AboveTopSecret.com is a Government COINTELPRO Disinformation Operation, page 22

Originally posted by Xeros
Could one of the three Amigos please give a rundown of their side of the story, if there is any truth in this, just to clear things up a bit.

There continues to be a great deal of misconceptions regarding the incident with the rebuttal of Catherder's 9/11 Pentagon article by Joe Quinn.

First, let me be clear that we did previously, or do not now, have any serious ill-will toward Mr. Quinn and his SOTT partners. I always thought he provided insightful contributions to the "conspiracy theory community", and it's clear that he still does. Things became somewhat "heated" during the episode, but that has passed and we're all grown-ups.

Mr. Quinn developed a well-regarded rebuttal to this similarly well-regarded posting by CatHerder: 9/11: A Boeing 757 Struck the Pentagon. Mr. Quinn's piece, due to the structure of the way he addressed the points in CatHerder's piece, was a derivative work and did not properly credit the source as clearly identified in the copyright notice at the bottom of the post. Additionally, while our Creative Commons deed allows for anyone to use the content with proper attribution, it cannot be user for commercial purposes, and Mr. Quinn's piece appeared to be used to attract traffic to sell books.

As is all too often the case, our enthusiastic support of Catherder's efforts were seen as "supporting the official story" of 9/11, and a great deal of hurtful comments were made about us by people at the SOTT forum. I think there is no secret, among ATS regulars, that our opinion of the "official story" is bunk... but many people cannot fathom our ability to support intelligent analysis of all sides of any given conspiracy as a necessary path to the truth.

Admittedly, our initial contact, because of the comments we saw, was somewhat "over the top" as we sought proper credit and usage of our member's work. However, calmer thoughts quickly prevailed and after a couple exchanges, made it clear we would be happy with:
1) Giving proper credit and link to the source of the material they used
2) Removing the ad for their book from the page (other ads could remain)
If they did that, we would even link to Mr. Quinn's rebuttal and encourage discussion. At no point did we seek to remove Mr. Quinn's well-presented contribution to the analysis of the events at the Pentagon.

Unfortunately, our offer was not received kindly, and our "agnostic" stance that enabled analysis of all sides of any conspiracy was interpreted to mean we were "government shills" of some kind. As a result, all manner of odd material was dredged up and twisted into a negative presentation... including content that was an April fools joke (the government IP nonsense).

Our short-lived relationship with a particular attorney (who was also a site member) didn't help. Once you go down the path of asking a lawyer to resolve an intellectual property dispute, lawyers do what lawyers do and no holds are barred. A stern letter resulted in temporary suspension of SOTT hosting, which is not what we intended.

One important item that has not made it into the incorrect material published about this mess is the tidbit that we have disengaged ourselves from that attorney, and his account on ATS is terminated. Such tactics are not compatible with our long-standing stance of collaboration.

So there you have it. A mess that lingers online in several postings of incorrect information. We generally choose to ignore it and focus more on continuing to operate a highly ethical environment that encourages anyone to post anything as long as it's done with civility and respect.