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Full details of the BBC complaint from Adrian Mallett

After watching the BBC Conspiracy Files program called '9/11 Ten Years On' Adrian Mallett, a member of the 9/11 truth movement, decided to complain to the BBC. The program distorted or avoided the facts in order to cast members of the 9/11 Truth Movement in the worst possible light.

The BBC then broadcast a further program called '9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip' which can only be described as blatant propaganda in support of the official story. It was full of truly ridiculous 'demonstrated' and 'experimental' evidence heavily stacked to make a group of carefully selected young people, not fooled by the official story, look callous and delusional. The program was so bad that even people who had no idea of any of the problems with the official story thought it was daft.

The BBC is governed by it own charter in which it states it is dedicated to the principles of accuracy and impartiality. Both programs mentioned above, and especially the Road Trip propaganda, ignored the BBC charter. If you care to read through the complaint correspondence that follows you will see that the BBC charter is nothing more than a paper exercise and the BBC itself has no interest in ensuring its producers comply with the rules.

Index of complaint correspondence

Date

Title

09/08/2011

Initial complaint sent by email to the BBC Editorial Standards Committee

25/08/2011

Reply by email from Gareth Brennan of the BBC Audience Services

25/08/2011

Further email to Gareth Brennan of the BBC Audience Services

12/09/2011

Email to Gareth Brennan of BBC Complaints

19/09/2011

Letter from Tanya McKee of BBC Complaints (PDF)

01/10/2011

Email to Tanya McKee of BBC Complaints

07/11/2011

Letter from Gemma McCartan of BBC Complaints (PDF)

02/12/2011

Letter to Gemma McCartan of BBC Complaints

13/12/2011

Email from Patrick Clyde of BBC Complaints

14/12/2011

Email to Patrick Clyde of BBC Complaints

15/01/2012

Further letter to Gemma McCartan of BBC Complaints

11/02/2012

Email from Stuart Webb of BBC Complaints

12/02/2012

Email from Jamie Patterson of BBC Complaints

16/02/2012

Letter to the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit

17/02/2012

No further comments reply from the BBC (PDF)

24/02/2012

Letter from Colin Tregear of the BBC ECU (PDF)

03/04/2012

1200092 911 Conspiracy Road Trip ECU Finding (PDF)

05/04/2012

1200091 The Conspiracy Files 911 Ten Years On ECU Finding (PDF)

23/04/2012

Letter to Lucy Tristam of the BBC Trust Unit

25/04/2012

Email reply from John Hamer of the BBC Trust Unit

29/05/2012

Email from Lucy Tristam of the BBC Trust Unit

30/05/2012

Email to Lucy Tristam of the BBC Trust Unit

13/06/2012

Reply from BBC - Conspiracy Files Mallett (PDF)

13/06/2012

Reply from BBC - Conspiracy Files Annex 2 (PDF)

13/06/2012

Reply from BBC - Conspiracy Road Trip Mallett (PDF)

13/06/2012

Reply from BBC - Conspiracy Road Trip Annex 2 (PDF)

24/06/2012

Letter to Lucy Tristam of the BBC Trust Unit


24/06/2012 - Letter to Lucy Tristam of the BBC Trust Unit

Dear Ms Tristram

In reply to the letters from the Head of Editorial Standards of the 13th June.

I have to admit that when I read them it made me feel very sad. I’m 42 years old and grew up watching the BBC. My enthusiasm for science and engineering started from an early age and was greatly encouraged by watching excellent BBC programs such as Horizon and Tomorrow’s World. My knowledge of world events has always come mainly from the BBC news. Over the years the BBC may have made the odd mistake but I always had trust that the BBC would do their best to ensure their program content was as impartial and accurate as possible. Then we have the BBC coverage of the events of September 11th 2001.

In the few days immediately after 9/11 the BBC was still living up to its reputation. To this day the BBC website carries a report (dated 23/09/2001) addressing the fact that one of the suspected hijackers had turned up alive (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1559151.stm). Since then at least six of the hijackers, which the UK went to war over, have been found alive. One even received an official apology from the US government a few days after 9/11 but his details were never changed and the BBC never followed up on that initial report.

Since then the BBC has managed to avoid asking any of the difficult questions. That would be bad enough but the programs the BBC has produced on the subject of 9/11 have actively promoted the official story and sought to discredit those trying to shine a light on the truth. The conspiracy files programs finishing up by stating that the actions of ‘conspiracy theorists’ were causing distress to the families of the victims when in fact it was the victim’s families themselves wanting answers that started the truth movement in the first place. It was the families who forced Bush to grudgingly allow the 9/11 commission and it was also the same families that then highlighted the lies and omissions in the conduct and report from the commission. The road trip program managed to surpass the conspiracy files on a whole range of levels by portraying ‘conspiracy theorists’ as a bunch of delusional people who needed ‘fixing’.

In the letters it was stated that ‘it is not within the Head of Editorial Standards (HES) remit to decide upon the validity of any of the competing versions of the events of 9/11’ and I understand that. It would be unreasonable to expect the HES, the Trustees, or anyone else for that matter, to be an expert on every subject presented to them. However, one of the objectives of the BBC Trust is to ensure the BBC adheres to the editorial guidelines and the overriding principles of those guidelines are program content impartiality and accuracy. The road trip in particular was about as far from impartial or accurate as it is possible to get and to understand that some basic knowledge of the issues is required.

The BBC had three options for its coverage of 9/11. These were:

  1. Do not cover it at all.
  2. Cover both sides of the argument in an impartial and accurate manner.
  3. Choose a side and promote that side while actively undermining any other view points.

Clearly option 1 wasn’t viable and the BBC stopped following option 2 after its report on the 23rd September 2001 mentioned above. Since then it has diligently followed option 3.

How much evidence does the BBC need?

The BBC has already been presented with a mountain of evidence relating to the questions and problems with the official story so I don’t think I need to repeat everything again here. Additionally hundreds of people have emailed or written into the BBC in the last few months to support our complaint including highly qualified and experienced professionals who are experts in their fields.

The BBC complaints procedure is cleverly structured to only allow subjects directly addressed in programs to be considered. In this case that has proved useful to the BBC as it allows them to ignore the facts which make the official version impossible. So long as no one ever mentions them in a program they can be avoided. This also applies if the BBC chooses to ignore specific areas such as World Trade Centre building 7 (WTC7) for the road trip program. Emily Church was one of the participants and she was interviewed after the program by blogtalkradio.com. She said WTC7 was mentioned countless times but the producers chose to ignore it completely. You can listen to Emily’s interview at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/resistanceradio/2011/09/09/the-mistrbrit-show.

Since the free fall of WTC7 is absolute scientific proof that controlled demolition was used for at least WTC7 the producer’s decision to ignore it is clear evidence of a lack of impartiality which is a direct breach of the editorial guidelines.

A simple test

Some of the 9/11 evidence is of a technical nature so here is a simple test for anyone to see if they believe the official story is possible or not.

Try answering the following questions:

  1. Does a brick dropped in water fall as fast as a brick dropped in air?
  2. Will a steel pan melt on a kitchen hob when the burner is turned up to full?
  3. If a car has a top speed of 100 mph is it possible for it to reach a speed of 140 mph on level road?
  4. Is it possible for paper to survive an explosion which vaporises a very strong metal box?
  5. Is it possible for two aircraft to crash into two buildings and completely demolish three?

Anyone with no doubts about the official story must answer ‘yes’ to all the questions. They are based on the same scientific laws which the official story violates. The explanations are given later.

Blaming Bin Laden and the alleged 19 hijackers solely for 9/11 caused the UK to follow the US into Afghanistan. Because of that action over 400 UK service personnel have been killed and thousands more have been injured. The BBC approach to its coverage of the events of 9/11 has not only allowed this state of affairs to carry on but has actively assisted it. UK troops have paid with their lives for that BBC mistake.

I do not believe that the BBC Trust members would want to help actively promote a lie so I can only assume they are unaware that is exactly what the BBC has been doing. The BBC’s Charter states that one of the main roles of the Trust is to set the overall strategic direction of the BBC. If that is the case then could you please provide the minutes of the meeting where the Trust decided that the BBC should carry on supporting a lie which costs UK lives.

Specific issues arising from the HES’s decisions

I would like to address some of the issues arising from decisions attributed to the HES in the latest letters.

1) The road trip medium was a debate rather than a forensic investigation.

I understand that the program would stand more chance of complying with the guidelines if it had been a debate but the problem here is that it clearly wasn’t. The group were allowed to state their points of view but these were never addressed by Maxwell. Subsequent accounts from members of the group state that every time they tried to get an answer from Maxwell on one of the issues he would get angry and storm out. That is the classic behaviour of so called ‘9/11 conspiracy debunkers’ who cannot address the facts and so resort to ridicule and personal attacks. I believe this is because they simply cannot come to terms with the implications of the truth and so do all they can to avoid it. Of course Maxwell’s behaviour never made the final program as it would have undermined the producer’s objective.

Also, a debate generally has two reasonably equal sides and evidence is presented for both. The use of a trial lesson in a Cessna to prove that someone with a few lessons could fly a Boeing 767 at impossible speeds with pin point accuracy could easily have been balanced by taking the flying instructor to a 767 simulator and letting him have a go at replicating the attacks. Such experiments have been actively broadcast by Pilots for 911 Truth and included on a few US programs. Even experienced 767 pilots struggle to successfully replicate the flights that day and find it impossible when they are conducted at the recorded aircraft speeds. How are viewers expected to make up their own mind when they are only shown one, very biased, side of an argument?

2) The program had retained a respect for factual accuracy.

I do not know what the HES’s background is but I have a degree in Civil Engineering. As such I can assure you that the ‘demolition expert’ testimony about the collapse of the towers broke several laws of physics including conservation of momentum. Buildings do not collapse straight through the path of maximum resistance so on what basis does the HES consider this information to be accurate?

The ‘evidence’ presented to prove thermite cannot melt steel did not work because the thermite was not contained so most of its energy was allowed to escape and only a fraction was directed towards the steel. There is plenty of evidence to prove that thermite can easily melt steel including decades of use doing exactly that to weld railway rails together and demolish steel masts. Even NIST acknowledges this fact in their FAQ’s on their website (http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/faqs_wtc7.cfm question 14) so what intention did the road trip producer have for trying to imply the opposite? If that is not a clear breach of the guidelines on accuracy then what is?

On what basis did the HES judge the factual accuracy of any of the program? Hopefully she did not use the evidence presented in the program as a bench mark to judge the accuracy of the evidence presented in the program? If as she states ‘it is not in her remit to decide upon the validity of any of the competing versions of the events of 9/11’ how is she then able to decide upon the validity of any of the ‘factual evidence’ presented in these programs?

Any of the road trip ‘evidence’ could easily have been discredited had suitable experts been allowed to provide counter arguments such as you would expected in a proper debate. Stating the road trip was a debate and not a documentary was a blatant attempt by members of the BBC complaints department to try to provide it with some validity.

3) The Trust could not involve itself in the matter of the choice of participants unless there was a specific breach of the editorial guidelines. (Summary of the final paragraph on page 9 of the road trip letter).

The road trip program pitted Andrew Maxwell aided by a group of ‘experts’ and all the back up of the program production team against a group of people who conducted some research in their spare time. Generally a debate is a discussion between two reasonably equal parties. If this program was indeed a debate then it can only be described as a very heavily stacked debate in favour of the views held by Maxwell and the program producer. The program featured a few comments from one expert for the Truth movement - Tony Szamboti. Why wasn’t he allowed to question Maxwell on his own beliefs as would happen in an actual debate? The program format is clearly a breach of the guidelines on impartiality and if the Trust does not have jurisdiction on that then what is the point of having the Trust?

4) The viewers can make up their own mind.

This is a recurring defence of heavily biased and inaccurate content used by both the HES and by Colin Tregear (CT) in his report. It implies that it is OK for BBC producers to include any content they want and it does not matter if it is factually accurate or completely false as the viewers are able to see through any deceptive or misleading evidence and decide for themselves what to believe.

Interestingly both CT and the HES viewed the road trip evidence for the thermite not being able to melt steel then also viewed a film made by an AE911Truth Engineer which clearly demonstrates that thermite can melt steel in even smaller amounts than that used by the road trip ‘experiment’. Both CT and the HES stated that after viewing the films they were unable to make a judgement so how do they expect the average viewer to make a judgement based on a sole piece of misleading evidence?

Both also make the point that the road trip experiment was described in the program as ‘DIY’ but they fail to mention the fact that this ‘DIY’ experiment was carried out by a ‘thermite expert from the University of California’. Experts do not conduct ‘DIY’ experiments as they are experts in the required field. If the program producers truly wanted to be impartial then show a second experiment with the thermite contained in a simple metal cylinder with a slot and when that cuts straight through the steel the viewers will certainly be able to make up their minds.

History has proven the argument that ‘viewers can always judge for themselves’ to be false anyway. In 1938 the ‘War of the Worlds’ by HG Wells was broadcast to the New York public. Mass hysteria followed as people tried to leave the city because they believed that what they were hearing was real. In 1992 the BBC broadcast a program called ‘Ghost Watch’ which thousands believed was real and the BBC switch board was jammed with calls. I must admit I remember watching the Ghost Watch program and thought it was brilliant but it still took me half the program to figure out it was fake.

The BBC has worked hard to gain the trust of its viewers but having that trust carries a responsibility to ensure anything broadcast is as impartial and accurate as possible. In the case of the road trip the ‘evidence’ broadcast was deliberately misleading and the name for such a program is ‘propaganda’. I do not believe the Trust members would be happy knowing that the BBC is producing any programs of that nature.

5) The controlled demolition theory had been clearly explained by Tony Szamboti

Tony Szamboti mentioned the free fall in the program but did not have any chance to explain the problem it creates or ask Maxwell, or any of his experts for that matter, how it was possible. I understand why because had Szamboti been allowed to explain the case for controlled demolition it would have been game over for the producers.

The facts are so compelling that when Richard Gage or any of the experts from the Truth movement present them to the public approximately 90% stop believing the official story afterwards. The fact that WTC7 collapsed in free fall for 2.25 seconds is absolute scientific proof that it had to have been brought down in a controlled demolition which in turn demolishes the rest of the official explanation like a house of cards. If anyone from the BBC would like me to explain why this is absolute proof I am very happy to come and do so. Even Shyam Sunder, the Lead Investigator for NIST, stated on film that free fall was impossible due to the structural resistance of the building components yet the BBC have never mentioned the NIST U turn afterwards or explained its implications.

The only mention made of the WTC7 free fall was in an early BBC interview with Sunder where the BBC actually showed a timed film of the WTC7 collapse to help Sunder ‘prove’ there was no free fall. Since then NIST was forced to admit to free fall but the BBC has never corrected that mistake.

The facts behind the simple questions posed earlier

In the section titled ‘A simple test’ I posed five questions. Here is the explanation of those questions.

1) Does a brick dropped in water fall as fast as a brick dropped in air?

When a brick falls in air it accelerates at gravitational acceleration also called free fall. It can fall at free fall because the only force resisting its movement is air resistance. Before the brick begins to fall it has potential energy. For free fall all the potential energy must be available for conversion to kinetic energy. When the brick falls in water a portion of the potential energy has to be used to perform the work of moving the water from the path of the brick and therefore the brick cannot reach free fall acceleration. Even the NIST Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder explained this principle at a televised technical briefing in August 2008. When NIST were forced to admit free fall a few months later in their final report the footage of the technical briefing was removed from the NIST website.

The fundamental objective of the structure of a building is to resist gravity and in doing so it provides substantially more resistance than water. The structure of WTC7 was five times stronger than it needed to be yet according to the official story it provided zero resistance for at least 2.25 seconds. In other words, for the official story to be correct the same laws of physics have to be ignored that prevent a brick dropped in water to fall as fast as a brick dropped in air.

The BBC coverage has never addressed this point.

2) Will a steel pan melt on a kitchen hob when the burner is turned up to full?

Large pools of molten iron were found under WTC towers 1, 2 and 7. These pools stayed hot for weeks and the temperatures were even recorded by NASA from space observations. This is a huge problem for the official story which is why they have ignored it. The melting point of steel is 1500 deg. C while office fires can reach a maximum of 900 deg. C in ideal conditions. Even jet fuel burns at a maximum of 980 deg. C so where did the heat come from to melt so much steel?

The BBC coverage has never addressed this point.

3) If a car has a top speed of 100 mph is it possible for it to reach a speed of 140 mph on level road?

According to Boeing the maximum speed of a 767 at sea level is 385 knots. When American Airlines Flight 11 hit WTC1 it was travelling at a speed of 430 knots. When United Airlines Flight 175 hit WTC2 it was travelling at a speed of 510 knots. Flight 175 was moving at a speed 40% higher than its maximum speed. There are several sources for the aircraft speed data including very accurate US military tracking radar. Film footage of the final few seconds of each flight can be used to confirm the speeds by using the aircraft length as a measure of distance against film frame speed.

This can be explained if the planes which hit the towers were not the same ones which took off. In order to switch the aircraft they would have needed to turn off the transponders and fly through one of the few blind spots in the US radar coverage. All four planes did exactly that. Witnesses reported that the alleged flight 175 was a military plane described as “dark in colour with no windows”. If two substitute aircraft had been specially prepared for that day then a requirement would have been for them to be as fast as possible to minimise the chances of interception. Upgraded engines and avionics would explain the otherwise impossible speeds. Of course this is just a theory and what is really needed is a proper investigation to find out what really happened.

The BBC coverage has never addressed this point.

4) Is it possible for paper to survive an explosion which vaporises a very strong metal box?

This question follows on from the last one to an extent. If flights AA 11 and UA 175 were substituted for ones which could be remotely flown into the towers then the flight data recorders would be a major problem. According to the official story all four ‘black boxes’ were never found and assumed to be destroyed in the explosions. Of course these were exactly the kind of events which the black boxes were designed to survive. At the same time one of the hijackers was identified by the fact that his passport was found on a street in New York. According to the official story the passport in question managed to travel from the hijackers pocket to the street through a massive explosion which destroyed four black boxes.

The BBC did provide some coverage on this point very early on but has never mentioned it up since.

5) Is it possible for two aircraft to crash into two buildings and completely demolish three?

This one is just very simple maths and a huge dose of common sense. Buildings are generally not designed to be weak and delicate and the WTC towers were specifically designed to cope with the impact of a Boeing 707. Even if it is accepted that a 767 crash could lead to the collapse of either WTC tower the buildings would have suffered a partial collapse rather than the complete symmetrical collapse straight through the path of maximum resistance at near free fall speed. But then there’s WTC7 which was not hit by an aircraft and yet completely collapsed with the result that a 47 storey building ended up as a 3 storey pile of rubble.

It is not possible for a plane to cause the complete collapse of a single high rise building but to try to claim that 2 planes managed to destroy three buildings is just plain daft which begs the question – Why is the BBC trying so hard to support this farce?

In conclusion

In conclusion I would like to request that the Trustees should review the HES decision as I do not believe they would wish to have the BBC continue to create programs which help prop up a lie which in turn has lead to the deaths of so many UK service personnel. If there was even a prospect of the BBC making this mistake surely the Trustees would want to check this out. I would like to point out that should the Trustees require any additional information or would like an explanation of the facts the BBC has actively avoided up to now then Paul Warburton, Peter Drew and I would be very happy to meet with them.

Yours Sincerely,

Adrian Mallett


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