http://www.ctka.net/reviews/am_consp.html
American Conpsiracies: A Textbook for Alternative History
Reviewed by Joseph E. Green
...
I have certain quibbles with the book – the information on the 9/11 attacks is a real mixed bag, including some things that I find to be disinformation. But 9/11 is always a contentious issue and Ventura and Russell do focus on several good points, including the all-important Norman Mineta testimony. However, Ventura talks about the Pentagon missile theories and actually urges people to see Loose Change. Like his television program on 9/11, he also relies heavily on the testimony of Willie Rodriguez, who has been a questionable figure in the movement. On the other hand, he does invoke the lack of military and FAA response, and unlike most critics does so having actually been in the military and seen traffic controllers at work. (p. 143) He also talks about a 2003 memo in which the idea to paint a U2 surveillance plane in U.N. colors to fly over Iraq is floated. If Saddam fired upon it, this could be played up as an attack on a U.N. plane and made the instigator of a war. As Ventura notes, this has certain echoes of the Operation Northwoods documents floated during the Kennedy presidency and turned down by JFK. (p. 185) He also notes, quite rightly, that 10 months prior to 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld had approved major "changes to the Army's [Continuity of Government] plan." He correctly identifies this as a "shadow government." (p. 191) In the bibliography of the 9/11 chapter, one finds only Peter Dale Scott's excellent book, The Road to 9/11, and the work of David Ray Griffin, which explains much of what is good and bad in his analysis.
This does point out what is a flaw in the book and in Ventura himself: which is a certain excess of credulity at times. As anyone who has tried to navigate the minefield of political research in general, and 9/11 in particular, one encounters all sorts of bizarre claims and "witnesses" who may be telling no truth, some truth, or the whole truth at various times. It is a weakness of the book that, in having to jump quickly into a topic and then leave it behind for something else, the information tends to be muddled together, good, bad, and questionable, with a certain lack of prioritization. The bibliography shares this trait as well. In his chapter on the Jonestown case, the best work has actually been done in two articles, one by John Judge and the other by Jim Hougan. Hougan is greatly relied upon both in this chapter and the Watergate chapter, and one can find both authors' work in the endnotes. However, there are only two books listed on Jonesstown, and one is John Marks' The Search for a Manchurian Candidate, a fine work but with a limited connection to Jonestown.