How many police officers, government officials, politicians and journalists were involved in the distortion and cover up of the Hillsborough disaster in which 96 Liverpool fans died in 1989? A not insignificant number. An independent investigation with full access to 400,000 documents has finally concluded that the police systematically distorted the witness accounts to deflect blame from themselves. In the words of Michael Mansfield QC, who represented the Hillsborough families, this was the biggest cover-up in British legal history. This may be hyberbole - but the scale of the cover up and criminal misconduct is hardly in doubt.
Within days of the event, the South Yorkshire police fabricated stories of Liverpool fans causing the mayhem that led to so many deaths and fed them to the media. The truth is that police terribly mishandled the event leading to the deaths of scores, and then tried to cover up their terrible mistakes by doctoring the statements of many witnesses.
For those who support 9/11 truth but are told that large-scale conspiracies are impossible because too many people would need to be involved - therefore someone will talk - the Hillsborough example disproves this. Or rather it proves that someone 'talking' is not enough - there also need to be people willing to listen to the truth and for authorities to take action. The cover-up and distortion of what happened on that day was maintained for more than two decades by South Yorkshire police with the support of the mainstream media. Only an independent investigation with full access to all the documents was able to uncover the truth. The fact is that the reaction of the South Yorkshire police to their own culpabilities was to doctor the witness statements of the fans who were there that day and to denigrate them.
How is that different than the way on 9/11 the FBI and CIA suppressed information, including black boxes, CCTV recordings and witness statements in order to protect people in power and their own institutions from public accountability? There are dozens of witnesses who heard explosions at the World Trade Centre - but their accounts have been dismissed. When persons in authority have something to lose by admitting the truth, in particular when their own role in the event may amount to criminal, fatal, negligence, they have the motive to suppress the truth. And that truth can be denied for many years, even when alternative accounts and witnesses to what really happened are shouting from the rooftops. A whole community, in the case of Liverpool fans, were slandered as hooligans, thieves and liars. There are huge differences between Hillsborough and 9/11, but the similarities are there - inasmuch as both involve a disastrous handling of an incident by the authorities causing mass civilian casualties, and a subsequent cover up of the truth, assisted by media collusion. If 23 years is how long it takes for the truth to be admitted, we are half way there on 9/11 truth.
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