Founders of the 9/11 Consensus Panel Honor Shelton Lankford, USMC, 1942-2019

On January 16, 2020

Lt. Col. Shelton F. Lankford was a United States Marine for 20 years, a naval aviator with over 10,000 hours of flight time, and a Vietnam veteran with over 300 combat missions.

He was also a charter signatory of a petition calling for a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001, and a member of Military Officers for 9/11 Truth.

In a 2010 letter to his local newspaper in Salisbury, Maryland, Lankford wrote:

“My mourning for the country I live in is not abstract, but real and very immediate. Since the unsolved crime of 9/11/01, I have seen our republic descend into darkness, as we used the lie of 9/11 to justify aggression abroad and repression at home. We have officially become a torture state. Accountability for egregious crimes at the highest levels is non-existent.”

Shelton Lankford In September 2010, Consensus Panel co-founders David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth organized a joint simultaneous 9/11 Press Conferences in Los Angeles & New York City to announce the launch of Actors and Artists for 9/11 Truth, Military Officers for 9/11 Truth, and Scientists for 9/11 Truth. On September 9, Mr. Lankford represented the military officers during the New York City press conference announcement.

In 2011, again at the invitation of Griffin and Woodworth, Lankford joined the evidence-based 9/11 Consensus Panel to work under an exacting protocol in which the 20 reviewing members were blind to one another. His three rounds of insightful analysis for the first 18 Consensus Points helped the Panel to achieve over 90% consensus.

During April 2012, following an internal Panel dispute over the Pentagon evidence, Lankford was persuaded to resign from the Panel, a decision for which he expressed earnest regret during a telephone call to the co-founders in late April, wishing his lucid statement to remain on the Panel’s website masthead:

“September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes. The evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment. It has been used to justify all manner of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad. Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.”

Lt. Col. Shelton F. Lankford, US Marine Corps (ret.)

Rest in peace, Shelton Lankford. The world is a poorer place without you.

David Ray Griffin
Elizabeth Woodworth