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Filmmakers’ notebook # 120
COME OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE WITH YOUR HANDS UP! – MORGAN REYNOLDS
We first learned of Morgan Reynolds when we* filmed his May 6, 2006
talk in Madison, Wisconsin. Just under a month later, we were able to
put some questions to him in Chicago at the 9/11 conference.
Independent filmmakers had to scramble for space for interviews at the
airport hotel in Chicago. Inside and outside you could hear planes
screaming during take-off from O’Hare. Between flights – about every
three minutes – we shouted our questions. Reynolds waited until the
plane was a little distance before answering.
As a libertarian economist (Texas A & M), Professor Reynolds joined
Elaine Chou’s labor department in 2001 as chief economist. Chou, wife
of GOP porkster Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is a trustee of
the Heritage Foundation. Reynolds spent a year and a half as a
backbencher on Capitol Hill before quitting, disgusted at the Bush
administration's lies and deception, particularly the lies told to get
the U.S. into Iraq.
Our questions for Reynolds concerned themselves largely with the
cognitive dissonance in DC, on Capitol Hill, among the porksters and
their staffs, Dems and Republicans. How was it that they go along with
the big lies and the rush to fascism?
Earlier, prompted by an interview with Four Arrows (aka Prof Don Trent
Jacobs), we discovered Frank Luntz, and then David Brancaccio’s
revealing 2004 interview with him. (http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript327_full.html
) Luntz is regarded as a “compliance professional,” in the mold of
Joseph Goebbels, Edward Bernays and Tony Schwartz. In the brief
Brancaccio interview, Luntz plays tribute to his mentor, Schwartz,
author of The Responsive Cord.
Hailing his guest as a “master of the rhetoric of political
seduction,” Brancaccio adds to Luntz mystique by adding that he is “a
magician with a gift for the politics of words and what words best
connect with the hearts and minds of the public, a magician with a
gift for the politics of words and what words connect with the hearts
and minds of the public.”
A cheerful hypnotist, Luntz happily serves up shit to customers who
think they’re eating chocolate ice cream. Properly labeled, Luntz’s
brand of ice cream could be called Fascist Swirl. In this video,
prompted by Morgan Reynolds’ insights, we observe Luntz’s tricks and
attempt to deconstruct his techniques of trance induction which play
on ignorance, fear, racial prejudice and the willingness of his
subjects to be hypnotized.
* Josh Harvey, co-founder of snowshoefilms
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Snowshoefilms: Why did you join the Bush administration?
Morgan Reynolds: Well, I was hoping it would be a free market oriented
and make some changes in the labor market that I favor. I’m a
libertarian free-market oriented economist and what I quickly found
out was, there’s not going to be any changes along that line.
The whole focus was to re-elect George W. Bush and I found to my
disappointment there was no discussion, really, of what was the best
policy on any issue and how to sell it, but rather what would be
prudent from a short-term political point of view and it…. the
contradictions and policy errors piled up and I only stayed on for 16
months before I resigned.
Snowshoefilms: When did you become aware that 9/11 was an inside job?
Morgan Reynolds: I did not suspect involvement by the Bush-Cheney
administration until 2003. One of the decisive events the invasion of
Iraq – which I knew was based on big lies. Most people in Washington
DC, truthfully, did suspect that, or know it.
INSERT: CHENEY (Oct. 10, 2003) “Our mission to Iraq is a great
undertaking and part of a larger mission that the United States
accepted – now more than two years ago – September 11th, 2001, changed
everything for this country.”
Morgan Reynolds: (cont) And I asked myself the question, if they’d lie
about this to get into a war half way around the world, what else
would they lie about? And that’s when I went off to do some research
on 9/11. And by the end of 2003, I was convinced that, yes it was an
inside job. And then, next March, 2004, I wrote an essay-review about
David Ray Griffin’s brilliant book, The New Pearl Harbor. That put it
all together.
So I came late to the truth, you might say, but certainly by one year
later when David Ray Griffin’s book the New Pearl Harbor appeared, I
knew. Because he put together so much of the evidence in a very nice
and patient and scientific package.
Snowshoefilms: Were you surprised, looking back, that such a crime
could be pulled off, and covered-up
Morgan Reynolds: The audacity of 9/11 still resonates with me every
day. How ‘over the top’ it is. How audacious, it’s just…. the enormity
of this crime. And it’s not just, by any means, the number of lives
lost -- innocent lives taken – nearly three thousand; it could have
been far greater.
(INSERT: photo collage, concluding with the photo used on the cover of
the Don Paul/Jim Hoffman book, Waking Up From Our Nightmare.)
But it’s just the Independence Day show of it. The greatest terrorist
event in world history. To traumatize America and stimulate the
blood-lust to go off halfway around the world and engage in
clash-of-civilization killing Arabs. It’s just…. the scale of this
thing is just mind-boggling in the cold-bloodedness of it all.
Snowshoefilms: As the labor department’s chief economist, did you have
any contact with Paul O’Neill (Secretary of the Treasury)? (INSERT:
O’Neill)
Morgan Reynolds: I was in a room with him a few times in a
medium-sized meeting because of the Social Security trustees role that
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chow filled, and I was a backbencher.
Secretary O’Neill impressed me as a very honest man. That’s what got
him in trouble in the Bush administration. He is a policy-wonk who
really did, at these Social Security trustee meetings, discuss what
was the best policy, what was the best approach. Annually you had to
make these actuarial estimates of the fiscal soundness or unsoundness
of the Social Security System. And he just…. what you see publicly is
what you get privately, to the little extent I saw him in action. So,
he was an honest man and…. his book with Ron Suskind called The Price
of Loyalty, puts out these revelations that are highly credible; the
most important one of which was at the first National Security Council
meeting it was ‘all about how to invade Iraq. Help me do this. Help me
do this.’ And that’s Paul O’Neill. And he’s a very trustworthy man, in
my opinion.
Snowshoefilms: How did your colleagues respond to your 9/11 views?
Morgan Reynolds: I do know that some of my former colleagues at the
labor department, when they found out what I had to say about 9/11,
said ‘Morgan, what are you talking about?’ They thought I’d gone off
the deep end. So, I think there’s a lot of people who are ignorant of
this possibility in the administration. But of course, there’s plenty
of people who are knowledgeable or suspicious or participants in 9/11
or accessories-after-the-fact in the cover-up.
Snowshoefilms: How many were knowingly involved in 9/11?
Morgan Reynolds: On the day of 9/11, of course, it would have taken
hundreds in preparation. Now, my number is, it’s certainly not over
2000 active participants. For example, most of these people doing
these military exercises that were concurrent with 9/11 aren’t aware
of what’s gonna go down. They are not witting participants. And some
of the participants might have been witting that something in the form
of domestic terrorism was going down, but not on the scale. It was so
over-the-top, so many lives lost – that they were participating in a
set of murders that was far great than they expected. So there’s
varying degrees of knowledge of the hundreds of people who were
involved.
Snowshoefilms: Given the abundance of evidence, those involved in the
political scene in Washington, unless they are complicit, must exhibit
a high degree of cognitive dissonance….
Morgan Reynolds: There’s quite a bit of cognitive dissonance, this
on-the-horns-of-a-dilemma. There’s this ambivalence…. because on
Capitol Hill, I can tell you that the political antennae are just so
acute. Every day, it’s politics politics politics and although there’s
no public discussion of 9/11, or virtually none - [former
Congresswoman ] Cynthia McKinney’s raised the issue – there is immense
knowledge up there. There’s a lot of people who know this was a
Bush-Cheney inside job but they’re scared, and they’re living with
their conscience on this and they’re…. I predict somebody will go
public in an important way.
Snowshoefilms: What’s the best evidence for an inside job?
Morgan Reynolds: The number one piece of evidence is WTC 7 which is so
transparently a controlled demolition from the free-fall symmetrical
collapse to the neat rubble stack, just folding in on itself at the
bottom.
[INSERT Bldg 7: collapse]
Here we have multiple cameras on it in broad daylight at 5:20 p.m. and
clearly something went wrong for them to blow it in this odd, obvious
condition. Probably they wanted to blow it from a remote location
beneath the pyroclastic cloud from WTC 1, the second tower that fell.
That would have made a lot more sense. There wouldn’t have been film
of it and smoking-gun-evidence of its controlled demolition.
Snowshoefilms: Have you experienced any Bush administration effort to
silence you?
Morgan Reynolds: I’m glad to report that nobody in the administration
-- it would be entirely inappropriate – has contacted me in any way to
try to intimidate me. The only put-down was by my university president
and the university itself tried to put out a distancing statement. It
was low-key, but all the attacks have really come from various
e-mailers, callers in to radio shows who think I’m a traitor or
believe to that effect, or a liar. And then, of course, within the
9/11 skeptics movement itself, there are some people who believe I’m a
Bush agent or trying to discredit 9/11. We have a lot of friction in
the 9/11 research and activist community as many know.
Snowshoefilms: Do you want to elaborate?
Morgan Reynolds: I don’t want to name names or organizations. To me,
it’s not terribly because it’s of no consequence to my activities or
what I say. I don’t care who I offend…. to me it’s all about justice,
ultimately; but in the meantime, truth is our weapon and we are going
to have, because we don’t understand all aspects of the crime, there
are competing hypotheses. There’s going to be some elbowing. I’m used
to that as an academic and a ‘policy warrior.’ It doesn’t bother me
and in fact, that’s one of the attractive things about this is that
parts of it are unknown; you’ve got to have these research issues
there to keep bright researchers involved. We can’t just be pure
educators or teachers or activists. So, to me it’s all good, both the
education and research components of this. We have scientific
questions, we have criminal questions, we have world political
balance-of-power questions, we have the Invisible Government. There
are so many aspects of this that are intriguing, strictly from a
purely intellectual exercise point of view.
Snowshoefilms: What’s to be done?
Morgan Reynolds: Well, the number one thing we’re driving for is a
criminal prosecution where we, ‘Hey, come out of the White House with
your hands up’ and we’re going to arrest and charge, indict and put on
trial…. that’s the best way to do it in a court room criminal
prosecution. Now it’s true, we’re a long way from that but it’s also
good to test our evidence in this. Are we courtroom-tough on this. Do
we have enough? Certainly, I argue, we do. What we have to show is
there is no other way to explain these facts but that the accused did
it, the inside perpetrators. And it’s also morale-boosting to get real
names. Who should be indicted and I offer this list. http://mtdewar.spaces.live.com/
Now there are many other mechanisms. For example – and I think that
they’re all worth pursuing. The international tribunal mechanism.
Candidates should be about 9/11. We’re running some candidates. There
are all these…. We should have a PAC [Political Action Committee], a
campaign fund to contribute at the margin to candidates. We should
have activism and beating the drums. The Zogby Poll [of Aug. 30, 2004]
was another great plateau-shifting event. There’s all these good
things, this Army of David is engaged in.
Snowshoefilms: Many people have undoubtedly have left the Bush
administration and just kept silent. How do you account for your
singularity?
Morgan Reynolds: I would say it’s my oh-so-pre-9/11 thirst for the
truth. I went in to academe because I said, ‘Wow, you can make a good
living being in the ivory tower, being really a permanent student,
pursuing the truth, teaching, doing research and there’s nothing but
satisfaction at my career choice; and the fact that I think that truth
ought to matter in the political arena….
When I went into government, I know I remember being in the interview
with the Secretary of Labor [Elaine Chou] and her chief aide [Deputy
Secretary] Steven Law and I said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ In other
words, I’m not going to compromise the truth for short-term political
gain and that’s where I am now. I guess my singularity is that I
wasn’t enough of a Bush family loyalist. Loyalty to the truth trumps
loyalty to any politician.
Of course 9/11 gave them the sanction they wanted to run amuck in the
world as a rogue superpower. And recall when President Bush said,
‘Hey, international law, that doesn’t matter.’ And of course now it’s
become obvious that domestic law, ‘Hey, that doesn’t matter. Trust
us.’ So much of these evil policies have only surfaced since the event
of 9/11. None of this could have happened without that. Little did we
know…. Remember the debates back in 2000 where President Bush promised
a ‘more humble’ foreign policy and he scoffed at ‘nation-building.’
Well, look at where we are today. Just a complete 180 degree from what
he promised in the year 2000.
Snowshoefilms: Would you comment on the significance of insider Frank
Luntz.
Morgan Reynolds: Well, Frank Luntz is a very important Republican
pollster. I know some people well who know him well and I’ve been in a
session of two with Frank Luntz where – when I was on Capitol Hill,
actually, rather than in the Bush administration…
(INSERT LUNTZ April 2002 to Energy trade association members: “…They
are No, and you are Yes.”
Morgan Reynolds: Luntz is an expert at packaging policies using wedge
issues to get people elected.
(INSERT LUNTZ interview with David Brancaccio, NOW/PBS, July 2, 2004)
Luntz: The way that I look at it, it’s not to convince a voter what to
think, it’s to convince a voter that what they think is correct. (&
repeat)
Some of this is not a matter of re-educating them. (repeat)
That their gut instincts are correct. (repeat)
They should not be fooled by either what they or what they hear.
(repeat)
That what they feel is what is correct. (repeat)
I’m listening to the American people and this is how they feel. And
not just here in New York…The American people, they don’t know up or
down when it comes to this but they do know that these are bad people,
they know that they’ve killed Americans, they know that they are a
threat to our national security, and they want them gone. What’s wrong
with that?
Morgan Reynolds: It’s all about selling and then getting in the
administration and doing whatever policies you want.
Luntz: 9/11 changed everything. And I think that not only do
politicians have a right to talk about 9/11, they have a
responsibility to talk about 9/11.
Morgan Reynolds: He is quite a attractive, charming soothsayer, sales
rep…
Luntz: I find that frustrating, if not outrageous that you can’t talk
about the root cause, that you can’t talk about the fact that there
are people out there who hate America so much…
Morgan Reynolds: He’s one of the influential artists of deception.
David Brancaccio (PBS/NOW co-host to Luntz): You know that there is a
memo circulating attributed to you that talks about the need, among
other things, for politicians to always mention the terrible events of
September 11.
INSERT voice over leaked memo title (“Communicating the Principles of
Prevention & Protection in the War on Terror” : Number One: No speech
about homeland security or Iraq should begin without a reference to
9/11.)
Luntz: And what’s wrong with that?
Brancaccio: Nothing at all, but before mentioning Iraq…
Luntz: What is wrong with mentioning why these things took place. What
is wrong with mentioning the fact that there are enemies to America?
What is wrong with talking about the fact that it is better to fight
this war in Afghanistan than fighting it in Washington and New York?
Morgan Reynolds: So he’s one of the important shakers and movers in
selling…
Luntz: 9/11 – we’ve never experienced anything like this. This wasn’t
Pearl Harbor, this is worse because this was on American territory.
This was on – right in the center -- these were the biggest buildings.
These were the icons of American success, of the American economy, the
American free-market, and they don’t exist. Not just two buildings,
but seven buildings. That was the day that nobody’s going to forget
and that is a day that we should always, always remember.
[INSERT cover photo of George Estabrooks’ book, Using Hypnotism]
Luntz (v/o): There are people in Iraq that hate us and would like to
do anything they could against us, and the people who caused 9/11 hate
us and would like to do anything against us. It doesn’t matter whether
they are related. It doesn’t matter whether they are best friends, it
doesn’t matter whether the hung out at a Starbucks and drank coffee
together and planned against us… [v/o graphic/words] The American
people, they don’t know up or down when it comes to this. But they do
know that these are bad people. They know that they’ve killed
Americans. They know that they are a threat to our national security.
And they want them gone.
[INSERT pic of Nazi-uniformed Joseph Goebbels, with super of Luntz’s
last words] What’s wrong with that?
Snowshoefilms: What was your experience with that other public psyops
operative, Karl Rove?
Morgan Reynolds: Well, Karl Rove is a trickster of the first order
where he gets people to take the bait and then self-destruct. That’s
his game. Dirty tricks of every kind. If Rove were to be indicted or
removed from the administration, that would certainly be a loss.
Because he is, as they say, Bush’s brain. [INSERT cover of the
Moore/Slater book, Bush’s Brain] and we don’t need any more brain loss
by Mr. Bush who’s not, of course, the real brains of the
administration. He’s the front man, the frat boy drunk as it were….
Rove is the kind of man who succeeds fabulously in the short run but
is self destructive in the long run. That’s what we’re getting now
because…. For example, the Iraq war is going so badly; it’s an
important part of Bush not wearing well and his popularity is
unprecedented. I mean it’s Jimmy Carter-type low or Nixon-low at 30
percent, so it’s not a long-run enduring type of strategy.
Snowshoefilms: Exposure of 9/11 could trigger yet another false flag
terror attack….
Morgan Reynolds: The further we get to breaking it wide open, the more
dangerous it becomes because will they react as cornered rats and act
in a desperate way, do another 9/11, bigger, better? And that is a
huge risk. They will do it if they think they need it. Now, that’s a
huge risk but it’s a risk we’ve got to take.
The fact that we did not root out this rogue network in the 1960s when
JFK was assassinated led to this series of escalating domestic events,
terrorist outrages and we’ve got to stop it. That straight line leads
to worse than a Constitutional crisis, so we’ve got to stop them.
[CREDITS roll over sound of jet engines]
FNB #120 by Roy Harvey/ interview transcribed by snowshoefilms
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