Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The real controversy regarding 9/11 is not who did it and why but how the 9/11 Commission reached its conclusions, having admitted to coerced confessions and not looking at all the scientific and forensic evidence made available to it. To this day the National Institute of Standards and Technology has been unwilling to make public for peer review its computer model and calculations of just how the World Trade Center collapsed. How are upcoming engineers supposed to learn from such tragedies? Such blatant disregard for proper and accepted investigative methodology does of course affect not only the integrity of the official report and compromise the validity of its conclusions, but negates the very principles it claims help make us a free nation. What choice do the people have, once aware of the situation, but to demand a real investigation? And why would the government object if it had nothing to hide about the truth and was so convinced of its conviction? Those who will argue that the writer of these words is a conspiracy theorist are completely missing the point. What’s at stake are principles our government apparently no longer believes in nor holds dear, but to which it expects we remain loyal.

Nick van Nes, West Tisbury