A Side Order of Scotsman: Confession

Posted by Brian McLain on 11.02.2007

This is sort of a take off from Scotsman's old “Wild Card” articles that pop up on 411mania without any rhyme, reason, or scheduled appearance just to throw a wrench into the works. Quite often these will be posted because he has a burning desire to clear the air on something, get something off his chest, or just plain rant on issues that need immediate attention. In this first issue, the Scotsman makes a deep, dark confession to express to you all...which will make all of you want to read this article even more.

Greetings to one and all and welcome to the surprise article of the Angry Scotsman I would like to call "A Side Order of Scotsman". This is sort of a take off from my old "Wild Card" articles that pop up on 411mania without any rhyme, reason, or scheduled appearance just to throw a wrench into the works. Quite often these will be posted because I have a burning desire to clear the air on something, get something off my chest, or just plain rant on issues that need immediate attention. Since I have made a name for myself as a series writer here on 411mania, it is rare that an issue that I hear about on the news, read about online or in the paper, or so on will match up with what the current series is talking about so it is difficult to actually express my views on such things in my normal columns.

That being said, as the title will suggest, I have a deep, dark confession I would like to make to you all. To some this might come as a shock…and to those people I would like to ask if they had filled out a change of address form for the rock they've been living under yet. Then again, perhaps I hadn't made myself that apparent. As an amateur politician I've gotten pretty good at covering my tracks in some cases, even when I don't fully intend to. This confession might make me lose credibility as a writer on 411mania, though I certainly hope not. There are a great many things I've written about that I had this little voice in my head telling me "Okay, this is the one that'll bring people against you, Scotsman. This is the one that will get people telling you that you're crazy", but that has been surprisingly proven false.

I have written articles detailing how our federal government is sliding quickly into an American fascist police state. I have written articles that detail legislation and directives that show the foundation of a police state, totalitarian take over, martial law, and even a shift of the American people from Citizen to subject…and I have had nothing but honest questions regarding expansion on my premises and evidence, and expressions of good faith and praise in my writing and news coverage. From your e-mails I can tell that my readers trust my judgment, my point of view, the facts I present and the reflections I show in my conclusions. I certainly hope that you will take what I will say with as much trust, inquiry, and critical thought as you had with everything else I have written about.

This confession is, my name is Brian McLain, AKA The Angry Scotsman, and I am a 9-11 Truther. That's right, I'm one of the nut jobs that people have been calling anything from "dangerous, dangerous, dangerous" to outright "terrorists".

The path that I had chosen to get to that point of view had been long in the making from the day that 9-11 took place and as I, a man who requires a great deal of information, proof, and evidence to sway me towards one way or the other, had recently settled comfortably into this role within the past few weeks. However, the questions I had regarding 9-11 had been boiling for over six years. I made a hobby out of studying the events of 9-11, I had cataloged news reports and paper clippings on the day the tragedy occurred, I had compiled numerous reports from both sides, and listen to talking heads on both sides for years. For a little while one might say I was obsessed, however I was finding plenty of more concrete fallout from 9-11 that took up more of my time, as you have read before in the past. Allow me to explain how I arrived at this point:

9-11-01 2:30 PM, I wake up for the day. I worked nights during this time so I received the news a little late. I signed on to AOL and right there on the front page of the home site was the words "America under attack!" in really big, bold letters. I thought it was a joke at first, but then I turn on the TV and it was wall to wall coverage of the events. By now there were several different angles to which this event was covered. I watched in horror as I saw, over and over again, the planes flying into the towers, the videos of people jumping out of the gaping holes in the side, and then...the first tower collapsed.My first reaction to this..."WHY THEY HELL DID THEY DO THAT?!" Where they scared that the top part was going to fall off and cause even more damage and casualties?

This looked exactly like a demolition to me. I discussed this possibility with some friends and family and they later convinced me that the idea wasn't at all probable so I simply bury it in the back of my brain.
A month later, I get my first taste of true Constitutional outrage as I see the PATRIOT Act passed without so much as a whimper through both House and Senate, then signed into law by Bush. I actually get online to see what exactly this bill did and I found myself staring at a very disturbing expansion of police state like authority in the United States. This was also a 300 page bill, and every single person in the Executive office would have had to work without sleep for days to bang this bad boy out in only a little over 3 weeks in finished form. There was something rotten in Washington.

Then the bombs started in Afghanistan, fine, good, get those bastards!
Then the bombs started in Iraq...wait..what? Again, to me this was fishy behavior.
Fear became a common tool used to manipulate the populous, a very effective tool used only by the most ruthless of empires. The PATRIOT Act II came around and this expanded the police state even further.
It was quite clear that the federal government was taking the 9-11 tragedy for what its worth and bleeding out its usefulness.

In 2005, I just happened upon a viral video called "Loose Change", which claimed to know exactly what happened on 9-11. The questions in the back of my brain began to really start churning up again, and this time, even more questions came up. Just to make sure the videos weren't doctored, I pulled out the video tapes of the 9-11 coverage I was scrapbooking for future use and cross referenced it. Loose Change got me back into thinking about the 9-11 issue and I began to research again. This was one of the more obsessive times of thought about the 9-11 tragedy.

I picked up a copy of the 9-11 Commission Report and began to read. This report, which came several years after the attack, after a commission was handpicked to overlook the data of the 9-11 attacks almost two full years after the fact only because of outcries for an official story. The accounts given, the testimony, the official reports all seemed very choppy, no real consistence, and there were certain questions that came to mind as I read. Why is it, first of all, that building 7 wasn't mentioned at all even though it sustained damage from the 9-11 attacks that were bad enough to bring it down? Why were passports from the terrorists found among the wreckage (not thrown away from the site, but actually in the wreckage) but were hardly damaged in the heat of the fires hot enough to soften steel beams? If these fires were that hot, why were people seen in the gaps left by the planes waving frantically, but did not succumb to the same heat? The entire report seemed to read like a sci-fi version of the Warren Report.

It was in that instance, along with the odd behavior of certain officials in Washington, I began to smell a major cover-up. But why would the government cover something up like this? If these government officials wanted to really push their case for massive security measures at the expense of civil liberties, would they not want to cover every avenue and offer every reason? How can aluminum planes crash into tall buildings that were built to sustain damage from run away aircraft, through steel and concrete, and then have fires burning 700 to 1000 degrees cooler than required to soften steel but have the steel soften anyway? If the steel did soften, why didn't the area above the damage lean over rather than falling straight down through hardened, still stable, fireproofed, and solid steel? Nothing was adding up, but I still wasn't convinced. There had to be another answer.

I looked over old news reports as well, and certain testimony of people who escaped from the building, first responders who did the same, commentary from reporters all seemed to point towards a series of explosions heard, explosives seen, etc. These were first hand accounts that were either omitted or had their role drastically reduced in the report. Well, it was the heat of the moment, people could have heard just about anything, seen just about anything, it was chaos so who knows what might be true or false.

It was about three weeks ago I found the video online of "September 11th Revisited" and, like anybody obsessed with a topic, watched the video like an addict. I still had these questions in my head, and I wanted answers, dammit! It was not the video, necessarily, that had turned my head enough to actually change my opinion to the solid position that I have now, but a three second video clip. The video you can find under this article, and please take a very close look at news clip used between 3 min 21 sec and 3 min 24 seconds.

You can distinctly see a series of flashes going up the side of the building. I replayed this clip perhaps 10 times over and I was convinced I wasn't just seeing things. I delved back into my "scrapbook" once again to find a similar occurrence of first hand video footage and I found more of the same. Unlike all the other reports, articles, videos that I viewed, viral or otherwise…this actually freaked me out to the point of silence. I was ultimately convinced that the collapse of WTC Towers 1, 2 and 7 were controlled demolitions, and the government didn't want this information to get out…but why?! If terrorists DID infiltrate these buildings, set up strategic bombs to cause maximum casualties and damage, wouldn't that be a huge, I mean HUGE flaw in our security that should be pointed out and recognized? If steel buildings can collapse from such an impact, why have codes not been changed to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the new Freedom Tower? And when did the terrorists infiltrate building 7, a building that housed such juicy targets as the offices of the mayor, CIA, FBI, etc?

Look, I'm not expecting anybody believe me from my own analysis, but please believe me when I say something is rotten in Denmark, and it needs to be looked at, in-depth, by everyone. I am not a kook who will go screaming from the roof tops, yelling at Bill Maher (though I would gladly bother Geraldo or anybody else at Faux News), or scream at certain officials (I've got other, more concrete beefs on them anyway), but if I do see something fishy I feel a solemn duty to uncover it and share with my fellow Citizens. My personal opinion is while I see no concrete evidence that may convict any Washington official in these cases; if such evidence and testimony that I have seen was presented to a Grand Jury, it would be hard to make an excuse against indictment of certain people. At the very least, the federal government saw this coming…at the very worst we have the Reichstag Fire re-deux.

If you have different opinions, questions, or just want to shoot me some hate mail (and I know I'll be getting it) I would be more than happy to hear from you. I will respond to everyone who writes me, as I have always promised. All I ask is that you keep an open mind and open eyes. Take care, everyone.

Again, please keep a close eye on the side of the building between 3:21 and 3:24.