Conspiracy Theories, Part III

There's a construction site a block or two away from my office, and like most sites in New York City, the plywood walls blocking off the site from the street are plastered in posters.  Sure they all have the stenciled words painted on the walls telling people not to post, but people do it anyway.

Usually they consist of ads for a club or a new record about to be released, or an upcoming film, or in one case, the inspired and romantic marriage proposal that a friend I used to work with received (she said yes, and when she described how her now-husband popped the question, we all had to admit the construction wall posters were pretty cool).

But here's one I saw the other day:

Moving in a little closer:

Since I had never heard of Jeff Boss or why the NSA was trying to kill him, I thought I would check out what was going on.  Doing a little research reveals that he's apparently a candidate for the 2012 democratic presidential nomination and the 2012 Senate race.  He also ran for Congress in 2010 (unsuccessfully) and for both president and US Senate in 2008 (unsuccessfully).  His platform is a simple one, and I'll let him spell it out in his own words.

I  Witnessed a family member my sister in law, high up in the NSA (National Security Agency) planning the 911 attack. She was talking about helping Ramsi Yousef (responsible for the 93 bombing at the World Trade Center) call his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed(considered the mastermind of the 911 attack) from the NSA secret prison in Alexandria, VA and she was talking about flying planes into buildings. I never heard the dates or the names of the buildings and I never thought anything would ever happen. But  on September 10, 2001 I was told to go the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. My first day in a new office, and I was yelled out by 4 supervisors not to be late. I was late. Thank G-d. The NSA wanted the oil in Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserve in the world.  Certain powerful people in the NSA told me that the electronic voting machines can be hacked into and the vote changed within seconds. If we do not have our vote, then we are not a democracy. By creating a culture of  Fear, the NSA has helped to pass the Patriot Act, which trashes our constitution. Now the government is bailing out the automakers, banks, insurance co. etc, and when they bail out these companies, they own and control them. When the government controls the big companies this is Russian style communism. Our Civil liberties, Constitution, and Democracy are rapidly disappearing. I will not let them hijack my country.

While I share his concern about the lack of transparency surrounding electronic voting machines, we differ on a number of other points, so needless to say, he probably won't get my vote next time around.

He goes on to claim that the NSA is now trying to kill him to block his message, and that they take active measures to shut down his attempts to get the message out.  He hands out literature, the NSA swoops in behind to collect it and destroy it.  He posts videos on Youtube, the NSA edits them or takes them down (at least according to his videos that I watched on Youtube).  He tries to buy ad space in local papers or on local radio, the NSA forces the media to turn down his requests.

When I was on WPAT, the radio station broadcast the Emergency broadcast system for 10 minutes over my interview. My phone, email, and website are controlled by the NSA. I have filed 9 complaints at the US Attorney’s Office in Newark. The only response I got back was a forged letter with a forged signature of the director on it. I have a tape of this person Tom Mallony admitting he signed Ralph Marra’s name illegally. I have also filed 15 complaints with the FBI, but every time I show up at one of these federal buildings, the people on the payroll of the NSA show up and block my complaints from being heard. I have been stopped from getting help from FBI employees named: Esposito, Marrero, Zambleta, Mercarto, and Barnes and numerous others, some with fake names.

There's even this line in extremely small print on his website:

NSA IS TRYING TO KILL THE CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES   2012 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY/CONGRESS 2010 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY!

He's written to President Obama himself outlining his claims and specifically mentioning that the NSA has bugged his car and home, and also set up microwave devices to send waves through the walls to kill him.  Obama never responded, which begs the question... did the NSA get to Obama or was he in on it the entire time?

Mr. Boss also claims he has over 200 NSA agents admit to what they are doing on DVD.  Here's some of that footage:

You can get the idea pretty quickly without sitting through the entire 10 minute clip.  If that's what the NSA let through, I'd hate to see the damning stuff they cut out before they let Boss post it up.  Obviously it's pretty easy to guess that when newspapers see what he wants to print, they shut it down.  When radio stations hear what he says, maybe they run emergency broadcast signals over his words.  When he asks people that are barely paying attention to him or barely speak English about his theories, they sort of nod.  It's not hard to understand why Mr. Boss experiences what he does.

While Jeff Boss may come across as an easy target, he's not alone in the 9/11 conspiracy camp.  There's a number of feature-length (or near-feature-length) "documentaries" up on youtube that supposedly go into how the WTC attacks were an inside job.  One favorite target is Bill Maher:

There's a lot of energy that goes into these particular efforts by a particular group of people, and sometimes I wonder if efforts such as my own here aren't terribly different?  Maybe I'm just as crazy for believing a lot of what's working against our country is an inside job.  Are 9/11 Truthers all that different from misinformed people trying to actively participate in the national debate?

In the end, I can't fault the passion of many of these people that get categorized as the lunatic fringe while so many people seem to sit on their hands, but I obviously wish that passion got directed at something 1) actually real and 2) actually able to make this a better place.  I am genuinely curious what sparks their passion and sends it spinning off into these misguided directions.

A few days later, the Jeff Boss posters were all torn down... not unexpected in New York City itself.  Not when you can turn around from the spot where the posters hung and see the Freedom Tower already surpassing every downtown structure around it.

Part of the travesty might be that our political debate on both sides is taking too much from the 9/11 Truther movements.  Angry and out of touch with reality.