Another high profile website that is often cited as a source of information for the 9/11 "Truth" movement is Alex Jones' website, prisonplanet.com Given what I have recently been enlightened to with regards to americanfreepress.net I decided to do some digging into Jones and see what skeletons might be in his closet.

First question up is, does Jones' have any high visibility interaction with AFP? Meaning, does he reference AFP or its affiliates. Let's do some digging:
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=american+free+press&sa=Search&domains=prisonplanet.com&sitesearch=prisonplanet.com
This is a google search of the prisonplanet.com website for "american free press"
Here is the first page of hits:
National Geographic Channel and 9/11 Propaganda

The uncanny similarities between the Murdoch film and the subsequent events of 9/11 is a subject American Free Press has investigated, but one which has ... www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/240306Propaganda.htm - 54k - Cached - Similar pages

Bilderberg Exposed In Europe; Exclusive Reports Confirmed

Tony Gosling, a European Bilderberg-hound-in-training, promptly faxed the documents to American Free Press. Gosling is one of many in Europe who have ... www.prisonplanet.com/bilderberg_exposed_in_europe.html - 10k - Cached - Similar pages

U

Exclusive to American Free Press. By Christopher Bollyn. CHANTILLY, Va. ... Both Miller and Smith were aware of Bilderberg from reading American Free Press. ... www.prisonplanet.com/us_media_blackout_protects_conspirators.html - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

Bilderberg Group Meeting 2004: Stresa, Italy, June 3-6

American Free Press http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2004/061104silentmedia. htm. Cyprus represented for first time at secret Bilderberg meeting: ... www.prisonplanet.com/archives/bilderberg/bilderberg_2004.htm - 39k - Cached - Similar pages

Who Is Bilderberg?

By the Staff of American Free Press. The Bilderberg Group takes its name from the hotel in Holland where the group met in 1954, during the earliest period ... www.prisonplanet.com/who_is_bilderberg.html - 14k - Cached - Similar pages

BILDERBERG PLOTTING

Exclusive to American Free Press. By James P. Tucker Jr. When Bilderberg luminaries seal themselves off behind armed guards at the Westfields hotel in ... www.prisonplanet.com/bilderberg_plotting_to_bushwack_iraq.html - 19k - Cached - Similar pages

Unexplained 9-11

Exclusive to American Free Press. By Christopher Bollyn. A massive explosion, witnessed by millions of television viewers on CNN, evidently devastated World ... www.prisonplanet.com/unexplained_911_explosion_at_wtc_complex.htm - 23k - Cached - Similar pages

Berg Lawsuit Filed On Behalf Of Another WTC Bombs Witness

American Free Press/Greg Szymanski | May 24 2005. Philadelphia lawyer Phil Berg has never tried to climb Mt. Everest. In the past, he’s always attempted ... www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2005/240505bombswitness.htm - 43k - Cached - Similar pages

Ansar al-Islam leader threatens to document his links to US

"I had a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000. ... www.prisonplanet.com/news_alert_020403_general1.html - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

Bilderberg Pushing World TaxExclusive to American Free Press. By James P. Tucker Jr. High on the Bilderberg agenda this year is the creation of a United Nations “Financial Action Task ...
www.prisonplanet.com/bilderberg_pushing_world_tax.html - 9k -Cached - Similar pages


Okay, so it appears he does at least reference their articles. Let's dig deeper. What about Liberty Lobby, AFP's parent publisher?
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=liberty+lobby&sa=Search&domains=prisonplanet.com&sitesearch=prisonplanet.com
Hrm, sure enough. Not as many hits, but they are there.

What about Liberty Lobby's founder, Willis Carto?
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=willis+carto&sa=Search&domains=prisonplanet.com&sitesearch=prisonplanet.com
"Your search - willis carto - did not match any documents. " Well, nothing there. Something in there defense at least. No hits either on IHR, "Institute for Historical Review" or "Noontide Press". Looks like Jones may just not be aware that he is citing known history revisionist publications.

Based on what I have found in this cursory snooping I can't say I'm willing to make any accusations against Alex Jones beyond that of quoting dubious sources.

Check back as I investigate more into this possible link between fascism and the 9/11 movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Lobby , which was founded/run by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carto who is also the founder of Noontide Press and the IHR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Historical_Review the vanguard of revisionist history and Holocaust denial.

As can be seen in previous entries, I have been confronting Sept. 11th conspiracy theorists on their ideas that the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by 19 militant Islamic hijackers. Over the last couple of weeks I have taken to referring to them as "9/11 deniers", "Al-Qaeda shills", or "terrorist deniers" since they commit many of the same logical fallacies as Holocause deniers. Imagine my surprise when, this week, some information comes before me that shows that this parallel my not be quite as coincidental as I initially thought.

On the JREF (James Randi Education Foundation) forums, which I frequent, the following post was made:
"Those of you who've seen Loose Change or read my critique of it are aware that one of its main sources of disinformation is the American Free Press. The AFP is relatively new, and lists its predecessor as a publication called the Spotlight. I did some Googling on the Spotlight but didn't turn up much in my brief search. A reader has just emailed me with some very interesting (and not surprising) information, reprinted with permission:

"Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools."
-August Bebel

I just finished reading your excellent rebuttals to Loose Change and Loose Change 2, posted on 911Myths.com. I wanted to congratulate you on a job well done. I'd like to point out one thing, if I may, regarding your description of The American Free Press (AFP), which you correctly note is an "anti-Zionist", conspiracy-obsessed online publication. What you failed to note and what I think is of great importance in demonstrating the lengths to which Avery et al are willing to go to force the square pegs of history into the round holes of their claim, is that The AFP is not simply anti-Zionist(which I, personally, do not object to in and of itself) in orientation but is, in fact, the spin-off publication of the now defunct domestic neo-fascist organization, The Liberty Lobby, founded by American quasi-Nazi and conspiracist, Willis Carto. Formerly known as The Spotlight, The AFP is a perfect example of the "old wine in new skins" PR campaigns that many neo fascists and Third Positionist organizations have undertaken over the last few decades (perhaps best embodied by the current suit-and-tie public face of former (?) Klansmen and American Nazi, David Duke). While the pages of The AFP do not openly endorse things like Nazi-skinheads, Aryan Nations summerfests, Holocaust denial books and organizations, or sell Third Reich marching music CD's and Tapes, (unlike its former incarnation, The Spotlight) the fact that they proudly announce that their publication is "brought to you by the former staff of The Spotlight, who are now the publishers." should be more than enough reason for any serious researcher to keep a light year's distance between themselves and such a crackpot publication. Well, that and the piss-poor journalism advanced by its roster of rambling, reactionary, closeted and not-so-closeted Swastika-saluting scribes. Again, can someone tell me why Avery and his pals are relying so heavily on the neo-fascist AFP as a main source for LC2E? Could it be that they themselves, along with a growing number of so-called "alternative" researchers are, in some way, anti-Semites, or simply just fools? Is there a difference?

"Pope" Ralph Hernandez"
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=1794153#post1794085

AFP is probably as heavily referenced by 9/11 CT'ers as S. Jones' paper (http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html) (1)
Now, not wanting to commit the same errors in thinking that the 9/11 CT'ers commit, I did not want to take this at face value and decided to do some investigation. Here's what I have uncovered so far.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm...l_meeting.html

http://64.233.167.104/custom?q=cache...29003121141183
http://www.americanfreepress.net/Liberty_Supplement.pdf

http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm...rs_strike.html

So, there is a conclusive, and short, trail from AFP back to Liberty Lobby who is one of the biggest neo-nazi/Holocause-denier movements to have blighted the US landscape. (for a good summation of their antics I suggest reading Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, or at least pick it up from the library and check out the chapters on Holocause deniers.

My concerns about this connection are twofold:
1) The neo-nazi/neo-fascist movement in the US is, unfortunetely, reletively strong due to our protection of speech (no matter how stupid or irrational). With this backing the 9/11 "Truth" movement will be able to reach a sizeable audience.

2) If people become involved in the 9/11 "Truth" movement and begin looking at AFP as a source of credible, "unbiased", and independent information this would provide the neo-nazi/fascist movement with exposure and opportunity to indoctrinate new people into their movement.

With these concerns in mind, I plan on digging further into this connection and trying to establish just how deep it runs.

My next step will be to look into prisonplanet.com (Alex Jones' website) and see how tight the ties are between it and AFP.

- Arkan

(1) Jones' paper does not have the backing of the academic or professional communities:

Soon after Mr. Jones posted his paper online, the physics department at Brigham Young moved to distance itself from his work. The department released a statement saying that it was "not convinced that his analyses and hypotheses have been submitted to relevant scientific venues that would ensure rigorous technical peer review." (Mr. Jones's paper has been peer-reviewed by two physicists and two other scholars for publication in a book called 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, from Olive Branch Press.) The Brigham Young college of engineering issued an even stronger statement on its Web site. "The structural engineering faculty," it read, "do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones." However, his supporters complain, none of Mr. Jones's critics at Brigham Young have dealt with his points directly. While there are a handful of Web sites that seek to debunk the claims of Mr. Jones and others in the movement, most mainstream scientists, in fact, have not seen fit to engage them. "There's nothing to debunk," says Zdenek P. Bazant, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University and the author of the first peer-reviewed paper on the World Trade Center collapses. "It's a non-issue," says Sivaraj Shyam-Sunder, a lead investigator for the National Institute of Standards and Technology's study of the collapses. Ross B. Corotis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a member of the editorial board at the journal Structural Safety, says that most engineers are pretty settled on what happened at the World Trade Center. "There's not really disagreement as to what happened for 99 percent of the details," he says. Thomas W. Eagar is one scientist who has paid some attention to the demolition hypothesis — albeit grudgingly. A materials engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Eagar wrote one of the early papers on the buildings' collapses, which later became the basis for a documentary on PBS. That marked him for scrutiny and attack from conspiracy theorists. For a time, he says, he was receiving one or two angry e-mail messages each week, many accusing him of being a government shill. When Mr. Jones's paper came out, the nasty messages increased to one or two per day. So Mr. Eagar has become reluctantly familiar with Mr. Jones's hypothesis, and he is not impressed. For example, he says, the cascade of yellow-hot particles coming out of the south tower could be any number of things: a butane can igniting, sparks from an electrical arc, molten aluminum and water forming a hydrogen reaction — or, perhaps most likely, a spontaneous, completely accidental thermite reaction. Occasionally, he says, given enough mingled surface area, molten aluminum and rust can react violently, à la thermite. Given that there probably was plenty of molten aluminum from the plane wreckage in that building, Mr. Eagar says, it is entirely possible that this is what happened. Others have brought up this notion as well, so Mr. Jones has carried out experiments in his lab trying to get small quantities of molten aluminum to react with rust. He has not witnessed the reaction and so rules it out. But Mr. Eagar says this is just a red herring: Accidental thermite reactions are a well-known phenomenon, he says. It just takes a lot of exposed surface area for the reaction to start. Still, Mr. Eagar does not care to respond formally to Mr. Jones or the conspiracy movement. "I don't see any point in engaging them," he says. Hence, in the world of mainstream science, Mr. Jones's hypothesis is more or less dead on the vine. But in the world of 9/11 Truth, it has seeded a whole garden of theories.