Reflections on the Truth Movement
From the beginning, people had doubts about the 9/11 narrative. In the immediate aftermath, the scariest thing for me, was to hear the drumbeats for war.
2001 was a pivotal year, a global justice movement had sprung up to shut down the World Trade Center talks in Seattle, large international protests had taken place in Italy and Quebec City, a major protest was mobilizing against the IMF and the World Bank that September in Washington DC. That January, I had helped to mobilize North Americans to attend the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a counter to the pro-corporate World Economic Forum held annually in Switzerland. The anti-corporate globalization movement was going strong. We joked about turning the IMF headquarters into day-care centers to meet human needs, not greed. That movement took a blow with the event, new travel restrictions, and turned into a scattered anti-war movement.
The World Bank meetings and protests were cancelled, but my affinity group went anyway to protest an impending war, lobby against the PATRIOT Act, thank Barbara Lee for voting against giving Bush unlimited war powers. In DC, I realized that the war had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, but a lot to do with grabbing resources.
A flurry of articles appeared on the internet which raised serious questions, and drew attention to the “fingerprints of a Psychological Operation.”
One of my great mentors, Bill Moyer authored the book Doing Democracy- The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements. I decided to take to the streets. I wasn’t the only one; I began with a “Listening Project” in downtown Palo Alto. I simply asked people 3 questions- What do you think of the events of September 11th and the US government’s response? How could we diffuse terrorism? How could we make a safer, better world for our children and all children? I wrote down people’s responses, this happened on a weekly basis, for over a decade. Some folks came and supported my efforts. I also organized marches on our Senators and my Congresswoman demanding an investigation of 9/11, and passed out worksheets on how social movements worked, pointing at Stage 1, to let folks know where we were. {There are some in the lobby on our free lit table, help yourself; they are useful!} Bill Moyer was on that first march, as well as Grey Brechin, author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin.
I was a house-wife, a mom; I volunteered in the school library and my kids’ classrooms. My husband was the cub scout leader. I couldn’t be fired. I made friends online, in person, with kindred spirits. We were in the minority. I learned that over 2000 people had signed an online petition calling for an investigation of 9/11. We had some phone conference calls under the banner of the “9/11 Truth Alliance.” When there was an anti-war rally, people would help me set up a 9/11 Truth table at the rallies. It was a slow, organic process of simply meeting people and talking with them, over the phone, online, while tabling. The first “official meetings” were held one day in December 2002 by our “Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance” and by another group in New York City. Kyle Hence contributed greatly.
More groups popped up around the country, books were published, press conferences were held, speakers gave presentations, banners were made. I collaborated with Canadian artist, Blaine Machan to begin publishing “The Deception Dollars” which featured key websites challenging the official narrative. We distributed millions of them, mainly at the anti-war rallies, and they helped fund and grow the fledgling 9/11 Truth Movement. More websites were created by more groups, such as scholars, scientists, actors, pilots, firefighters, architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth.
The victims’ families’ efforts forced a Commission upon a reluctant White House, but along with the Joint Senate and House Inquiry, both “official investigations” were cover-ups, and they failed to investigate themselves. Evidence was destroyed, stories were twisted or used to further more wars, including the war on Iraq. The 9/11 Commission Report was based on tortured evidence, drafted by Philip Zelikow, the same guy who wrote a paper describing in detail how ”had the 93’ WTC bombings succeeded” the event could have been used to transform policy from a pre-event to a post-event world, as outlined infamously by the Project for a New American Century, and who wrote the Pre-emptive War Doctrine for the Bush Administration. The Report made no mention of WTC 7, and stated that who financed the operation “was of little practical significance.” Clearly the official story was a giant lie.
I loved the people that I met. I loved their spirit, their courage, their generosity in giving whatever they could, their talents, time, resources, to further the cause, not only of truth, but peace, freedom, justice, in the face of a brutal assault upon the public mind, and upon innocent people outside and within the US. I organized many events, marches, protests, film showings in the early years, including the 2004 San Francisco International Inquiry into 9/11. It wasn’t easy. My worldview was not shared by the majority of people.
I became a “media activist,” attending “Media Reform Conferences” to champion taboo topics, such as 9/11 Truth, Impeachment, Stolen Elections. I was invited to host two radio shows and, for a while, I became “the media.”
In 2005, I spoke with the Editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian for two hours, giving him my best books and best arguments for questioning the official narrative, I spent an hour with the publisher, and they did a lengthy article on the 9/11 Truth Movement, well they didn’t call it that, they did poke fun at us, and bash us. They had to “distance” themselves from us, but they did put forward much critical information. A New York Times writer did a similar “attack piece” upon our big conference in Chicago in 2006, slipping in some important information, but not overtly agreeing with us.
Sometimes a journalist or a scientist or a person will come in direct contact with powerful truthful information that will transform the way that they see the world and they will stick their neck out to share their story or what they have learned.
I stopped watching television when I was 17: Before I became a mother, I was working in public relations and successful in getting stories into print, on the radio, and television. After I became an activist, I realized how difficult it was to get critical information out to the public. I thought of the corporate press as agents of psychological warfare.
If you saw this afternoon’s interview with James Douglass who authored many important, insightful books, including his latest- Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK. Douglass named the three men most responsible for JFK’s assassination including James Jesus Angleton, head of the CIA, the handler of Lee Harvey Oswald, who said, just before he died, that he and the other heads of the CIA all sought global domination, that they “all were liars,” and that they “all would be going to hell.” Angleton wrote the script for the Kennedy assassination. The media’s role was to follow that script, but Douglass noted that the real purpose of the media was to frighten people into submission and make them feel powerless.
In 1906, on September 11th, Satyagraha was born in South Africa when three thousand people agreed to join forces in civil disobedience to challenge racist laws, led by Gandhi. At that meeting, a Muslim merchant, Seth Haji Habib, declared that their resolution must be passed “with God as a witness.” Gandhi realized that including spirituality in a political struggle would change the nature of civil disobedience, but the idea was enthusiastically embraced by those gathered and “Satyagraha” has since inspired countless struggles against injustice. The term combines the Sanskrit words of satya ”love” with agraha “firmness” using love force, truth force, patience to counter injustice.. It requires courage, presence, persistence; it can be done alone, but is amplified when done in solidarity with others, for the benefit of all.
James Douglass, when describing JFK, Malcolm, Martin and RFK in that interview said “the people were the real leaders,” their actions, spirit, allowed and energized those four to speak out, and become a genuine threat to a global power structure.
Those leaders were men of courage, who marched to a different drummer, a more powerful force, the arc of the moral Universe. They recognized and encouraged everyone to serve humanity, truth and life which is why they were martyred. Their words, their visions, and dreams live on, and we are inspired by them.
The truth movement grew, scholarly books were written, documentaries were made, large crowds came to events. A few of us ran for public office, simply to raise issues. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats would touch 9/11, so when the Green Party asked me to run, I did. My campaign slogan was “Impeach the Terrorists!”
With the election of Obama, the wind was knocked out of the sails of the anti-war movement in California and it was increasingly difficult to convince the public of the relevance of the defining event of the century. Not unlike the Kennedy Assassination, the “contrived myth” flooded airwaves and media outlets. However, truth does have power; the questions raised, key information brought to the surface did trigger more people to question the dominant narrative, the media, the government, the wars, the bailouts. Eventually “Occupy Wall Street” sparked a wave of protests across the country.
The Truth Movement broadened into the vast swath of people subjected to the assaults by giant corporations, financial institutions, media conglomerates, agribusiness, robbing and harming them on multiple fronts, recognizing that they were the 99%.
The author of “Cognitive Infiltration,” Cass Sunstein, was appointed by the Obama Administration to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He suggested splintering the 9/11 Truth Movement through the use of conflicting narratives. Attacks grew upon those who questioned the events of September 11th.The arguments over various aspects of 9/11 divided and destroyed many groups, but on the worldwide scale, the majority were not buying the official story, and suspected that the CIA, or the Zionist “Project for a New American Century” within the US government were to blame..
In 2009, The European Open Physics Chemistry Journal published, a scientific article entitled ”Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” which helped fuel the truth movement.
Deep truths can challenge one’s identity, one’s worldview, promote an uncomfortable sense of cognitive dissonance and challenge us to change, to speak out, to be the change we wish to see in the world.
I have devoted much of my life to 9/11 Truth, but probably because my life changed dramatically after I saw the film JFK and began looking deeply into the Kennedy Assassination, the CIA, and was horrified by what I learned. I felt a deep sense of responsibility to do something about it, because my country was causing so much harm to innocent people in other countries. I saw activism as humanity’s immune system tackling a deadly cancer, that gave me the energy and strength to keep going strong for decades.
In his book, Doing Democracy, Moyer writes about how social movements help pull one another along. The big social movements of the 60’s against militarism, racism, sexism demonstrated that.
With the drama of subsequent “terrorist attacks,” wars, regime changes, military incursions, and a global psyop, dwarfing 9/11, well articulated by James Corbett in his podcast Covid-911 From Homeland Security to Biosecurity, the public has been traumatized and splintered. The most visible current organized resistance to militarism, war, corruption are protests against the genocide of Gaza, and the “No Kings” demonstrations against Trump.
Depending on which country you look at, the abolition of “chattel” slavery took half a century to a full century. However, debt slavery and sex slavery are still a problem, today. The mission of the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance is simply “to seek and disseminate truths about the terrible crimes committed on September 11, 2001, exposing gaps and deceptions in the official story. Our goal is to inspire more eyewitness revelations, truthful media coverage, and a movement that will bring the responsible criminals to justice and eliminate governmental and corporate policies that enable criminal elements to commit such acts.” Will this take 50 or 100 years? Was 9/11 a State Crime Against Democracy, a SCAD? Will it, like the political assassinations of the 60s, be blamed on chosen patsies, while the real masterminds go free? Courageous, persistent, non-violent resistance, actions in which anyone can participate support people power.
One of my favorite quotes is by Jimmi Hendrix- When the Power of Love Overcomes the Love of Power, the World will know Peace.”
Last year, we were honored to have retired Captain Raul Angulo speak here, his article Did World Trade Center 7 Really Collapse Due to Office Fires? in the International Fire and Safety Journal had garnered much attention, especially since he authored a textbook on fighting high rise fires. His work drew the attention of politicians, including Senator Ron Johnson, ennis Kucinich, Curt Weldon, and other ex-Congressmen attended the 2025 9/11 Truth Conference.
Senator Ron Johnson has also pushed back hearings on 9/11. Washington DC has a long history of cover-ups. There is still a push for “Disclosure,” and for the release of more documents, including the Epstein documents, which contain many links to 9/11. We do need to encourage the declassification of crimes, especially those committed by government agencies. We have already received tons of documents detailing all sorts of crimes, researchers do sift through them; they publish their findings; but it takes a major effort, for the public to locate them, read them, and share that information, which is too often censored or dismissed by the corporate media.
Corbett’s 10/7 A Conspiracy Theory vividly shows Israel’s complicity in their “9/11” to justify the genocide of Gaza. Jimmy Dore and James Corbett discussed the topic at length recently, perhaps that might help to put a halt to the marriage of US military and intelligence forces with those of Israel, currently taking place in DC. Do you think this false flag would be enough to wake up the US population?
Perhaps the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the 9/11 Truth Movement is that we disagree on many aspects of what happened, who did it, how, and why. However, there is much that we do agree on. 9/11 was a crime against humanity; the official narrative defies the laws of physics, it was used to attack civil rights everywhere; it was used to launch wars of aggression; it enriched the few and impoverished and killed many; it was used to expand the police state/surveillance state: it laid the foundation for even worse attacks.
The Grand Strategy of all social movements is for the hearts, minds, support of the majority of people, and to get them to exercise the people power that resides within themselves. We can see how the perpetrators of 9-11 had a Grand Strategy, too. Their tools were violence, fear, and the corporate/government/media megaphone.
We have the advantage of being able to expose a giant societal secret that they need to sell their lies, and maintain power. Our job is to expose the lie and to recognize that the deeply held values, symbols, beliefs, sensibilities and traditions that are important to the public are being violated. All we need to do is prove to the public that the truth movement, not the powerholders, upholds these values and principles, to motivate and inspire the public to challenge the power holders and their policies.
We need to honor, respect and join, in coalition with other movements which are part of this grander struggle against the concentrated power of an elite few; this includes all the movements, born out of the struggle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is no wonder that many of the great researchers and advocates for truth have been theologians or “believers.” At the heart of most religions, is the most valuable lesson that I have learned in my lifetime-“to forgive, to accept, to love” myself, people and the world. In activism, when we are working on life and death issues, there is a lot of stress, some danger, and risk. People are doing the work because they care deeply. Most are volunteers; it is important to remember not to be too hard on ourselves and others.
It is our genuine love of people and life which gives us our strength, power, and connects us all. I encourage you all, if you aren’t part of any movement, yet to join us or others in the largest Satyagraha Movement of all as we transform ourselves and the world to be kinder, more, loving, more truthful, courageous, in our quest for peace, justice, equality, liberty, and life for all. Banish fear, laugh, let the journey we are on be our reward, enjoy the wonderful companions that we meet along the way. Together we can do what we cannot do alone.
Carol Brouillet, September 8, 2026