9/11 conspiracy theories

[Yeti]

It may be 10 years since the attacks in the US on 11 September, but conspiracy theories have not faded over time, says Mike Rudin.

Numerous official reports have been published since the Twin Towers fell, but just when a piece of evidence casts doubt on one theory, the focus then shifts to the next "unanswered question".

Here are five of the most prominent 9/11 conspiracy theories circulating in online communities.

1. Failure to intercept the hijacked planes
The question: Why did the world's most powerful air force fail to intercept any of the four hijacked planes?

Conspiracy theorists say: The then US Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the military to stand down and not to intercept the planes.

Fighter jets failed to intercept the hijacked planes
Official reports say: This was a highly unusual multiple hijacking with violence on board, and where the transponder, which identifies the plane, was turned off or changed.

What is more, a routine military training exercise happened to be taking place that day at US air defence command.

Air traffic controller Colin Scoggins was in constant contact with the military and did not see any lack of response. There was confusion and a lack of communication between the civilian air traffic control (FAA) and the military.

The military's equipment was also outdated and designed to look out over the ocean to deal with a Cold War threat.

2. Collapse of the Twin Towers
The question: Why did the Twin Towers collapse so quickly, within their own footprint, after fires on a few floors that lasted only for an hour or two?

Conspiracy theorists say: The Twin Towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions. Theories relate to the rapid collapse (about 10 seconds), the relatively short-lived fires (56 minutes in World Trade Center 2 or 102 minutes in World Trade Center 1), reports of the sounds of explosions shortly before the collapse, and the violent ejections that could be seen at some windows many floors below the collapse.

Five new skyscrapers are being built on the World Trade Center site
Official reports say: An extensive inquiry by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the planes severed and damaged support columns and dislodged fire-proofing.

Around 10,000 gallons of jet fuel were spewed over many floors starting widespread fires. Temperatures of up to 1,000C caused the floors to sag and the perimeter columns to bend, causing the sounds of "explosions".

The massive weight of the floors dropped, creating a dynamic load far in excess of what the columns were designed for. Debris was forced out of the windows as the floors above collapsed.

Controlled demolition is nearly always carried out from the bottom floors up, yet this collapse started at the top.

No evidence has ever been found of explosive charges despite the extensive hand searches and there is no evidence of any pre-cutting of columns or walls, which is routinely carried out in a controlled demolition.

3. Attack on the Pentagon
The question: How could an amateur pilot fly a commercial plane in a complicated manoeuvre and crash it into the headquarters of the world's most powerful military, 78 minutes after the first report of a possible hijack and leave no trace?

A memorial in the grounds of the Pentagon marks the deaths of those who died when Flight 77 crashed
Conspiracy theorists say: A commercial Boeing 757 did not hit the building but instead a missile, a small aircraft or an unmanned drone was used. But since evidence has increasingly shown that the American Airlines Flight 77 did hit the building, the emphasis has shifted to questioning the difficult approach manoeuvre. It is argued it was not under the control of al-Qaeda but the Pentagon itself.

Official reports say: Airplane wreckage, including the black boxes, were recovered from the scene and they were catalogued by the FBI.

Although some early video did not show much wreckage, there is a good deal of video and still photography which shows plane wreckage and evidence of the flight path, such as broken lamp posts.

The remains of crew and passengers on the plane were found and positively identified by DNA. Witnesses also saw the plane strike the Pentagon.

4. The fourth plane - United Airlines flight 93
The question: Why was the crash site at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, so small and why was the aircraft debris not visible?

Conspiracy theorists argue: United Airlines flight 93 was shot down by a missile and disintegrated in mid air, scattering the wreckage over a large area.

Forty-four people died when Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Official reports say: There are clear photographs showing aircraft wreckage and the cockpit voice recorder, which showed there had been a passenger revolt and the hijackers had deliberately crashed the plane.

Initial theories that heavy debris was scattered many miles from the main crash site turned out to be false. In fact the wind had blown light debris such as paper and insulation just over a mile.

Another theory was based on a misquote from the local coroner, Wally Miller, who said he stopped being a coroner after about 20 minutes because there were no bodies. What he also said was that he quickly realised it was a plane crash and there would have to be a large funeral service for the many victims.

In addition, the military never gave orders to the air force to shoot the commercial airliner down.

5. Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7
The question: How could a skyscraper, which was not hit by a plane, collapse so quickly and symmetrically, when no other steel-framed skyscraper has collapsed because of fire?

Offices for civil emergencies, the CIA and the Secret Service were based in World Trade Center Building 7
Conspiracy theorists say: The World Trade Center Building 7 was destroyed by a controlled demolition using both explosives and incendiaries.

Initially the focus was on the phrase "pull it" used by the owner, Larry Silverstein, in a TV interview. But in fact he was talking about pulling firefighters back. (Demolition experts do not use the term "pull it" as slang for setting off explosives.)

Now the focus has shifted to the speed of the collapse which reached near free fall for 2.25 seconds. It is argued only explosives could make it collapse so quickly and symmetrically.

Some scientists, who are sceptical of the official account, have examined four dust samples from Ground Zero and claim to have found thermitic material which reacts violently when heated up. They claim tonnes of thermite and conventional explosives were rigged inside, not just WTC7, but also the Twin Towers.

Official reports say: A three-year investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the building collapsed because of uncontrolled fires, started by the collapse of the nearby North Tower, and which burnt for seven hours.



The mains water feeding the emergency sprinkler system was severed. No evidence has ever been found of explosive charges and there are no recordings of a series of very loud explosions that would have been expected with controlled demolition.

Furthermore, there is an alternative explanation for the "thermitic material" the sceptical scientists found in the dust - it is just a type of primer paint. It's calculated 1,200,000 tonnes of building materials were pulverised at the World Trade Center and most minerals are present in the dust (not necessarily in a large quantity). More extensive sampling of the dust has not found any evidence of thermite or explosives, says a report from the US Geological Survey and another from RJ Lee.


BBC News - 9/11 conspiracy theories: How they've evolved


people should watch this program if they have any doubt about 9/11 because it answers every question posed


The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - Ten Years On will be broadcast on Monday 29 August 2011 at 21:00 BST on BBC Two
Or catch up later via iPlayer

 

[Chogy]

Wow! None of this has ever been discussed here before! Great find!

 

[lem34]

Why when we only have circumstancial evidence against america is it a conspiracy theory but when we have unsubstanciated circumstancial evidence against pakistani isi its rammed down our throats with statements like no smoke without fire

 

[Chogy]

I owe Yeti an apology. I fired off an unwarranted tongue-in-cheek response because I thought the OP was another re-hash of the popular conspiracies, when in fact it addresses them and debunks them in clear language.

Yeti, apologies to you, sir.

 

[BATMAN]

And we are told that pilots of the planes learned flying by couple of lessons on simulator of training aircraft.

Quite talented, i must say... not even PAF pilots can fly Boeing with such precision.

I advise the people to consult this fact with some pilot.. about altitude to speed relation.

 

[roadrunner]

Some "truther" points are legitimate, some are not.

 

[Chogy]

And we are told that pilots of the planes learned flying by couple of lessons on simulator of training aircraft.

Quite talented, i must say... not even PAF pilots can fly Boeing with such precision.

I advise the people to consult this fact with some pilot.. about altitude to speed relation.

Flying an airliner around, pointing at an object, hitting it, is not hard at all.

It's not that much harder than ramming something with a car. You have one more dimension to deal with, but these airplanes are very stable, and they tend to continue in whatever direction they are pointed.

Head towards the WTC, push the throttle up - I've heard they were 100+ knots above "red line" - and aim.

The Japanese did it with teenagers in WW2, who still managed to his a much smaller target that was moving, than these hijackers.

What makes airline flying hard is knowing what to do when systems fail; dealing with weather, ATC, and other factors, like rules & regs; approach and landing, load factors, flight planning, etc.

I could take any adult, sit them in the seat of a 767, and have them doing basic stuff in 5 minutes.

 

[Avisheik]

I dont believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories, but some of them here do have good points

 

[lem34]

Why is speculation in the case of america termed conspiracy theories. but when it applies to pakistans isi they are more than conspiracy theories?

 

[Ben]

The attack on the icons of America’s economic and military powers, twin towers and Pentagon, changed the world instantly. The change did not take place due to the terrorist attacks; the world was changed by the massive reaction and fury of the sole super power. Within a period of one month, an attack was launched on Afghanistan which toppled the government of Taliban but which caused the terrorists to be grateful. By the hindsight, it has now been revealed that this was what al Qaeda was asking for. It had successfully provoked the US to enter the land where two earlier super powers, Britain and USSR, had lost their pride and glory. After ten years, one trillion dollar and thousands of lives, al Qaeda is many times stronger and formidable. The US has gained nothing except for taking OBL, who was only a figurehead. The COO of al Qaeda is alive and kicking and so is his ideology of conquering the world.

 

[JayAtl]

HEY Guys- Guess who else was on the conspriracy? OSAMA BIN DEAD and Khalid Sheik Mohhamed because Osama himself has put out videos that he masterminded and KSM himself proclaimed he executed it...

 

[JayAtl]

The attack on the icons of America’s economic and military powers, twin towers and Pentagon, changed the world instantly. The change did not take place due to the terrorist attacks; the world was changed by the massive reaction and fury of the sole super power. Within a period of one month, an attack was launched on Afghanistan which toppled the government of Taliban but which caused the terrorists to be grateful. By the hindsight, it has now been revealed that this was what al Qaeda was asking for. It had successfully provoked the US to enter the land where two earlier super powers, Britain and USSR, had lost their pride and glory. After ten years, one trillion dollar and thousands of lives, al Qaeda is many times stronger and formidable. The US has gained nothing except for taking OBL, who was only a figurehead. The COO of al Qaeda is alive and kicking and so is his ideology of conquering the world.

Firstly, AQ is almost finished, every terror expert including your govt agrees. Secondly, in ten years of 1 trillion dollars we have had zero attacks on our soil- how many did you have this week? The point being, yes, we need to change our strategy to a “counter terrorism ops" , but what you don't get is Americans are a whole different breed- they don't mind spending money to ensure the safety of its people. how much money, growth , lives has Pakistan lost in 10 years? How many times have its citizens blamed its govt that it has not kept them safe? Well citizens of the United States don't march weekly cursing its govt because they are not safe...

Therein lies something others don't get - American resilience, we will prevail, we will adapt and like a famous Japanese admiral said on the eve of Pearl Harbor "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

 

[President Camacho]

Theory Vs, Facts


It's difficult to pinpoint a precise moment when the popularity of the 9/11 conspiracy theory peaked, though it was probably sometime in 2006. In tracking its decline, however, three dates stand out: July 22, 2004, when the 9/11 Commission released its final report; Feb. 3, 2005, when Popular Mechanics published its 5,500-word article dismantling the movement's claims; and Aug. 21, 2008, when the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued the final portion of a $16 million study investigating the cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers and a third World Trade Center skyscraper that was not hit by a plane.


Facts alone are insufficient to destroy a conspiracy theory, of course, and in many ways a theory's appeal has more to do with the receptiveness of its audience than the accuracy of its details. The popularity of the 9/11 conspiracy theory would continue to ebb and flow after each of these reports. But their responses to these challenges show how followers of the 9/11 conspiracy theory changed their emphases and arguments—or, more often, did not—when presented with new information.

***

The Popular Mechanics article may never have been published were it not for a $3 million national ad campaign by an eccentric millionaire to promote a self-published book called Painful Questions. The campaign posited that the World Trade Center was brought down in a controlled demolition and that the Pentagon was never hit by a jetliner, and asked questions about whether the fires in the Twin Towers were sufficiently hot to bring about their collapse or whether the hole in the Pentagon was big enough to fit a commercial airplane. When Popular Mechanics Editor James Meigs saw the ad, he says, "I thought, well, we're Popular Mechanics and we've been reporting about what happens when planes crash, how skyscrapers are built, for 100 years. Let's actually answer the questions."
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So the magazine went about reporting out some of the most interesting and serious conspiracy theories, and responding to them based on interviews with more than 70 experts in aviation, engineering and the military. Its article found that all of the supposedly scientific evidence for government involvement in 9/11 was based on shoddy research and, to a large extent, manipulated and misleading argumentation. The piece remains the most widely read story the magazine has ever published, with more than 7.5 million page views.

"We were the first people to actually take the conspiracy theory claims seriously and address them very directly," Meigs says. "And the reaction was so overwhelmingly hostile, and kind of scary, that it was a real education in how these groups work and think." Among the responses was a report by anti-Zionist conspiracist Christopher Bollyn, who claimed to have discovered why the 100-year-old engineering magazine would take part in a government cover-up of the crime of the century: A young researcher on the magazine's staff named Benjamin Chertoff was a cousin of then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and the magazine was seeking to whitewash the criminal conspiracy with its coverage.



Never mind that Chertoff had not been in his position when the story was being written, and Benjamin Chertoff had never met the man who he said might be a distant cousin. The mere mention of the connection was sufficient for conspiracists to dismiss the report.

"That was interesting. A little bit scary I think for Ben, but also kind of comical," Meigs said. "Imagine the scenario. Let's say somebody at Slate is related to Dick Cheney and all of a sudden he said, 'Hey guys, I need everybody to work with me on this: We're going to all get together to cover up the biggest mass murder in American history. Are you with me?' "

The Popular Mechanics article was turned into a book called Debunking 9/11 Myths, which came to include interviews with more than 300 sources and eyewitnesses. David Ray Griffin responded with his own book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking in 2007, in which he reiterated theories that he said had not been adequately debunked, claimed that the only successful debunking Popular Mechanics had done was of straw men, and repeated the Chertoff cover-up accusation.

It's worth lingering over Griffin's response to illustrate a typical reaction among conspiracy theorists to refutation. One of the bedrocks of the conspiracy theory is that U.S. military planes should have been easily able to intercept any of the four hijacked airplanes on 9/11 to prevent the attack. The Popular Mechanics article notes that only one NORAD interception of a civilian airplane over North America had occurred in the decade before 9/11, of golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, and that it took one hour and 19 minutes to intercept before it ultimately crashed. Based on initial reports that misread the official crash report, conspiracists had previously cited the Stewart case as evidence that it normally only took NORAD 19 minutes to intercept civilian aircraft.

"That's a very debated thing," Griffin told me. "It looks like somebody has kind of changed the story there. I don't know what happened, but I've read enough about it to look like that's not true that it took that long." And what about other physical evidence that debunks the interception theory, specifically the NORAD tapes, which document the chaos and confusion of American air defenses that morning in painstaking detail? Griffin's response is that the tapes have likely been doctored using morphing technology to fake the voices of the government officials and depict phony chaos according to a government-written script. It's not surprising, he says, that after 9/11, mainstream historical accounts would be revised to fit the official narrative.

"This is a self-confirming hypothesis for the people who hold it," Meigs says. "In that sense it is immune from any kind of refutation and it is very similar to, if you've ever known a really hardcore, doctrinaire Marxist or a hardcore fundamentalist creationist. They have sort of a divine answer to every argument you might make."

***

Another article of faith among conspiracy theorists is that the conspiracy would not have to have been very large. In Crossing the Rubicon, Michael Ruppert writes that there didn't have to be any more than two dozen people with complete foreknowledge of the attacks to orchestrate 9/11, and that they would all be "bound to silence by Draconian secrecy oaths." But those numbers begin to balloon out of control if all of the people and institutions accused of playing a part in the cover-up are counted. They would have to have included the CIA; the Justice Department; the FAA; NORAD; American and United Airlines; FEMA; Popular Mechanics and other media outlets; state and local law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York; the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and, finally and perhaps most prominently, the 9/11 Commission. (Keep counting...)

Of the alleged conspirators in the cover-up, few play a greater role than Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission's executive director. A career academic and diplomat, he was asked to resign from his post in 2004 by representatives of 9/11 families because of an alleged conflict of interest stemming from his role on George W. Bush's transition team. Zelikow recused himself from any part of the investigation dealing with the time period that he worked with the transition team, but his presence on the commission is all the conspiracists needed to discredit the entire report.

"I play a very prominent part in their demonology of the world, but the people themselves don't come across like raving lunatics," Zelikow says. "They're often people who in many respects seem quite sincere, very concerned, very patient. They just are fixated." The obsessive nature of conspiracism makes it very difficult to discuss or debate issues with some of the more hardcore believers. "They're not really able to listen to you," Zelikow says. "It's almost like you'll say something and then the tape will just replay its loop again."

In 2007 a conspiracist confronted Zelikow in public with the "fact" that many of the hijackers are still alive. Zelikow responded that the 9/11 Commission had looked into the claims and found nothing to them but could not fit every single debunked conspiracy theory into the final version of the report. The questioner's reply was to repeat his accusation. I had a similar experience on the same topic when questioning Griffin, who begins his book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions with the "hijackers are still alive" theory. I sent him an email pointing out that this theory relied on discredited media reports—the "hijackers" they had found were just people with the same names as the hijackers. In response, he emailed me a chapter on the topic from one of his books and said he was too busy to discuss the issue further.

Another common conspiracist tactic is to obsess over minor points of contention and exaggerate the importance of often easily explained inconsistencies in very hard evidence, such as phone calls victims made to family members on the ground describing the hijackings. For example, Griffin says that the phone calls, records of which were made public as part of the 9/11 Commission, were faked by "voice-morphing" technology that fooled family members on the ground.

***

All the same, some conspiracy theorists have actually retreated from their more difficult-to-prove claims, such as the argument that no commercial plane hit the Pentagon. "They are focusing most of their attention on the World Trade Center stuff, where they're clinging to a few of these now pretty well-rebutted engineering hypotheses," Zelikow says. The most successful purveyor of these hypotheses is Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth founder Richard Gage. In March 2006 Gage heard Griffin argue on the radio that quotes from firemen provided evidence of controlled explosions in the World Trade Center. Gage was floored. "I couldn't even get back to the office, I had to pull the car over," he says. Gage tried to attend a Griffin lecture in Oakland the very next day, but the 600-person hall was full and he had to settle for listening to a live webstream. Within a couple of weeks he had created a PowerPoint presentation about this theory and started proselytizing to co-workers.

Two months later he started Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and soon after that he became a full-time activist, spreading his message that the World Trade Center investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology was a fraud and that there needed to be an "independent" investigation. The petition he started at the time now has signatures from more than 1,500 licensed or degreed architects and engineers, and he is considered one of the movement's most persuasive leaders. Like Griffin, Gage argues that the three-year-long, $16 million NIST investigation, the work of nearly 100 NIST investigators, staff, and independent experts and consultants, was part of the criminal cover-up. "We're calling for a federal grand jury investigation of the lead investigator and his co-project leader," Gage says. "Whoever's names are on those reports need to be investigated." (Hope they don't investigate me, I watched it live on TV )

Dozens of peer-reviewed papers have been written that support the official hypotheses, but those are dismissed as well. Both Gage and Griffin do, however, point to the movement's own peer-reviewed paper, published by former BYU professor Steven Jones and Danish scientist Niels Harrit. Because traditional controlled demolitions would have been audible throughout lower Manhattan had they actually occurred on 9/11, conspiracists have been forced to posit a very obscure scientific explanation for their central thesis: that the demolitions used an incendiary chemical called nano-thermite. Jones and Harrit argued in their paper that they found traces of a thermitic reaction in particles of dust found at the World Trade Center. (Banana has its own radiation, I hope they don't think it's an atomic weapon )

Griffin and Gage hold this up as mainstream validation of the movement's work, but the peer-review process of the paper is suspect. (The editor of the journal resigned over the paper after it was published without her approval, for example, and one of the paper's peer reviewers is a 9/11 conspiracist who has speculated that the passengers on the four flights are actually still alive and living off of Swiss bank accounts.) "Since they can't attack the science, they attack the peer-review process," Gage responds. "Let's have them attack the science." The science has been addressed by Popular Mechanics and others.

At a certain point, though, debating science and theory and ideas is an exercise in futility, because the hypotheses of conspiracy theorists are not grounded in any kind of a larger understanding of the real world. "This sounds really mean," says Erik Sofge, a reporter on the original Popular Mechanics piece and an occasional contributor to Slate. "But really, it's like arguing over the marching speed of hobbits."

 

[Uchiha]

The truth behind 9/11 - the real conspiracy

 

[Chogy]

Very tacky, and making light of a tragedy... unless you personally don't think it was a tragedy.