DANIEL ELLSBERG
was the military analyst who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the "Pentagon Papers," a set of US military documents about decisions concerning Vietnam, to The New York Times. After the Times was slapped with a gag order, preventing further publication, Ellsberg went underground and continued releasing the documents through other newspapers, evading a succession of gag orders.

Ellsberg's revelation of the Pentagon's true motives in Vietnam eroded public support for the war. Many wonder whether the far more centralized corporate media of today will ever again provide a platform to a government whistleblower like Ellsberg, no matter how compelling the case.

 

APRIL GALLOP

"You live with it, almost every day," April Gallop told the Washington Post. "You carry it with you." The Army officer and her 3-year old son Elisha received serious injuries when the Pentagon was struck.

DANIEL HOPSICKER
is the author of Welcome to Terrorland, Mohamed Atta & The 9-11 Cover-up in Florida (2004: Mad Cow Press). He is one of the few journalists to take a genuine "gumshoe" approach to the facts of September 11th, uncovering numerous anomalies in official accounts of the alleged hijackers' activities. He is practically the only one to examine the role of the Florida flight schools where the alleged terror pilots trained. Hopsicker's investigative articles are published at his website
www.madcowprod.com

RICHARD BEN-VENISTE
was one of ten members of the 9/11 Commission. A lawyer to President Clinton in the Whitewater case, Ben-Veniste also played a role in Hopsicker's prior book, Barry and the Boys, as counsel to Barry Seal. (Seal, who once conducted a sting operation on behalf of George Bush Sr., was credited with being the leading coke-runner of the 1980s, transporting billions in narcotics through the Mena, Arkansas airport during the tenure in that state of Governor Clinton.) While not necessarily a truth-seeker, during his brief appearance in Improbable Collapse Ben-Veniste does deliver a frank assessment of the function of the 9/11 Commission.

DON PAUL
is the co-author with Jim Hoffman of Waking Up from Our Nightmare: The 9/11 Crimes in New York City. His work has focused on the financial architecture of September 11th. The photo shows Paul (r.) at a 9/11 research conference in Washington DC with Jim Marrs (l.) author of Inside Job.

JAMEY HECHT
is the author of Plato's Symposium: Eros and the Human Predicament, the translator of the Three Theban Plays by Sophocles, a painter, a poet, and a rapper who produced a hip-hop tribute to Robert Kennedy. Hecht is also the senior staff writer for From the Wilderness publications, the newsletter of Michael Ruppert (copvcia.com).