9/11 conspiracy theories

Template:Sep11 A number of "conspiracy theories" have emerged concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. According to a widely accepted account, on 11 September 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four planes in the Eastern United States. They crashed two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense at The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to regain control of the plane.

This article deals with alternative theories of the events which occurred 11 September 2001 and the time before the events of that day.

Overview

Although some conspiracy theories propose that Israel or Iraq were behind the attacks, those theories which have drawn the most attention seem to be based on one of two ideas: 1) that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the attacks and consciously failed to prevent them, or 2) that the U.S. government itself orchestrated the attacks. Claims that 9/11 conspiracy theorists cite are as follows.

Governmental Foreknowledge

After the attacks, David Schippers, the chief prosecuter for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, declared that he had received warnings from FBI agents six weeks earlier which included the dates and targets of the attacks. Schippers claims the FBI agents came to him because FBI headquarters had blocked their investigations and threatened them with prosecution if they went public with their information. Schippers reports that he tried to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft about this matter but Ashcroft repeatedly refused to return his calls.
In the article "Did We Know What Was Coming?" by William Norman Grigg, published in The New American, (published by the John Birch Society) Grigg states that according to three FBI agents he interviewed, "the information provided to Schippers was widely known within the FBI before September 11."
Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines on July 26, 2001 because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. (Sen. Bob Graham, Intelligence Matters, Random House Publishing Group, 2004)
Two of the 9/11 hijackers were living with an FBI asset for almost 4 months prior to September, 2001. The FBI did not give this information to the joint congressional committee investigating 9/11, then, it refused to serve a subpoena on the asset to appear before the joint committee. In a letter to the committee chairmen, a senior member of the FBI's congressional affairs staff explained that the Bush administration had not allowed the FBI to serve the subpoena on the asset. (Sen. Bob Graham, Intelligence Matters, Random House Publishing Group, 2004)
An unusually high volume of put options were purchased in the three days before 9/11 for only two airlines, American and United. Put options were also purchased for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which occupied 22 stories of the World Trade Center. Although no evidence has yet been provided that there was anything sinister in these transactions, US intelligence agencies are known to monitor markets for signs of imminent, untoward events.
Rep Curt Weldon has asserted that over a year before the 9/11 attacks, a classified US intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" identified Mohammed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers as likely members of an Al Qaeda cell operating in the US. The team recommended that the information be shared with the FBI but the military's Special Operations Command rejected the recommendation. (Doublas Jehl, Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00, New York Times, 8/9/2005)

The World Trade Center

See also: Rumors about the September 11, 2001 attack: Claims that the towers were demolished with explosives and Collapse of the World Trade Center

File:310954.jpg

Madrid's Windsor Tower burned for days but did not fall.

The government has not produced voice (CVR) or flight data recorders (FDR) in the New York attack, so-called black boxes, a fact unprecedented in the aviation history of major domestic crashes. It is unknown if any FDR were recovered from the wreckage.
The WTC 1, 2, and 7 buildings are the only steel frame buildings in history to collapse due to fire.
The WTC 7 building was not struck by any airliner nor were the fires inside caused or sustained by jet fuel. The official explanation for the collapse of the twin towers relies primarily on these two details. Building 7 is said to have collapsed due to having been pelted by debris from the twin towers. This building showed no signs of instability until the moment it suddenly collapsed into its own footprint approximately 6 hours after the attacks.
The rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered for months after their collapse. Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, N.Y, reported seeing pools of "literally molten steel" at the WTC. This was also confirmed by Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI). The melting point of un-fireproofed steel is around 3000 °F while the highest speculation regarding temperatures inside the twin towers is 2000 °F. (American Free Press, New Seismic Data Refutes Official Explanation, April 12, 2004)
The Twin Towers collapsed straight down, at close to free-fall speed. This is a characteristic of, but not necessarily indicative of, a controlled demolition.
Most of the columns came down in sections about 30 ft. long. Soon after the attacks, most of the steel columns were loaded onto trucks and shipped to Asia. This may have no relevance, as some of the largest users of scrap metal reside in the Pacific Rim. Some, however, point out that the area was considered a crime scene and that the WTC materials should have been preserved for an extensive forensic criminal investigation. The quick removal of debris is often cited as evidence of a governmental cover up. See images of the debris sorting for more information.
Viewpoints surrounding the collapses:

In a letter to Frank Gayle of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories, wrote "This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans. Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around 250 °C suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure." Underwriters Laboratories is the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center towers.
Van Romero, Vice President for Research and Economic Development at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and a major authority on the effects of explosions on buildings, has said "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." Romero has since retracted this statement, saying "Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail." ("Explosives Planted in Towers, New Mexico Tech Expert Says", Albuquerque Journal, September, 2001)
A June 13, 2005 article in the Washington Times, reported that former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term, Morgan Reynolds, said the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, expressed his doubt about the official 9/11 story in the following statement: "I know many qualified engineers and scientists have said the WTC collapsed from explosives. In fact, if you look at the manner in which it fell, you have to give their conclusions credibility."

The Pentagon

Flight 77 was able to fly toward the Pentagon for 40 minutes and was not intercepted despite sophisticated radar technology, anti-missile batteries surrounding the Pentagon, and the building's close proximity to Andrews Air Force Base.
At the time of the attacks, the west wing (which was the area of the crash site) of the Pentagon was under construction, and therefore nearly empty.
The hole in the outer wall of the Pentagon is said to be too small to have been created by a Boeing 757.
Many consider the only photographic evidence of plane wreckage lying on the grounds of the Pentagon to be ambiguous and unconvincing.
Pentagon surveillance cameras captured 5 frames from before, during, and after the impact, but none show exactly what hit the building.
The FBI confiscated videos, which might have captured the attack, from a nearby gas station immediately after the attacks. These videos are classified and have not yet been released. ("Three Months On, Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon", Bill McKelway, Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 11, 2001)
Military personnel were photographed removing from the crash site a large light-weight object shrouded by a blue tarp. Some conjecture that this was to hide its contents from the public.

The President's Behavior

The President's location on the morning of the attacks was highly publicized. However, after the second plane struck the World Trade Center, the Secret Service permitted the President to remain in a classroom for 10 minutes and then to give a speech to the nation from the same school. At this time there would have been no way of knowing whether the President himself was in danger.

One theory uses this fact to support the idea that the Bush Administration knew of the attacks and somehow was convinced there was no imminent threat to the President of the United States. One could think that in a normal situation, the Secret Service protecting such an important person would act much faster to remove the President to a secure location. Guests and the White House press corps reported that they were hurried onto Air Force One and that the plane made an aggressive, highly unusual, takeoff.

Inconsistent Explanations

One of the suspected hijackers was named Waleed al-Shehri. He has been confused with another man with the same name leading some to claim that the suspected hijacker has turned up alive.9/11 Attacks web page. The identities of at least three other hijackers have come into doubt, all of whom are still featured on the aforementioned site. (See the 9-11 Commission Report section)
The explanation for the military's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks has changed over time:
- Initially, the military reported that, on 9/11, no fighters were sent up to intercept the hijacked planes until after the Pentagon was hit.
- Later the same week, the military put out a second story, saying that it had sent up fighters but because the FAA had been late in notifying it about the hijackings, the fighters arrived too late.
- The 9/11 Commission reported a third version that the FAA gave the military insufficient warning of the first hijacked airline and no warning of the other hijackings until after they had crashed.
Many government officials have said that, prior to the 9/11 attacks, no one could have imagined that planes could be hijacked and used as weapons. In reality, intelligence officials had found information outlining a terrorist desire to use planes as weapons on at least 12 occasions prior to September 11, 2001. (9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 7/24/03)

The 9-11 Commission

Dick Cheney initially opposed an investigation into 9/11 saying that it would take resources and personnel away from the war on terrorism.
The official investigation began 411 days after the attacks, where as the investigations into Pearl Harbor and the assasination of JFK began after only 9 and 7 days, respectively.
The commission was given a startup appropriation of only $3 million and made a subsequent funding request for $11 million in order to meet its target date for completion. As a point of comparison, $50 million was set aside to investigate the crash of the Columbia space shuttle.
The commission neglected to include in their final report that the identities of at least four of the suspected hijackers have come into doubt, as has been verified by FBI director Robert Mueller. (BBC, "Hijack 'suspects' alive and well", September 23, 2001)
- Saudi pilot and suspected flight 11 hijacker, Waleed Al Shehri, acknowledges that he attended flight training school in the United States, but is alive and protesting his innocence. He is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring.
- Men by the name of Abdulaziz Al Omari and Saeed Alghamdi have also surfaced since the attacks.
- There are suggestions that another suspect, Khalid Al Midhar, may also be alive.

Other Points of Interest

A September, 2000 report by the Project for the New American Century (cofounded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle), entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces and Resources For the New Century, states the following:
- "To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs."
- "Further, the process of [military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
Half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall said that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them. Rep. McKinney led a Capitol Hill hearing on July 23, 2005 on whether the Bush administration was involved in the terrorist attacks. Panelist and former CIA official Melvin Goodman was quoted as saying "Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian and I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom."
Two hours before the attack two employees of Odigo, an instant messaging service, received general warnings at their offices in Israel. Odigo has employees in Israel, but is headquartered in downtown Manhattan. The full text of the messages has not been released to the public, however Odigo did say that they did not specifically mention the World Trade Center. The Washington Post reported Odigo had a feature called People Finder which would enable someone to send messages to others based upon demographics. Certain conspiracy theories have suggested Jews were warned on September 11 of the coming attacks and were able to avoid the disaster. The suggestion is that Israeli intelligence was monitoring the hijackers, knew of the planned attacks, and issued the warning in an attempt to save Jewish lives.

Motives

All theories as to why the US Government would have either perpetrated the attacks or allowed them to occur seem to entail one or more of the following motives:

To justify increased defense spending.
To gain the support of US citizens to invade the Middle East in order to control petroleum reserves in response to a peaking of global oil production. (See peak oil)
To justify passing legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, which would grant extra-constitutional powers to the federal government.

Demonstrably False Claims

In a PBS documentary, former WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein recalled telling firefighters to "pull" building 7. While many insist that Silverstein could only have been refering to demolition, the term "pull" can also be interpreted as "evacuate". Silverstein has never elaborated on the exact meaning of this comment, but has said he was not referring to a controlled demolition.

Some have reported Minoru Yamasaki, architect and designer of the WTC, as saying "We designed the towers to take multiple jumbo jet strikes, this is not architecturally feasible," in reference to the collapse of the towers. However, this is not possible as Minoru Yamasaki died on February 6, 1986.

Less Common Theories

Some theories claim that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein conspired in the 9/11 attacks. These claims were most common during the buildup to the Iraq War as they were made, or alluded to, by various members of President George W. Bush's cabinet. Some proponents of this theory refer to another theory, surrounding the Oklahoma City Bombing, according to which Iraqi intelligence agents were involved, as was reported by investigative journalist Jana Davis.
Numerous theories have been put forward suggesting conspiratorial involvement of Zionists, Israel, Jews and/or the Mossad. (Main article: 9/11 conspiracy claims regarding Jews or Israel)
The Church of Scientology claims that the 9/11 hijackers were brainwashed by psychiatrists, who were the real masterminds behind the attacks. [1]

External links

Discussion and Evidence of various conspiracy issues

Skeptical of or debunking larger conspiracy claim