Minneapolis/St. Paul

Best Of | Promotions | Store | Ad Index | Advertise With Us | Contact Us

PAGE | 1 | 2 |

As a middle-aged guy with a moustache and NASCAR cap sidled up to the table where James H. Fetzer was sitting, I couldn't help thinking: "Here's the part where Fetzer gets punched." We were partway through a marathon lunch at the Giant Panda, an inexpensive Chinese joint located in a strip mall not far from downtown Duluth. For the better part of the previous two hours, Fetzer had been discussing his great passion of late—his conviction that the 9/11 attacks were not orchestrated by Osama bin Laden but by criminal elites in the Bush administration. Actually, "discussing" is not the best descriptor of Fetzer's rhetorical approach. Fetzer, a just-retired philosophy professor from the University of Minnesota Duluth, is a soliloquist by nature. And, aside from the occasional instances when he lowers his voice for effect, he speaks loudly. Very loudly. That's why I was worried about the guy in the NASCAR cap. Fetzer was thundering on about lies, hoaxes, and the U.S. government's secret role in the worst act of terrorism in the nation's history. I figured some red-blooded buffet patron in this working-class quarter of Duluth would take umbrage at such allegations. NASCAR guy seemed a likely candidate.

As it turned out, my stab at casual profiling proved utterly inaccurate. NASCAR guy wasn't indignant. Not at all. On the contrary, as he meekly explained, he once watched Fetzer on Duluth Public Access TV, lecturing about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Paul Wellstone. Now he just wanted to shake the professor's hand. He proceeded to tell Fetzer that he, too, was skeptical of "the official story" about 9/11—especially the part about the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. At that, Fetzer beamed and nodded vigorously. In the truth movement (as the 9/11-was-an-inside-job crowd refers to itself), the collapse of the Twin Towers is considered among the most damning pieces of evidence. And while Fetzer sees plenty else to support the argument, he gets especially animated on the subject of the towers. In talking to NASCAR guy, he reiterated the talking points like an auctioneer with a full bladder. No modern steel-frame skyscraper has been toppled from fire alone. Airplane fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel girders. Look how the buildings fell. Symmetrically. At a speed approaching free fall. Into their own footprints. It all points to one inescapable conclusion: The Twin Towers didn't collapse because they were struck by commercial airliners. They were "pulled"—in other words, taken out by controlled demolition.

After NASCAR guy left, Fetzer sipped on his green tea and his demeanor turned more contemplative. Of course, he conceded, there are unanswered questions about the Twin Towers. Who rigged the buildings with the explosive charges and how, exactly, they did it remains an open question. But like many of his allies in the truth movement, Fetzer favors the thermite hypothesis. It goes like this: In the weeks before 9/11, a team of secret agents slipped into the Towers undetected, thanks to a suspicious change in security protocols. The agents toted in multiple charges of an explosive agent called thermite, which they then furtively planted in the Towers. Now, it probably wasn't garden-variety thermite but rather thermate, a sulfur-enhanced version that burns much hotter. That's the only explanation Fetzer can find for the pools of molten steel said to have been found in the wreckage of the towers weeks after the attacks. And, he adds, it also explains World Trade Center 7. In Fetzer's opinion, the collapse of the blockish Building 7 is beyond suspicious. It was never even struck by an airplane and yet it collapses? Can you explain that?

When he watches the video of the attack on the World Trade Center, Fetzer says, it's just all very obvious. "How can anybody begin to look at this and not understand what's going on here?" he asks, almost plaintively. Of course, he knows a lot of people don't share his views. But he believes there is more skepticism afoot in the land than you probably think. In fact, it's hard to say. There has yet to be a major poll to gauge Americans' beliefs about whether the government was complicit in 9/11. That's a defect Fetzer hopes to remedy soon. One Zogby poll has demonstrated a widespread public belief that the government isn't being honest about 9/11. For Fetzer, that's encouraging—a toehold, at least. If "our paper of record, the New York Times" and the rest of the national media had not abdicated their responsibility to investigate 9/11, everyone would know the truth. That's why Fetzer has taken up the cause. Somebody has to.

Fetzer's efforts in this regard began in earnest in December, when he announced the founding of an organization called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group—which consists mainly of university professors, graduate students, and other academics—professes a simple goal: "exposing falsehoods and revealing truths behind 9/11." It has grown steadily since its inception and now boasts over 200 members, including one of the truth movement's leading eminences, Steven Jones. A physics professor at Brigham Young University, Jones authored a paper in which he argued that, in his scientific opinion, airplanes alone could not have felled the Twin Towers. A conservative Mormon and former Bush supporter, Jones quickly emerged as the leading champion of the controlled demolition hypothesis. So when Fetzer founded the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, he invited Jones to serve as co-chair. It's not just Jones and Fetzer who bring a patina of respectability to the Scholars. There are a number of notable members, including the former chief economist in Bush's Department of Labor (Morgan Reynolds), a past director of the Star Wars program under Ronald Reagan (Bob Bowman), and retired theologian David Ray Griffin, author of two of the seminal truth movement texts, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions and The New Pearl Harbor.

"This thing has taken off like a bloody rocket. It's just been wonderful," Fetzer says. Indeed, since the founding of "the society," as he likes to refer to the Scholars, Fetzer has devoted most of his energy to spreading the awful gospel. He has held a press conference on the steps of a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. He has traveled to Hollywood to hobnob with West Coast skeptics. He has given speeches at a college in San Diego and a conference in Chicago. He has made—by his count—70 radio appearances. He even wrangled his way on to the FOX shout-fest Hannity & Colmes (where he spent most of his time scolding Alan Colmes and guest host Oliver North for the apparently slipshod research of their show's producers [link]). And, naturally, he also turned his attentions to the internet.

Since its launch six months ago, scholarsfor911truth.org has attracted nearly half a million visitors. In Duluth, though, Fetzer owes his notoriety to an older friend of the dedicated conspiracy theorist, public access television. Earlier this year, the Duluth public access station dedicated an entire week to conspiracy theories. A three-part lecture Fetzer delivered at UMD in November—evidently the one NASCAR guy caught—was aired repeatedly. In that speech, Fetzer not only outlined the case for government involvement in 9/11, he also aired his views on the assassination of JFK (it was a government hit job, there were multiple shooters, the Zapruder film is a fake) and the death of Paul Wellstone (he was assassinated, probably at the behest of the Bush administration, likely with a sophisticated electromagnetic pulse weapon).

Despite the seeming lack of connections, Fetzer says his research on JFK and Wellstone has proved invaluable to his understanding of 9/11. "If you've ever worked your way through what's gone on in JFK, you've encountered almost every mode of deceit, deception, and fabrication the government is capable of displaying," he explains. "Therefore, when I got involved in 9/11 research, it was a relative piece of cake in terms of sorting things out. The evidence was so obvious. The inadequacies of the government account were so blatant."

In the course of our meal at the Giant Panda, Fetzer would be approached by one other admirer. He, too, had caught one of the professor's lectures on TV. Like NASCAR guy, he felt he had to talk to Fetzer. Such encounters, Fetzer says, are common. He attributes this to his memorable persona. "People hear me on the radio and they never forget. They never forget. It's just astonishing," he offers. Most of the time, people are polite and enthusiastic. Occasionally he is confronted by doubters and haters. When it happens, he pushes back with all the bombast he can muster. "You've got to be very aggressive and push it," he says, locking into me with laser eyes that suggest that I am about to hear one man's credo. "You have to be willing to take on all arguments and defeat them. Goddamit, I've done that forever with JFK and I'll do it for 9/11. Shy away from nothing. Confront everything."

 

Short and barrel-chested, Jim Fetzer carries himself like a big man. He has an erect posture, a purposeful stride, and a highly expressive face, which is topped by an unruly shock of gray hair. His eyebrows and sideburns are bushy. When he speaks, his eyes light up as if someone flipped a switch. Put another way, he looks the part of Radical College Professor. For most of his 65 years, though, Fetzer led a conventional, relatively quiet life. Born on December 6, 1940—or, as his father used to put it, a year and a day before Pearl Harbor—he grew up in southern California, where his father worked as an accountant in the Los Angeles County welfare office. He describes the California of his youth with a nostalgia common to people who lived there in the good old days. The Pasadena of Fetzer's boyhood was a paradise, but there was trouble in the Fetzer household. His first conscious memory is one of family strife. He remembers standing outside the family home in Altadena while his father and mother were inside having an argument. Just then, a fire engine passed by. It's the fire engine Fetzer recalls most vividly. He figures that's because it served as a distraction from the emotional conflict.

A few years later the Fetzers divorced, and young Jim moved with his brother, mother, and new stepfather to La Habra Heights. It was a remote spot and, Fetzer says, his mother soon succumbed to feelings of isolation. "My mother needed people. She was a very sociable person," Fetzer recalls. "I think she despaired that she made a mistake in divorcing my father." When Fetzer was 11, his mother committed suicide. He moved back to the home of his father, who had since remarried and started a new family. Though he is reluctant to talk about his mother's death in much detail, he says it rid him of illusions about mortality and made it easier for him to confront unpleasant truths. In other words, it paved the way for a career as a professional philosopher and skeptic.

In school, Fetzer did well, which he attributes to encouragement from his stepmother. He was active in an Episcopalian youth group (though, he says, never devout), won various prizes, and in 12th grade was admitted to Princeton University. For tuition, he signed up for the Navy Regular Program. After graduating with a philosophy degree in 1962, he went on to serve as an artillery officer in the Marines. While in the service, he eloped to Vegas with a high school sweetheart and fathered one son. Like most men of his generation, Fetzer seems proud of his military service. But he is cynical about his government's motives and actions. When he was stationed in Okinawa, Fetzer recalls, he and his fellow Marines were involved in an artillery drill at Mount Fuji. "We started lobbing shells all over the base of the sacred mountain. Off in the distance, you could see pilgrims making their trek. I turned to one of my fellow officers and said, 'Who says we're ugly Americans?'" Fetzer says. At the recollection of this witty remark, he lets loose a raucous laugh; like a sea lion, he's noisiest on the inhale.

 

When JFK was assassinated, Fetzer was stationed in Formosa. He remembers being awakened by an officer and told the news. A few hours later, he learned of the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. He thought it was "pretty fast work," but didn't make much more of it. By his account, the young Fetzer was more interested in his own future than in politics or, for that matter, in looking deeply enough to find the hidden order in events. After he was discharged from the Marines in 1966, Fetzer enrolled at the University of Indiana to pursue a master's in the history and philosophy of science and prepared to take the world by storm. "By the time I got out of the Marine Corps, I was a devastating intellectual machine," he explains. "I had grad students who, when they knew I was going to critique their work, dropped out of the program."

But all was not well on the home front. After four years of marriage, Fetzer and his wife divorced. To put some space between them, he transferred to Columbia University for a year. Those were heady days on the Columbia campus. When the radical student group Students for a Democratic Society trashed a teacher placement office, Fetzer—concerned that the campus disruptions might hamper his career—aligned himself with an opposition group, Students for Columbia University. At one point, he says, he was involved in a melee in which he shouted down SDS leaders with a bullhorn. Only later did Fetzer come to suspect that some of his fellows with Students for Columbia University were probably agents provocateur—and, by extension, that he had been made a government dupe.

After the year at Columbia, Fetzer returned to Indiana, where he completed his Ph.D. In 1970, Fetzer landed a gig as an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky, where he would remain for the next seven years and meet his current wife, Jan. In 1977, much to his dismay, he was denied tenure at Kentucky. Thus began a decade in the academic wilderness, a period during which he landed visiting or associate professorships at the University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, University of Cincinnati, and University of South Florida. During those years he also published prodigiously, authoring books and papers with mind-numbing titles such as "Scientific Knowledge: Causation, Explanation, and Corroboration, Dispositional Probabilities," and "Syntax, Semantics, and Ontology: A Probabilistic Causal Calculus." Such output would be the one constant in Fetzer's career. "I just know what I'm doing. I'm extremely efficient," he says of his writing habits. "I'll just sit down to write an article and it's done. My first book was 500 pages and I sat down and wrote that from first page to last page continuously. They didn't ask me to revise a comma."

After enduring 10 years without tenure, Fetzer was almost ready to abandon his academic ambitions. "If I thought there was anything in the world I could do better than being a professional philosopher—if this weren't in my blood—by God, I would have pursued those things," he says. His persistence finally paid off in 1987, when he was hired as a full professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth. There, he continued to write papers and books in the esoteric fields of artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences. He also became the first faculty member at UMD to be named a Distinguished McKnight Professor, which, in addition to putting another honorific in his title, garnered him a $100,000 research grant. Still, were it not for Oliver Stone, Fetzer probably would have remained an obscure figure outside his chosen discipline. In 1991, he watched Stone's film JFK and found himself transfixed. In a quixotic manner, Fetzer abruptly immersed himself in the peculiar and pugnacious world of JFK assassination research.

Over the following decade, Fetzer published dozens of articles attacking the Warren Commission Report, which he views as a flagrant whitewash, and floating his own theories about the assassination. He has edited three JFK-related anthologies, most recently one titled The Great Zapruder Film Hoax. In Fetzer's estimation, his work on "Jack" has been nothing short of revolutionary. "These books I have published are the most important in establishing the objective and scientific evidence of the existence of conspiracy and cover-up in the assassination of JFK. Bar none. No other books come close. Remotely. None. They're in a category by themselves," he says. "This shattered the whole goddamn cover-up!" Not surprisingly, Fetzer has become a familiar and controversial figure in the JFK research community. On occasion, he has been assailed, lambasted, and denounced by his fellow researchers. No Fetzer critic has been more dogged than a California-based private detective named Josiah "Tink" Thompson.

 

At first blush, you might think Tink Thompson and Jim Fetzer ought to be pals. Their shared contempt for the Warren Commission and otherwise similar life trajectories seem to provide grounds for friendship. They didn't. Thompson—like Fetzer, a former philosophy professor—rose to prominence in 1967 when he wrote Six Seconds in Dallas, one of the first Kennedy conspiracy books and to this day an influential tome among JFK researchers. Relying on frame-by-frame analysis of the Zapruder film, Thompson posited that there were at least three shooters at Dealey Plaza. Over the decades, Thompson, now a private detective, has participated in countless JFK conferences. It was at one such gathering in the early '90s that he met Jim Fetzer. Evidently, it was not especially memorable. "We spent some time one night talking about the academic world," Thompson recalls vaguely. "He seemed quite personable and genial."

After that first encounter, Fetzer stayed in touch with Thompson. Sometimes, Thompson says, Fetzer would share theories that—even in the world of assassination buffs—seemed off the wall. "The first thing he sent me was a rather confusing claim that William Greer, the driver of the presidential limousine, could be seen in the Zapruder film turning around 180 degrees, holding up a chrome colored revolver, and shooting the president in the head," Thompson remembers. "At that point, I knew I was dealing with someone with diminished experience in these matters." Despite what Tink Thompson thought of the professor from UMD, Fetzer soon established himself as a ubiquitous presence in the JFK world. He participated in the chat boards and attended conferences, sometimes serving as a moderator or organizer. Over the years, Thompson's disdain for Fetzer swelled.

In the highly contentious world of assassination research, Thompson says, Fetzer's bombastic approach and unconventional theories rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But the animosity between Fetzer and Thompson seems to have been largely driven by Fetzer's assertion that Thompson had been bamboozled by the Zapruder film—in Fetzer's words, "a phony strip of celluloid." No one likes being called a sucker, but in conspiracy circles, where the sum of one's endeavors is to uncover truths that all the suckers out there failed to see, it possesses a special bite.

After one nasty dust-up with Thompson, Fetzer found himself denounced in a written statement by a group of prominent JFK researchers. They called Fetzer's attacks "biased, prejudicial, counterproductive, and, finally, useless" and insisted that he apologize. The apology, says Thompson, never came. The last time he saw Fetzer was at a JFK conference in Dallas in 1998. Fetzer announced that he could prove that the Zapruder film was a fake and Thompson was itching to take him down. After he and a colleague had made their presentations, Thompson says, Fetzer stepped to the podium to present his arguments. There was supposed to be a question-and-answer session but, according to Thompson, instead Fetzer simply filibustered. "I remember him very red in the face trying to tell a Richard Pryor joke when the sponsor of the conference turned off the power to the microphone," Thompson recalls gleefully. "I think that's the last time I saw Fetzer, yapping into a dead mic." (For his part, Fetzer recalls the incident a little differently, though he does acknowledge having his power shut down for "taking too long to tell the joke, 'Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?'")

While they didn't meet again in the flesh, Thompson continued to spar with Fetzer on internet discussion forums. The brawling hasn't all been confined to JFK. Thompson is scornful of everything about Fetzer. His rhetorical approach. His emphasis on credentials and résumés. Even his philosophic writings. "They're dreck," Thompson says of Fetzer's numerous papers and books. "The usual sort of eminently forgettable pap which second-rate academics pump out for publication lists so deans, who never read anything, will say, 'Let's hire this guy.'" But Thompson says he is motivated mainly by Fetzer's periodic accusations that Thompson might be a spook. "When he said that, it really pissed me off," Thompson says. "So I figured, 'I'm not going to let this blowhard wander around the world and do this. I'm going to take a shot at him every chance I get.'" He has lived up to the vow. When Fetzer writes or edits a new book, Thompson can almost always be counted on to show up at Amazon.com with some vitriol.

 

For his part, Fetzer says he still suspects that Thompson is "working on the other side." "He's got a role to play, I'm telling you. He's got a role to play," Fetzer whispers when Thompson's name comes up in conversation. "If he's not an agent of disinformation, he's certainly acting as if he were." It's too bad, he adds, because he once admired Six Seconds in Dallas. Heck, he once admired Thompson. You can still hear it in his voice. "I thought it was a wonderful book," Fetzer says. "He was a philosopher. He was an instant hero, which is why it's so ironic that years and year later, he becomes my principal assailant."

The acrimony between Fetzer and Thompson moved into a new phase thanks to a former St. Louis County prosecutor named Thomas Bieter. Fetzer and Bieter were once friends. They shared pizza and beer on weekends when the wives were out of town. They went to the same parties. They liked to talk philosophy. The two met in 1988, not long after Fetzer landed at University of Minnesota Duluth. At the time, Bieter—who had attended UMD off and on since 1975—was teaching a philosophy of law course. While Bieter and Fetzer shared some broad intellectual interests, they were worlds apart politically. Bieter, who describes himself as a conservative Republican, says that didn't matter at first because he and Fetzer seldom talked about politics. He does recall one awkward dinner when the topic of the JFK assassination was broached. "I asked him a question and he took off and went on and on, talked about the CIA and the FBI and the Mafia," Bieter recalls. He remembers being taken aback by Fetzer's fervor and, afterward, was careful in his choice of subjects with Fetzer.

Following the presidential election in 2000, that became more difficult. Bieter, who enrolled in a class taught by Fetzer, says he was appalled by his friend's high-octane Bush-bashing. Then came the death of Paul Wellstone. In the wake of the fatal plane crash, Fetzer penned a series of columns for the Weekly Reader, a Duluth newspaper, in which he argued that Wellstone had been terminated by an out-of-control Republican cabal under the direction of Karl Rove. (Later, he would co-author a book, American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone, in which he elaborated on those contentions.) Aghast, Bieter decided a response was in order. He composed a satirical piece for the Reader, claiming that Wellstone was in fact assassinated by the Lesbian Avengers. "A month or so later, Fetzer and I had pizza together," Bieter recalls. "We were talking and I brought up my letter. He got very angry and urged me to read his articles."

Not long after, Bieter decided to start an internet forum that would examine the issue of the Wellstone assassination—and his soon-to-be ex-friend's incendiary claims. He dubbed it, provocatively enough, "Fetzerclaimsdebunk." At first, Bieter says, his goals were mainly intellectual. He says wanted to debate the value of "jurisprudential" modes of analysis versus scientific ones. The launch of the discussion group quickly spelled the end of the friendship. As the forum became ever more acrimonious, it attracted some of Fetzer's old foes—including Josiah Thompson, who says he couldn't resist joining the fray. "I find Fetzer's approach to be purely pernicious," Thompson explains. "I just enjoy puncturing pomposity. The man just pisses me off." Thompson's attacks on Fetzer were often ferocious and Fetzer responded in kind. He titled one retort to Thompson, "Proof he is a liar, a hoax, and a fraud (not necessarily in that order)."

As with Thompson, the name-calling between Bieter and Fetzer was unbridled. Of Bieter, Fetzer wrote: "It becomes increasingly apparent that this man is a mental mediocrity with no character or discernible virtue. He has disgraced himself in public and continues to display this juvenile and vindictive personality... One of us should see a shrink, but it ain't me." For Bieter, the dispute turned acutely personal after Fetzer posted about the circumstances surrounding Bieter's retirement from the law practice, hastened by allegations of malpractice and sexual harassment. (The sexual harrassment charge was ultimately dropped.) As it happens, Fetzer himself had been the target of a similar claim; at the end of the 2004 academic year, Fetzer was suspended for several weeks for a purported incident of sexual harassment. (Fetzer admitted that he had a conflict with a female staff member at UMD, but denied there was a sexual component.) Given the increasing hostilities, it was no surprise that Bieter aired the charge on the discussion board.

The acrimony ultimately wound up in the courts. After unsuccessfully pressing the St. Louis County attorney's office to have Fetzer charged with criminal libel for his Wellstone allegations, Bieter filed a civil defamation suit against Fetzer. That lawsuit, which also named UMD and the school's chancellor as defendants, was dismissed by a trial court and then an appeals court. After that, Bieter abandoned the legal route. "I sued everybody in sight, which was a mistake," Bieter says now. Still, Bieter has maintained the fetzerclaimsdebunk site. And while he occasionally takes a break from the forum, Fetzer routinely wades into the fray to defend himself. He has a boxer's pride in his willingness to engage his opponents. "There's been 2,000 attacks on me and I've rebutted every one," Fetzer says of Bieter's forum. "I haven't seen where they've laid a glove on me."

Sometimes, Fetzer says, he has no choice but to reiterate his past arguments. "Most of my life is spent trying to find new ways to say things I've said before that make them even more interesting and penetrating," he offers. He pronounces these efforts a rousing success. "I've put them in their place so many times," he says of his critics. And as he sees it, his long-running battles over Wellstone and JFK have helped to prepare him for his role as spokesman for the truth movement. "I know a whole lot about how these games are played," he says. "When I come into this 9/11 thing, see, I am not just a formidable foe on my own. I have this wealth of experience. The others don't know diddly shit about disinformation. But, man, I've lived through it."

| Next Page>> 

| 1 | 2 |

 

Entire contents ©2006, City Pages LLC, 401 North Third Street, Suite 550, Minneapolis, MN 55401. (612) 375-1015. All rights reserved. No part of this service may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of City Pages LLC except that an individual may download and/or forward articles via e-mail to a reasonable number of recipients for personal, non-commercial purposes.

CITY PAGES: Home | Online & Print Ad Info | Work at City Pages | Contact Us | NEW Privacy Policy

OUR SISTER PAPERS: Village Voice | LA Weekly | Seattle Weekly | OC Weekly | Nashville Scene
  Westword | Broward New Times | Cleveland Scene | Phoenix New Times | The Pitch | SF Weekly
  East Bay Express | Houston Press | Dallas Observer | Miami New Times | River Front Times