publisher did not wish to be politically controversial, which I was fine
with. But they also wanted to avoid things like 9/11 Truthism and Holocaust
denial — again, to avoid being controversial. I told them those are the Holy
Grail of conspiracy theories, and that the book would have no credibility if
they were excluded. There would be conspiracy theories about the book! We
would be charged with being "on the payroll" of "Big Government" to deny
that alternate claims of 9/11 and WWII even existed.
In the end, I got most of what I wanted into the book, and I'm very happy
with it. The chapters in this document were excluded because they were either
about 9/11 or about Hitler. Conspiracies Declassified does include a chapter on
Holocaust denial, and it does include a chapter on the building collapses of
9/11. They are condensed from the much broader treatment I felt was most
appropriate.
But here they are, for your enjoyment: the chapters they don't want you to
read.
Part XX: 9/11 CONSPIRACY THEORIES
The events of September 11, 2001, changed the world more than any other
single date in history. It was perhaps the most dramatic day in the lives of
many people worldwide. It had all the elements of sensationalism: death,
destruction, both courage and cowardice, consequences that affected so many
aspects of our lives, and a narrative suggesting an almost unbelievable
vulnerability of the world's most powerful nation. It was a virtual certainty
that conspiracy theories would arise.
The 9/11 conspiracy theories sit in a class by themselves. They are so
passionately believed by their adherents that science writers who debunk
them routinely receive death threats. The idea that the United States
government was either directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, or allowed
them to happen, is believed by almost half of Americans, a number which
grows slowly over time. In Islamic countries, the prevailing theory is that
Israel is responsible, an idea that has small but growing support in the United
States. 9/11 conspiracy theories represent cognitive dissonance in our culture
like no other.
Chapter XX: WTC Building 7
Hours after the twin towers fell, World Trade Center Building 7, which had
not been struck by a plane, collapsed all on its own, in an obvious controlled
demolition.
• Date: September 11, 2001
• Location: New York, NY
• The Conspirators: The US government
• The Victims: The American public

The Theory
When the twin towers collapsed on the morning of September 11, 2001, after
burning for several hours, debris was hurled all over the surrounding area.
After nearby buildings had all been evacuated, 7 World Trade Center was
found to be on fire. Firefighters fought it for some time, but at one point, they
all made a coordinated exit and left it to burn unfought. Shortly thereafter, the
entire building collapsed in a manner that looked exactly like a controlled
demolition. It also collapsed exactly in its own footprint so as not to damage
other buildings nearby; again, consistent with a controlled demolition.
After the collapse, the debris was quickly removed so it could not be tested or
examined.
As the building had not suffered significant structural damage either by debris
from the twin towers or by fire, a controlled demolition by the government is
the best explanation for its spontaneous self-destruction. The motive probably
involved the many city, state, and federal offices located within the building.
The Truth
Heavily damaged by debris from the collapse of the twin towers, Building 7
caught on fire in multiple places, burned unfought for several hours, and could
not be saved by firefighters. It collapsed after several hours of weakening.

The History
Charges of conspiracy began almost immediately after the building collapsed,
but they didn't have much traction because they really only looked at the
manner of the building's collapse, with little corroborating evidence of a
controlled demolition. It wasn't until January 2004 that conspiracy theorists
got what they were really looking for, when PBS rebroadcast a 2002
documentary called America Rebuilds.
Larry Silverstein was the owner of building 7 and owner of the lease on the
rest of the World Trade Center complex. In the PBS program, he recounted a
phone call he received from the fire department commander as they were
fighting the fires that raged in the building. The firemen had reported
structural groaning and an ominous bulge on the building's exterior between
the 10th and 13th floors. Fearing an imminent collapse, the commander
recommending pulling the battalion out of the building. Silverstein recounted:
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 then we watched the building
collapse."
It is his phrase "Pull it" that conspiracy theorists claim is proof that the
building was deliberately demolished, based on their claim that it is a common
phrase in the demolition industry meaning to trigger the explosives. Thus,
their basic narrative is that a government conspiracy led by President George
W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld organized everything and
had the building somehow surreptitiously wired with explosives. Then, on the
day of the attack, the plan was to place the actual go/no-go decision into the
hands of the building's owner (the reason for this has never been convincingly
argued), and to have him then go on national television and reveal to the
world that the demolition had been deliberate.
The Science
Much of the difficulty with the controlled demolition conspiracy theory lies in
its fundamental logic. If the overall purpose of the entire 9/11 event was to
serve as a false flag attack and rally Americans to support a war against the
Middle East, presumably to secure its oil, then it would be necessary to make
Americans think that Middle Eastern terrorists were responsible. However, in
the conspiracy theory narrative, they believe the plan included giving Larry
Silverstein the ultimate authority, and then to announce to the world that they
had done it themselves.
Fortunately, that irrational plan does not seem to be what took place. For one
thing, despite the many, many claims by conspiracy theorists that "pull it"
means to trigger a controlled demolition, a direct inquiry to Controlled
Demolition, Inc. (the world's largest demolition contractor) revealed that they
have never used that term for triggering a demolition, nor have they ever
heard it used elsewhere in the industry.
A typical preparation to demolish a building with explosives can take several
months to a year, depending on the size of the building. Shaped charges have
to be precisely positioned on the structural members themselves, which
means stripping away the insulation and any surrounding walls. Many
hundreds of these would be required on a building of this size. Obviously, this
was not done, or the people who worked in the building would have obviously
noticed the massive construction project throughout the building over the
preceding year. Some conspiracy theorists have asserted that the building was
constructed with the explosives already in place. It was built between 1980
and 1987, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies. So this seems unlikely.
When the building did collapse, despite the vast noise on the Internet
claiming that it looked exactly like a controlled demolition, it actually didn't.
It did in only one respect: that it accordioned more or less straight down,
compared to toppling over sideways. But there are at least two irreconcilable
differences between what building 7 did and what a controlled demolition
does. First and most obvious was the total lack of triggering explosions. A
timed sequence of explosions throughout the building first severs minor
supports throughout, then a second round of larger explosions takes out the
major supports in a specific order. All of these explosions are large and very
much visible on the outside of the building. Building 7's collapse lacked these,
completely; therefore its structural members were not cut when it fell.
Second, a controlled demolition is indeed usually intended to fall within its
own footprint, as it would be in a city environment like this one to avoid
damage to neighboring buildings. To accomplish this, the center section is
often dropped first, so that it can pull the ends inward and downward on top
of it. Alternately, one end might be dropped first, which then pulls the rest of
the building down domino-like. But in the building 7 collapse, the whole
building dropped at once, with no control over where it might go. You can
view all the controlled demolition videos online that you want; you will not
find a single one that uses such an "all at once" method. Controlled
demolitions are much more... "controlled".
They also do tend to fall in their own footprint; at least, they do if all goes
well. That was not the case with building 7. The videos of its collapse show it
dropping straight down, but you're only seeing the top part of it. What you
don't see is that as it piled up at the bottom, it did major damage to the
Verizon building, costing $1.4 billion to repair; and to Manhattan Community
College's Fiterman Hall building, which was totaled and its remains had to be
dismantled.
So, in fact, the collapse of building 7 did not look or happen anything like a
controlled demolition. And as the best theory suggesting that it was a
conspiracy is crippled by a fatal logic flaw, combined with a lack of any
evidence of a controlled demolition, plus a dearth of either office workers or
construction workers coming forward with evidence of the building being
rigged to blow, we can safely dismiss any hint of validity that this particular
conspiracy theory might have ever had.

References
9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission Report. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc, 2004.
Byles, Jeff. Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition. New York: Three Rivers
Press, 2005.
Eagar, Thomas W; Musso, Christopher. "Why did the world trade center
collapse? Science, engineering, and speculation." Journal of the Minerals, Metals,
and Materials Society. 1 Dec. 2001, Volume 53, Number 12: 8-11.
Hoffman, Jim. "WTC7.net the hidden story of Building 7: What Caused
Building 7's Collapse?" WTC7.net. WTC7.net, 25 Jan. 2007. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.
<http://wtc7.net/collapsecause.html>
McAllister, Therese (editor). World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data
Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations. Washington DC:
FEMA, 2002.
Sunder, S., Gann, R., Grosshandler, W., Lew, H., Bukowski, R., Sadek, F.,
Gayle, F., Gross, J., McAllister, T., Averill, J., Lawson, J., Nelson, H.,
Cauffman, S. NIST NCSTAR 1A: Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center
Building 7. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008.
Chapter XX: Flight 93
Flight 93, the hijacked United Airlines Boeing 757 en route to the White
House on 9/11, was intentionally shot down by American aircraft.
• Date: September 11, 2001
• Location: Somerset County, Pennsylvania
• The Conspirators: The US government
• The Victims: The American public

The Theory
While two hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers in New York City and
a third struck the Pentagon, a fourth was allegedly on its way to crash into the
White House in Washington DC. This was United Airlines Flight 93. It
crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. The government wove us an elaborate
story about heroic private citizens aboard the plane who rushed the hijackers
in an attempt to retake control and fly the plane into the ground if they had to,
to prevent it being used as a weapon as had the other planes. One famously
said "Let's roll" as he hung up the phone while speaking with a GTE phone
operator. Soon after, the plane crashed. The heroes had indeed saved the day.
But this government-created fantasy is completely made up, in order to drive
greater feelings of patriotism and support for their war on the Middle East. In
fact, what happened is simply that the government scrambled an American
fighter jet and shot the plane down, allowing them the freedom to invent their
elaborate story of heroism.

The Truth
Although unarmed fighter planes did attempt to intercept Flight 93, the plane
was driven into the terrain and crashed before they could reach it.
The History
With all the events taking place simultaneously in three different states on the
morning of 9/11, broadcasters had trouble keeping up. Live news reports
came in and were broadcast before they could be fact checked. This added to
the confusion, and it's little wonder that on that day, few people knew exactly
what was happening where.
Luckily, after the pilots aboard Flight 93 had stabbed and injured, both
remained alive for a time. They made two important adjustments to the
controls. They disabled the autopilot, making it impossible or difficult for the
hijackers to set a course for Washington DC; and they changed the settings on
the intercom so that anything the hijackers attempted to say to the passengers
would instead be transmitted to air traffic control. Thanks to this action, and
in combination with the cockpit voice recorders and the telephone calls made
by passengers and crew to the ground, we soon developed a fairly complete
picture of everything that took place on that plane over a 35-minute period
between the hijacking and the crash. This includes the discussion and voting
that took place aboard the plane when making the decision to rush the
hijackers.
The following three points are among those most often raised by the
conspiracy theorists, and offered as proof that the government's version of
events cannot be what took place:
• A mysterious white jet was seen circling the crash site shortly afterward.
Conspiracy theorists charge that this was probably a military plane that had
just shot it down. Even though fighter planes are not painted white, it could
have been a government business jet, perhaps from Customs, which
conspiracy theorists claim can be easily armed and could have been made
ready in advance. Or perhaps it could have even made an electronic attack,
scrambling the 757's avionics.
• Debris was found fluttering down from the sky 6 miles away at Indian Lake,
proving that an explosion took place in the sky 8 miles before the crash.
This would prove the government's account of the plane crashing is a lie.
Either it was shot down with an exploding missile, or it exploded from a
bomb onboard.
• There is allegedly a three-minute discrepancy in the times given for the
crash. Analysis of the flight data recorder and some air traffic controllers
give a crash time of 10:03, while seismometer data and other air traffic
controllers give a crash time of 10:06. Conspiracy theorist say this proves
the plane was struck by a missile at 10:30, and the bulk of the fuselage
crashed at 10:06.

The Science
Before 9/11, fighter jets in the continental US did not sit at the ready at all
times armed, as they are now. It is a simple matter to verify this fact. Thus,
when in the midst of all the confusion, a pair of F-16 fighters from the 121st
Fighter Squadron of the DC Air National Guard were scrambled, they had to
go up unarmed. It was either go up now, or wait several hours to be armed for
combat. Everyone knew this last option was impossible.
The pilots, Sasseville and Penney, attempted to intercept Flight 93. By now
they knew what had taken place in New York and Washington DC, and were
well aware that they would likely be ordered to bring down the airliner.
Without weapons on board, they would have had to do this by ramming their
fighters into the big jet, taking out its wings or control surfaces and forcing it
to crash. Both were prepared to do so, even though it would be suicide. They
never reached the plane; it crashed before they could, and they were ordered
to return to base.
But could the conspiracy claims be true, that Sasseville and/or Penney
actually did successfully get off a missile and destroy Flight 93? Let's look at
what would be required to cover up a shootdown. Missiles are not inexpensive
and are not handled haphazardly or carelessly. They are meticulously tracked
and inventoried. Taking one out of inventory and arming a plane with it, even
if done under clandestine orders, would still trigger both military and civilian
audits of missile counts. It would be impossible to hide from the aircraft's
maintenance crew. The pilot, any other pilots on the ground, all air traffic
controllers, and all witnesses on the ground within a radius of many miles,
would all be well aware of the firing of a missile. Any one of the hundreds of
investigators on the ground at the crash site, which included civilians, could
have picked up a missile fragment.
This is all in addition to the air traffic control radar tracks that prove the F-16s
never got remotely within missile range of Flight 93.
So let's have a look at the conspiracy theorists' other points:
• The white jet seen circling the crash site was a Dassault Falcon 20 owned by
a private company, VF Corp. Air traffic controllers, seeing that it was in the
vicinity of the crash site, asked it to divert and pinpoint the location, which
they did at an altitude of as low as 1500 feet, and then continued along
their way. This is what witnesses saw. There are no known or theorized
"electronic weapons" that can knock out an enemy plane's avionics and
force it to crash, leaving the attacking plane's untouched, so this theory is a
bit far fetched. Theorists can claim that the VF Corp. pilots are lying, but
the fact remains is that all existing evidence supports that this is what
happened.
• Debris was indeed found at Indian Lake, but only very light bits of paper
and metal foil. It is located exactly 1.5 miles downwind of the crash site
(not 6 miles), so this is exactly what would be expected of the lightest
debris launched skyward from the massive explosion. The wind direction
roughly matched the direction of the plane's travel, so if this mysterious
secondary debris field was the result of an explosion from 3 minutes before
the plane crashed, it would have been upwind of the crash site, not
downwind.
• The 3-minute discrepancy turns out not to exist. There were a few initial
reports of crash times that differed from the official crash time of 10:03
(10:06 and 10:10 were also reported) but all were soon retracted. All the
available reliable sources, such as infrared satellite readings, concur with
the 10:03 crash time. The seismic readings were all from very distant
seismometers, and the signals were deemed to be too weak compared to the
background noise to positively correlate with the crash.
The grounds of the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, PA are open
365 days a year from sunrise to sunset.
References
9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission Report. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc, 2004.
Dunbar, D., Regan, B. Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand
Up to the Facts. New York: Hearst Books, 2006.
Heltzel, Bill, Gibb, Tom. "2 planes had no part in crash of Flight 93." Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. 16 Sep. 2001, Newspaper: A.10.
NTSB. "DCA01MA060." National transportation safety board. US Government, 3
Jul. 2006. Web. 19 Oct. 2009. <http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?
ev_id=20020123X00103&key=1>
Wagner, M., McCall, K. "Plane Damaged Before Crash." Dayton Daily News. 14
Sep. 2001, Newspaper: 6A.
Chapter XX: Hitler's Antarctic Fortress
Nazi Germany's Third Reich survived the war and retreated to a secret
Antarctic fortress where they thrived until their 1958 destruction by nuclear
attack.
• Date: 1938 - 1958
• Location: Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
• The Conspirators: The Nazi regime
• The Victims: World War II Allied forces

The Theory
After World War II ended, the world believed the Nazis had been vanquished;
but in fact, elements of the Nazi regime had already set up a safe base in
Antarctica. They called it New Berchtesgaden. Even during the war, the Nazis
used this base to develop some of their top secret weapons, possibly using
alien technology they'd discovered deep underground near a warm
geothermal lake. The British discovered the Nazi base in 1943 and made a
failed assault against it called Operation Tabarin. In 1946, the Americans
made a second attempt, called Operation Highjump. Finally, in 1958, New
Berchtesgaden was destroyed with a volley of three nuclear weapons launched
by Operation Argus.

The Truth
The few isolated historical events that imaginative authors have tried to string
together into the New Berchtesgaden narrative actually had nothing to do
with each other, and no Nazi boots ever landed on Antarctica for more than a
few minutes.
The History
This is a particularly fascinating conspiracy theory, not only for its
adventurous imagery, but also for the way in which it developed. The tale
began in 1945 when the war ended. Nazi submarines were ordered to
surrender, but some of them didn't believe the order or were afraid to
surrender fearing prosecution for war crimes. As a result, a number of them
were slow to turn themselves in. One of these was U-530, which surrendered
in Argentina a full two months after the end of the war.
Ladislav Szabo was a Hungarian reporter who had exiled to Argentina during
the war, and reported on U-530's late arrival for the local paper La Critica.
During those two months, conspiracy theories had already begun to spread
that Hitler had not died in Berlin, but had in fact survived and escaped. Szabo
was among the early proponents of the belief that Hitler had used one of these
late U-boats to escape to South America. But where had he gone? Researching
for his article, Szabo learned about a German expedition to Antarctica in 1938
conducted by a ship called the Schwabenland with two flying boats. Connecting
all the dots, and using his own notions of submarine travel times, Szabo
became convinced that the U-530 had taken Hitler to the Antarctic base
established in 1938, then proceeded back up to Argentina to surrender. This
was the substance of his article for La Critica.
A month after Szabo's article, yet another Nazi submarine, the U-977, sailed
into Argentina, which seemed to offer concrete proof that the Nazis were
operating a busy convoy back and forth to Antarctica. The theory began to be
taken seriously by some.
Szabo expanded his theory into a full length book called Hitler est Vivant
(Hitler is Alive) published in Paris. This time he included even more history
that he'd uncovered, most notably a 1943 incursion into Antarctica by the
British called Operation Tabarin. Collecting whatever scraps of information
he could unearth, Szabo wove them into a tale of a British assault against the
Nazi base which failed. The Nazis were well established and supplied, while
the meager British force was remote and unsupported.
Szabo also learned about the American Operation Highjump in 1946, a large-
scale incursion into Antarctica involving thirteen ships, 4700 men, and 33
aircraft. Szabo noted that several aircraft were destroyed in the combat, and
that the Americans, like the British, eventually gave up. By the time Szabo
published his book, it would seem that New Berchtesgaden was well
entrenched.
The 1958 detonation of three nuclear weapons as part of Operation Argus was
added to the story by later authors, although like the other operations, it was a
very real event. In fact pretty much everything that Szabo and his fellow
writers discovered was true. So must the story of the Nazi Antarctic fortress be
factual?

The Science
The first clue that this story cannot be true as told has to do with the Nazi
submarines. Neither U-530's nor U-977's type had any ability to break through
ice, and reaching Queen Maud Land at that time of year would have required a
2000-km round trip journey under the ice. This would have been a nine or ten
day trip for a submarine, and subs needed to surface at least every two days to
run their diesels to recharge batteries and collect air for the crew to breathe.
The fact is that neither U-530 nor U-977 could have gone to Antarctica. Their
logs had been jettisoned, but from debriefings of their crew, we do know
where they actually were during those months. Like many other German subs,
they were waiting to be sure the surrender was real, and they cautiously went
to ports where they felt they would be fairly treated.
Szabo had either honestly misinterpreted actual events, or he had deliberately
created a sensational story as was common for reporters of the day. It started
with the 1938 voyage of the Schwabenland which was part of Germany's four
year economic development plan, and was to assist their whaling interests in
the South Atlantic. It sailed to Queen Maud Land, and its two flying boats did
make important aerial surveys. But with the exception of three brief landings
by dinghy, not a single Nazi boot ever touched Antarctica. More expeditions
were planned, but were canceled with the outbreak of war.
Operation Tabarin was also real but had little to do with the Schwabenland's
voyage five years earlier. Operation Tabarin consisted of a grand total of
thirteen men, mostly scientists, who set up three small research stations about
2500 km away from Queen Maud Land. It was nominally scientific, but
actually political. Its true purpose was to establish a territorial claim, as a
minor strategic point of the war.
The much larger Operation Highjump was conducted by the Americans after
the war, and Szabo was correct in pointing out that there were casualties. But
he was incorrect in his assertion that they were combat casualties. Any time
you have 4700 men in a dangerous place like Antarctica with dangerous
military equipment for six months, you're going to have accidents. Three men
did die in a plane crash, and a fourth died when he was run over by a
steamroller on the ice.
Operation Highjump had a number of goals, primarily the establishment of a
permanent base on the Ross ice shelf, and also to gain general experience
operating in polar conditions. The American military had become increasingly
concerned about attacks coming from over the poles, exactly as we now know
that this is precisely how missiles and bombers will typically go. As for
battling apocryphal Nazi fortresses located exactly on the opposite end of the
continent, there is no mention of this in the stated objectives.
Finally we come to Operation Argus, the alleged nuclear attack that some
believe finally destroyed New Berchtesgaden. In 1958 the United States
nuclear weapons program was at full throttle. Under cover of the International
Geophysical Year, three nuclear weapons tests were conducted. The theory
being tested was that extreme high-altitude nuclear explosions might create
temporary, artificial radiation belts that could be used to disrupt an enemy's
communication. Three weapons were detonated at high altitude, carried aloft
by missiles, over the South Atlantic south of Cape Town, South Africa. The
closest to Queen Maud Land was 2400 km away, leaving any Antarctic Nazis
quite safe. The program has since been declassified and can be examined in full
detail. Additionally, ice core analysis has proven that no nuclear weapons have
ever been exploded near Queen Maud Land.
So it is indeed a fascinating tale, well worthy of a Captain America comic
book. But as far as being real history goes, the Nazi Antarctic fortress is frozen
in its tracks.
References
Haddelsey, S. Operation Tabarin: Britain's Secret Wartime Expedition to Antarctica
1944-46. London: Telegraph Books, 2014.
Sapienza, L. "George One/Operation Highjump Crew Recovery." Antarctic
History. South-Pole.com, 5 Dec. 1998. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. <http://www.south-
pole.com/p0000150.htm>
Soniak, M. "Hitler on Ice: Did the Nazis Have a Secret Antarctic Fortress?"
Mental Floss. Felix Dennis, 19 Mar. 2012. Web. 9 Feb. 2017. <http://
mentalfloss.com/article/30249/hitler-ice-did-nazis-have-secret-antarctic-
fortress>
Summerhayes, C., Beeching, P. "Hitler's Antarctic Base: the Myth and the
Reality." Polar Record. 1 Jan. 2007, Volume 43, Issue 1: 1-21.
Szabo, L. Hitler est Vivant. Paris: SFELT, 1947.
Wellerstein, A. "Declassifying ARGUS (1959)." Restricted Data: The Nuclear
Secrecy Blog. Alex Wellerstein, 23 May 2012. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. <http://
blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/23/weekly-document-declassifying-
argus-1959/>
Chapter XX: Hitler in South America
Hitler escaped Berlin and traveled to Argentina on a German U-boat, where
he lived happily to an old age.
• Date: 1945 - ?
• Location: Argentina
• The Conspirators: Adolf Hitler & confidants
• The Victims: Mossad

The Theory
The evidence that Hitler's body was not recovered in Berlin, and that he
traveled to Argentina about the submarine U-530, and that he lived to an old
age, is overwhelming. Even the FBI has 742 pages of proof that Hitler lived in
and around Argentina after World War II ended. The one surviving piece of
Hitler's corpse, a skull fragment in Soviet archives, was proven in 2009 by
DNA testing to be from a woman. But what really seals the case is the story of
U-530, the submarine which, after Germany surrendered, went back to
Germany, picked up Hitler and his wife Eva Braun who had escaped their
Berlin bunker via secret tunnels, then transported them to Argentina.
Witnesses saw a male and female civilian put ashore before the sub then went
into the harbor and surrendered.

The Truth
Adolf Hitler died by his own hand in Berlin in 1945. We have his remains. He
did not survive and did not go to South America.
The History
Much of that final day in Berlin comes to us through the narrative pieced
together by Maj. Hugh Trevor-Roper, an MI-5 intelligence officer assigned to
the duty. He interviewed the survivors from Hitler's bunker as well as the
Soviet troops who were first in. His investigation took two years to put
together a complete picture of everything that happened. Hitler and his
newlywed bride Eva Braun committed suicide in the famous underground
bunker. Their bodies were carried upstairs into the courtyard garden and
burned, several times. The Soviets were closing in all this time, and at least
one mortar shell partially destroyed the bodies even as the German officers
repeatedly set them aflame.
When the Soviets finally made it to the bunker, it was something of a party
atmosphere of looting and raiding the bunker's substantial alcohol stores.
Thirteen bodies, including Hitler and Braun, were haphazardly piled. Later
they were buried and reburied, and remains got mixed together and confused.
Smersh (Soviet counterintelligence) made repeated trips back to the
cremation site hunting for more evidence. No doubt, Hitler's remains were
indeed poorly handled.
It was two full months later that the U-530 made it to the Mar del Plata
submarine base in Argentina and threw open its hatches in surrender. Its logs
had been suspiciously jettisoned. All the Argentinian intelligence could do
was question the commander, Lt. Otto Wermuth, who of course could have
made up any lie he chose. Wermuth said they took their time because they
wanted to make sure the surrender order was real. They'd been northeast of
Puerto Rico when they received the surrender order, and that two months was
simply how long it took them to travel to Argentina, where they expected
better treatment than if they'd gone to the United States. The orders required
the subs to travel on the surface, but Wermuth ignored that order and traveled
submerged for their own safety; and U-boats of the day were far slower
submerged than they were on the surface.
One of the most interesting pieces of evidence, however, concerns a
photograph of an old man, analyzed in an episode of the History Channel's
shockumentary series Hunting Hitler. Investigators believed it to have been
taken in 1961 in South America. The episode largely focused on computer
analysis of the photo, and making careful digital comparisons of the
biometrics of the faces of both men. The conclusion was that it was almost
certainly Adolf Hitler himself, at age 72.

The Science
Let's look first at the FBI's 742 pages of evidence of Hitler living in Argentina.
While it's true that 742 pages exist and can be downloaded from the FBI's
Vault website, it's not true that it is evidence of Hitler surviving. What it is is
all the reports the FBI received over the years. Anytime anyone anywhere has
thought he's seen Hitler and reported it to the FBI, the FBI has been required
to take a report and file it away. That's all this collection consists of. The way I
recommend thinking of it is the same way you'd think of another document
set that's available from the same source: the 663 pages of Elvis sightings.
If I call the FBI and report that I just saw Kermit the Frog dancing the
Macarena on top of the Washington Monument, that report would end up in a
similar folder. It would have precisely the same validity of the 742 pages of
Hitler sightings.
The reports of a man and woman being put ashore by U-530 are all included in
these pages. One reason they're given little credibility is that all such reports
were made after the story of U-530 became public knowledge, which wasn't
until much later. There were no credible reports of anyone being put ashore
from the time that it would have happened.
Forensic proof that Hitler's corpse was the one recovered from the courtyard
in Berlin never hinged upon the strange skull fragment of unknown origins
from the Soviet intelligence archives, but upon the dental evidence. Hitler had
terrible teeth and very unusual dental work. He had missing teeth, crowns,
teeth that had grown into his jawbone, and a unique solid metal bridge. We
know all about this, because following a 1944 assassination attempt, five head
X-rays were taken -- which survive to this day -- because he was experiencing
chronic sinus problems.
Hitler's actual teeth are today on display in a Ukrainian museum. They had
been photographed and stored by Smersh since the war, and over the
intervening decades, had been examined by international odontological
experts multiple times. The most detailed explanation of the numerous non-
fakeable matches (such as the radiolucency of multiple teeth) was outlined in
a 1973 article published in Acta Odontologica Scandinavia. This proof alone
makes all other discussion about Hitler's fate moot. The certainty has always
met every legal and historical standard.
Lt. Wermuth's account of the U-530's two-month travel time turns out to be
mathematically correct. With the amount of fuel they had on board, it was
necessary to travel at a reduced (and more economical) speed to make it as far
as Argentina, which was a journey of some 5,000 nautical miles. During the
day, they traveled at 2 knots submerged on battery power; surfacing only at
night to recharge, when they motored at a reduced speed of 7.5 knots. It was
indeed a two-month journey. If they'd gone instead to Germany and then to
Argentina, a far greater distance, there is no way they could have made it in
that time period.
As for that photograph from the Hunting Hitler series? Once the episode aired,
fans of The Three Stooges immediately recognized it as a well-known photo of
Moe Howard, taken in the 1970s. We will charitably refrain from further
discussion of the rest of that season.
Did Hitler survive and live out his life in Argentina? It is safe to conclude that
he did not. All the evidence suggesting he did is of uselessly poor quality, and
the evidence that he died in Berlin as history tells us is beyond reasonable
dispute.

References
Colavito, J. "History Channel Thinks Moe Howard Might Be Hitler." Blog.
Jason Colavito. 1 Dec. 2016. Web. 24 Sep. 2017. <http://
www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/history-channel-thinks-moe-howard-might-be-
hitler-plus-micah-hankss-confusing-views-on-speculative-fiction>
Douglas, S. "The Search for Hitler: Hugh Trevor-Roper, Humphrey Searle,
and the Last Days of Adolf Hitler." The Journal of Military History. 1 Jan. 2014,
Volume 78, Number 1: 159-210.
Highfield, R. "Dental detective work gets to the root of Hitler mystery." The
Daily Telegraph. 26 Oct. 1999, Newspaper.
Joachimsthaler, A. The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, The Evidence, The Truth.
London: Arms and Armour Press, 1996.
Mullen, K. American Intelligence and the Question of Hitler’s Death. Columbus:
Ohio State University, 2014.
Sognnaes, R., Ström, F. "The odontological identification of Adolf Hitler."
Acta Odontologica Scandinavica. 1 Jan. 1973, Volume 31, Issue 1: 43-69.
Trevor-Roper, H. The Last Days of Hitler. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1947.
Chapter XX: Destruction of the Twin Towers
The twin towers of New York's World Trade Center were brought down not by
fire from airliners crashing into them, but were destroyed deliberately by the
government.
• Date: September 11, 2001
• Location: New York, NY
• The Conspirators: The US government
• The Victims: The American public

The Theory
Conventional wisdom states that on the morning of 9/11, two airliners
crashed into the World Trade Center towers, setting them both on fire. After
several hours, their steel structures softened and bent, bringing both towers
down catastrophically.
This is not what happened. It is not clear what (if anything) actually crashed
into the twin towers. Some evidence suggests the aircraft were holograms;
some suggests that they were military aircraft painted to look like airliners;
some suggests they were missiles. Regardless, it is impossible for fire to soften
steel to such a point as a building structure could be made to fail, so this
cannot be what happened. The towers collapsed at an impossibly fast
downward speed, faster than freefall; thus proving that whatever brought
them down was artificial and deliberate.

The Truth
When airliners loaded with jet fuel crashed into each of the twin hours,
several floors of them burned ferociously. It was necessary only for the
lightweight web joists to soften enough from the heat to bow slightly for the
entire structure to fail in a domino effect.
The History
As with so many national tragedies, claims of conspiracy started immediately.
The first was that 9/11 was perpetrated by Israel, in hopes of fomenting a holy
war against Islam. This began with a false story that 4,000 Jewish people
received warning not to report to their jobs at the World Trade Center and
were thus saved. In fact, they died along with their fellows of every nationality
and religion.
Within a few months the conspiracy theories had been woven into desperately
complex narratives implicating governments and individuals and money and
oil; everything was thrown into the pot, no matter how self-contradictory or
irrational, so long as it denied the actual events that everyone witnessed on
that day.
Even so many years after 9/11, the conspiracy community remains
surprisingly active. They are best represented by a website they created,
"Engineers & Architects for 9/11 Truth" at which over 30,000 conspiracy
theorists worldwide have signed a petition demanding that the events of 9/11
be re-investigated. Of these, some 11% self-report some engineering
background or education, though nearly all in irrelevant fields such as
software, audio, or web design. Of those few with relevant expertise that the
website highlights, nearly all can be searched on the web and found to also
promote other fringe conspiracies such as UFOs, fluoride, and chemtrails.
Suffice it to say that the main point communicated by their website is that
their view is far out on the fringe.

The Science
The main testable piece of evidence against the twin towers having collapsed
from fire alone is the claim that fire is not hot enough to melt steel. This is
true. Steel melts (liquifies) at 2750ºF, and testing of debris revealed that the
hottest it got inside the fire zones was 1832ºF. However, this is an irrelevant
point, because nobody has argued that it was necessary for the steel to actually
liquify in order for the buildings to lose their structural integrity. In needed
only to soften just enough to put it past its engineering threshold.
According to the American Institute of Steel Construction:
Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F, and at 1800°F it is
probably less than 10 percent.
However it was not even necessary for the steel to lose as much as 50% of its
strength. All that had to happen was for the steel to soften enough for any
girders to bend; and once the first beam buckled, nothing could have stopped
the collapse.
For centuries, blacksmiths have worked steel using far lower temperatures to
form it into any shape they want. Steel glows red and can be worked into
shape at only 560ºF, a tiny fraction of the heat inside the twin towers fires.
At least twice since 9/11, we've seen prominent steel-framed structures
collapse completely from fire alone, with no structural damage. Once was the
2007 Oakland, CA collapse of a freeway overpass when a tanker truck crashed
and burned beneath it. Another was the 2017 collapse of I-85 in Atlanta, GA
from a fire of polyethylene pipes underneath. In both cases, the freeways'
heavy structural girders were far thicker than the lightweight steel trusses that
the twin towers were built from, and they were heavily insulated in concrete.
The director of the California transportation authority said "If you have that
kind of heat, you're going to have this kind of reaction. We're not surprised
this happened."
Citywide firestorms triggered by incendiary bomb attacks in World War II
destroyed hundreds of tall, ssteel-framed buildings that were not otherwise
damaged. Twisted steel girders and other reminders are on public display at
the Edo Museum in Tokyo, the Imperial War Museum in London, and the
City Historical Museum in Dresden, for anyone who would like to personally
inspect how dramatically fire alone can mangle a steel building structure.
The argument that the towers fell faster than freefall has never been made in a
rational way. First of all, there is no one "freefall" speed. A parachute has a
much slower freefall speed than, say, a bowling ball. The billowing dust clouds
make it impossible to accurately observe how long it took each tower to
collapse, but most aficionados say it took about 16 seconds. Calculations show
that a steel I-beam would take about 9 seconds to fall the height of the twin
towers. The videos do make it clear that the beams from the sides of the
building fall away much faster than the core collapses all the way down, so this
argument has never really been clear, as it's easy to see from the video that it's
false. The cores of the buildings clearly collapsed more slowly than the debris
coming off of them fell.
It's also not clear what it would mean if the building collapse did in fact exceed
the freefall speed of steel. Are the conspiracy theorists arguing that rocket
engines must have been affixed to the top of the building to push it down
faster? How would this have aided the conspiracy?
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum opened ten years to the day
after the attacks, and commemorates the 2,977 victims of 9/11 plus the six
victims of the 1993 bombing. Its two pools are located in the footprints where
the twin towers once stood.

References
Aaronovitch, D. Voodoo Histories: the Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping
Modern History. New York: Riverhead, 2010.
Hodapp, C., Von Kannon, A. Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publications, Inc., 2008.
King, M. "Good Science and 9-11 Demolition Theories." Journal of Debunking
9/11. Journal of Debunking 9/11, 13 May 2007. Web. 18 Jan. 2010. <http://
www.jod911.com/>
NIST. "National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal
Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster."
National Institute of Science and Technology. National Institute of Science and
Technology, 30 Aug. 2006. Web. 5 Jul. 2007. <http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/
factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm>
Reagan, B. Debunking 9/11 myths: Why conspiracy theories can't stand up to the facts.
New York: Hearst Books, 2006.
The 9/11 Commission Report: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
upon the United States. Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States. New York: Norton, 2004.
Conclusion
Reading through some of the conspiracy theories that permeate modern
culture, and how far out some of them are, one could easily get the idea that
adherents must have some kind of mental illness. This, however, would be thin
ice on which to tread. Conspiratorial thinking is actually the opposite of crazy;
it is the brain doing exactly what it evolved to do, and doing it well.
A leading theory to explain the prevalence of conspiratorial thinking is that
humans have an evolved perceptual process called agency detection. It is our
brains' hardwired natural tendency to see malevolent agency in randomness:
paranoia, if you will. The reason it evolved in us is that those ancestors who
tended to be more paranoid defended themselves more effectively than those
who were carefree, and thus survived more often and therefore procreated
more. The classic example is a rustling in the grasses on the savannah. The
early humans who feared such a rustling, and suspected that it concealed an
evil force, were more likely to climb a tree and escape danger; while those who
dismissed such rustling as merely the wind were occasionally pounced upon
by the stalking predator, and failed to live to procreate. It is our brains' native
agency detection that, in part, allowed us to thrive in a world filled with
physically superior predators.
Overactive paranoia may be hardwired in our brains, but as intelligent
creatures, we have learned to temper those native tendencies with learned
experiences. Today while on a jog through the woods we might still hear the
same rustling and feel the need to spring to safety, but our intelligence allows
us to reflect on our life experience and realize that there are no wild tigers in
our local woods. More to the point, when we look at the complexities of
global geopolitics and the formidability of the military-industrial complex, our
native paranoia wants us to conclude that an evil, purposeful Illuminati lurks
behind every news story. Yet we temper this native fear with our experiences
in the world, which help us to understand why things are the way they are, and
that they do not necessarily constitute a threat. The fact is that there is a lot of
randomness and complexity in our world, and very little of it is truly
purposefully malevolent. So our brains have a lot of correction to do.
It is that we all have different life experiences which explains why some of us
tend more toward paranoid conspiracy theories than others. Someone with
very little practical knowledge of world affairs is, on average, more likely than
a professional political scientist to embrace world domination conspiracy
theories. It is no accident that many of the YouTube filmmakers who promote
conspiracy theories are young, or are non-experts, or who otherwise have
little practical experience in geopolitics. They do not have the same database
of life experiences with which to process the information filtered through
their native agency detection mechanisms.
It is, therefore, important that we don't fall into the trap of dismissing
conspiracy theorists as crazy. Their brains are doing exactly what they're
supposed to do. The problem is not one of broken thought process, it is one of
education and experience.
Thus our society is amply populated with people driven by agency detection
that is not well tempered by real-world experience and education. The
inevitable result of that is a raft of conspiracy theories that are wildly
unrealistic and often trivially disproven. So it's no surprise that so few
conspiracy theories have ever been proven true -- none, some have argued.
Having a vague notion that the government is up to something, and then
seeing a detailed scandal come out in the news, does not constitute a
successful prediction. Similarly, saying "I told you so" after investigators have
revealed details of some crime, also does not constitute a successful
prediction. Recalling our two points from the introduction to this book:
1. A conspiracy theory must be specific enough to be falsifiable.
2. A conspiracy theory must be known to the conspiracy theorist
before being revealed by the media or law enforcement.
Of the fifty theories discussed in this book, none unequivocally satisfies both
criteria.
Nor should we expect them to. According to at least one piece of published
research, there is actually sound statistical science that predicts the likelihood
of a given conspiracy theory being proven true. In a 2016 paper titled "On the
Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs" (available online), David Grimes from the
University of Oxford proposed a set of equations giving the probability over
time of any given conspiracy failing, i.e., being revealed. By examining a set of
actual historical conspiracies, and the number of people "in the know" for
each, and the number of years before each was blown, parameters can be
established that can help estimate the lifespan of other conspiracies.
Using Grimes' equations, it's possible to demonstrate that if NASA had
hoaxed the moon landings, it would have taken only 3.68 years to reach a .95
probability of being discovered. If anthropogenic climate change truly was a
hoax conspired by the world's climate scientists and scientific bodies, it would
have taken 3.70 years to be blown. And if pharmaceutical companies were
indeed suppressing a perfect cure for all cancers, they would have gotten away
with it for a mere 3.17 years. Tens of thousands of people simply cannot be
kept quiet without a single leak, at least not for very long, if history is any
guide.
Grimes' work provides one way to objectively show how incredibly unlikely
most conspiracy theories are. The ability to demonstrate this persuasively
would be a powerful tool in countering unscientific thought -- an important
goal, by any measure.
However, this calls to mind the old saying "You cannot reason someone out of
a position they did not reason themselves into" (various versions of this saying
can be credited back to a 1721 quote from Jonathan Swift). This argues that
even having the data in black and white is unlikely to persuade a staunch
conspiracy theorist, whose beliefs come from his deeply embedded agency
detection, and not from scholarly geopolitical research.
Does this, then, mean that conspiratorial thinking is here to stay, and will
continue its ongoing assault against the public intellect? To some degree, yes,
it will. The most passionate conspiracy theorists, and those prone to
delusional thought, are unlikely to ever be swayed. However I have personally
known a number of former conspiracy theorists -- including 9/11 Truthers
and anti-GMO activists, both among the most hotblooded of zealots -- whose
stories of discovering science and abandoning their irrational beliefs are
encouraging.
They were not reasoned out of their beliefs; I would say they were inspired out
of them. They were enchanted by some kernel of science they learned, which
led to a wonder for more, and they soon found themselves crossing a
threshold from dark conspiracies into a world bright with knowledge. The
more we learn about our world, and about how we know what we know, the
more we get drawn in. True knowledge and the methods by which we acquire
it are the real superpowers that we actually can acquire, not imagined insights
into shadowy cabals.
Reach up to the stars, not down the rabbit hole.

Brian Dunning, 2018

www.briandunning.com