I thought this might be relevant. Part of a question posed to Chomsky and his response:
someone on Znet's forum wrote:I didn't give the matter further thought until I, coincidentally, was
>reading Michael Parenti's 1996 "Dirty Truths" book and noticed that
>Parenti mentioned that you had failed to respond to his inquiries as to
>whether you were really reading the studies that had come out on the
>particulars of the JFK assassination, while you were writing at that
>time that the claim that it was a high-level conspiracy with policy
>significance was implausible to a quite extraordinary degree (in his
>'Conspiracy Phobia on the Left' chapter).
>
>Of course, when someone whose opinion we value highly disagrees with our
>own, one of the first questions that comes to mind is whether that
>person is reading the same things we are reading.
>
>As you said in your response to me, "The only 'benefit of the doubt' I
>think we should give is to the facts", so I again ask you whether you
>are, in fact, reading any of the numerous discussions flowering on the
>internet which challenge some of the facts surrounding the 9/11 attacks
>and the official explanations of same.
>
>If one searched far and wide for material concerning the possibility of
>whether Osama bin Laden is responsible for global warming (the analogy
>you used in your response to my question), I doubt that anything would
>be found. However, one doesn't have to search far and wide for material
>concerning the possibility that the US gov't facilitated and/or
>intentionally failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks (so as to have a new
>pretext for the war that won't end in our lifetimes... in replacement of
>the cold war-communist threat pretext). There is considerable,
>credible, well-referenced research on the internet examining this
>possibility.
>
>In addition to numerous web articles and sites devoted to such an
>examination, John Judge has given a most succinct and riveting interview
>about the most obvious holes in the official explanation of the 9/11
>attacks which is available at: John Judge Part I :
>http://mindgallery.com/hiddenroom/blackopradio/51a.ram
> John Judge Part II
>http://mindgallery.com/hiddenroom/blackopradio/51b.ram
>
>One of your strengths, (I've noted in hearing you speak and reading what
>you've written) is that you point to the sources upon which you've based
>your conclusions. You'll say, for example, it's right there in such &
>such; you don't have to take my word for it, look and you'll see it in
>x, y, or z for yourself. So, Mr. Chomsky, if you respond to this follow
>up that you still feel that this 9/11 conspiracy theory appears
>groundless, and you have in fact examined some of the literature which
>questions the possible role of the US gov't or rogue elements in the
>9/11 attacks, please share with us what you've read.
>
>Finally, one of the rules for writers I've heard is that writers should
>only write what they know about. If you are writing, as you have -that
>it seems to you that there are no grounds for taking 9/11 conspiracy
>theories seriously- but you haven't taken the time to study the
>literature that say there may be, then I think it's irresponsible to
>make such a statement.
>I think you should simply respond that you haven't read enough of the
>considerable literature, and not offer any comment one way or the other,
>until you do so.
>
>Your bottom line is that the possibility that the U.S. gov't or rogue
>elements within it facilitated or intentionally failed to prevent the
>9/11 attacks is as absurd as Osama bid Laden being the cause of global
>warming. My bottom line is that the more you read or listen to the
>stuff that's out there, the less absurd the possibility becomes.
>
>Are you able to get past your guess that this is an absurd possibility,
>enough to read the material of those who are investigating the facts?
NC wrote:I hadn't known that your "subquestion" was edited out. The answer to it,
in brief, is that I have looked at some of this material and did not find
it credible enough to pursue, pretty much for the reasons I mentioned to
you in my response (comments that you ignored, but that's fair enough;
you're not obligated to respond to the messages you receive in response to
yours). I also haven't investigated the charges about how Jews run the
world, or the very widespread claim that for their own nefarious purposes,
"liberals" are concealing the fact that the universe was created 6000 years
ago, or a host of others. Charges about significant issues have to have a
modicum of credibility and evidence to merit attention. Of course, we each
have to make our own judgments about this. If these charges seem to you
credible, by all means investigate them. I don't issue orders to others
telling them what they must concentrate their energies on, and do not
recognize any responsibility to accept similar demands from others.
As for Parenti's comment, I've been reading this material since 1968 (when,
as it happened, I read the galleys of one of the more serious books while
in jail along with the author), including a number of the major studies
trying to establish the conclusion. I've commented on a number of them in
print. I also edited a collection in 1974 which included what seemed to me
the most important contribution: an essay by Peter Dale Scott alleging that
the Pentagon Papers had been falsified to obscure JFK's intent to withdraw
from Vietnam, a core element of the more serious high-level conspiracy
theories. The essay seemed to me interesting enough to publish, though I
wasn't convinced. And a flood of evidence that subsequently came to light
undermines it, in my opinion, for reasons discussed at length in my book
"Rethinking Camelot," 1993, reviewing this new material. Scott did publish
a response, but I did not respond because he completely misconstrued what I
wrote, so radically that he did not even realize what sources I was
using. It's true that I haven't responded to Parenti's charges, but then I
don't respond to 99% of the vituperation and denunciations that appear in
print. Only to those that seem to me serious enough to warrant
response. It's not my responsibility, or anyone's, to spend my life
responding to charges that have already been adequately answered in print
or that ignore what is in print, and that seem to me to lack seriousness
and credibility. If there is something important you think I've omitted,
I'll be glad to look at it.
The only element of credibility I have found in what I've read about this
is the "who gains" argument. That's always worth looking at. To mention
one case, it's worth asking who gains by the huge industry that's
developing to try to show that the CIA, or the Mossad, or someone like that
orchestrated the 9-11 atrocities. The answer to that is pretty
straightforward: it's a marvellous gift to the most reactionary and
dangerous elements in the US government, and the world, because it diverts
the energies and attention of activists from what they could be and should
be doing. That doesn't prove, of course, that the industry is sponsored by
the CIA, nor do I believe it for a moment. But the "who gains" argument
has no greater credibility in the other case, and in my earlier response I
already mentioned some obvious criteria for evaluating evidence, even in
careful scientific experiments, surely in cases like these. But again, if
you believe otherwise, by all means pursue it: I don't issue demands for
you, nor do I recognize that you have some right to issue them to me.
I don't agree with you about your conditions on "responsibility," and I
don't believe that you do either. True, there is no literature trying to
show how Osama bin Laden is responsible for global warming, though it would
be easy enough to produce it, and I wouldn't pay any attention to it, nor
would you. But there is a huge amount of literature supporting the claim
that Jews run the world, or creationism (and its new version, "intelligent
design"), or a host of other such constructions. I think it is quite
reasonable to say that I've looked at some of it, and found it so utterly
lacking in credibility that I don't see any point in pursuing it, though if
others want to, I have nothing to say about it. I certainly wouldn't
instruct them on how to spend their time and energy, and am curious to know
what leads you to believe that you have a right to do so.
Noam Chomsky