A review of Daniel Hopsicker, Welcome to Terrorland:
Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-up in Florida (2012)
Daniel Hopsicker embraces journalistic flair and common-sense irony to present the case for a 9-11 cover-up, focused on the flight schools in Jeb Bush’s Florida. Admirably he succeeds in the challenge of how to make it believable, whether to ordinary readers or hardened skeptics. I mean, the coverup (chiefly by the FBI) is eminently believable, given the wealth of factual information and firsthand interviews in this account; but the real test is holding the reader’s interest.
Hopsicker hits on a novel approach: write it like a B-movie. Then we are drawn in, on the common human level. Familiar with Hollywood plots and pulp thrillers, we know how these things work: the old boys network, the greasing of palms.
When we see conspiracy in a movie, we go, “Oh, but it’s just a movie…”; or, “That sort of thing only happens in the movies.” So reality skates by, unexamined. Which, in its own right, can be chalked up to an agenda within the Hollywood establishment—but that’s another story.
If reality, on the other hand, is conveyed in straight investigative or academic terms, reasoned and footnoted, as in the approach of David Ray Griffin, we go, “Yeah, that sounds right…” but we probably already share the premise of skepticism. If we don’t already agree, we can see what’s coming and choose not to go there.
Hopsicker’s style uses humor to disarm, and subtle phrasing to avoid stating what to the programmed mind might seem outrageous, or to the NSA snoop, subversive. At times the narrator of this shockingly true chronicle will feign to contradict, tongue in cheek, what the evidence has made abundantly clear—“Of course, that’s just another coincidence”—mocking the mainstream default position, denial.
Given the facts, any reasonable person likely will come to the same conclusions as Hopsicker and this reader, unless our programming is harder-wired than we are aware of. Hopsicker has the genius and chops to undermine such programming with a winning combination of dogged investigative journalism, and a knack for telling a story that engages our interest, our sympathy, and our conviction that the “official” story is a shoddy pack of criminal lies.
–Nowick Gray
Note (8 August 2017): I discovered this week that Hopsicker’s book, which I bought last year from Amazon in Kindle version, is no longer available there; and Amazon is charging exhorbitant prices for Hopsicker’s books in paperback and hardback editions.
Why? The cover-up continues, apparently.
At least you can still get the books by donation from the author’s website, here: http://www.madcowprod.com/the-return-of-barry-the-boys-2/
