9/11 conspiracy theories: Difference between revisions

The collapse of the two World Trade Center towers and the nearby WTC7 are a major focus of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

A variety of conspiracy theories question the mainstream account of the September 11 attacks in the United States. These theories assert that the official report on the events is not sufficiently forthright, thorough or truthful. Many critics allege that individuals in the government of the United States knew of the impending attacks and intentionally failed to act on that knowledge. Some critics state that the attacks could have been a false flag operation carried out by a private network of high-level officials in the U.S. Government. The common suspected motives were the use of the attacks as a pretext to justify overseas wars, to facilitate increased military spending, and to restrict domestic civil liberties.

Many of these theories have been voiced by members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, a name adopted by organizations and individuals who question the mainstream account of the attacks. Generally, individuals and groups belonging to the 9/11 Truth Movement question the accuracy of the mainstream account of the attacks, demand a new investigation into the attacks, and often investigate aspects of the September 11 attacks themselves. A prominent claim is that the collapse of the World Trade Center was the result of a controlled demolition. Some also contend that a commercial airliner did not crash into the Pentagon; this position is debated within the Truth Movement, many of whom believe that AA Flight 77 did crash there, but that it was allowed to do so via an effective stand down of the military.

Published reports by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology rejected the controlled demolition conspiracy theories. The community of civil engineers generally accepts the mainstream account that the impacts of jet aircraft at high speeds in combination with subsequent fires, rather than controlled demolition, led to the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Initial reception

Since the September 11 attacks, a number of theories challenging the mainstream account of the attacks have been put forward in websites, books, and films. Many groups and individuals challenging the mainstream account identify as part of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

In an address to the United Nations on November 10, 2001, United States President George W. Bush denounced the emergence of "outrageous conspiracy theories ... that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty." Later, as media exposure of conspiracy theories of the events of 9/11 increased, U.S. Government agencies and the Bush Administration issued responses to the theories, including a formal analysis by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) about the collapse of the World Trade Center, a revised 2006 State Department webpage to debunk the theories, and a strategy paper referred to by President Bush in an August 2006 speech, which declared that terrorism springs from "subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation," and that "terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda." al-Qaeda has repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attacks, with chief deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri accusing Shia Iran and Hezbollah of intentionally starting rumors that Israel carried out the attacks to denigrate Sunni successes in hurting America.

A number of 9/11 opinion polls have been conducted in an attempt to establish roughly how many people have doubts about the mainstream account, and how prevalent some of the theories are. Just prior to the fifth anniversary of the attacks, mainstream news outlets released a flurry of articles on the growth of 9/11 conspiracy theories, with Time Magazine stating, "This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality." In 2008 9/11 conspiracy theories topped a "greatest conspiracy theory” list compiled by The Daily Telegraph. The list was based on following and traction. An August 2007 Zogby poll found that, while 26.4% of Americans believe that "certain elements in the U.S. Government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military and economic reasons", another 4.8% of them believe that "certain U.S. Government elements actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks". Mainstream coverage generally presents these theories as a cultural phenomenon and is often critical of their content.

Mainstream account

Main article: September 11 attacks

Immediately following the September 11 attacks, the U.S. Government stated that nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes by using knives, box cutters, pepper spray, a gun on at least one flight (United Airlines Flight 93), and explosives; it is likely, though, that the gun and bombs were fakes. At 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., Flights 11 and 175 crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, causing them to collapse soon after. 7 World Trade Center collapsed later in the day from fires started by debris from the collapse of the North Tower. Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. and Flight 93 crashed in an open field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. after the passengers stormed the cockpit. U.S. Government intelligence sources identified the hijackers and linked them to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, which later claimed sole responsibility for the attacks.

The terms 'mainstream account,' 'official account' and 'official conspiracy theory' all refer to:

• The reports from government investigations - the 9/11 Commission Report (which incorporated intelligence information from the earlier FBI investigation (PENTBOM) and the Joint Inquiry of 2002), and the studies into building performance carried out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
• President Obama's June 2009 speech to the Muslim world where he said "I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day."
• Investigations by non-government organizations that support the mainstream account - such as those by the National Fire Protection Association, and by scientists of Purdue University and Northwestern University.
• Articles supporting these facts and theories appearing in magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, and Time.
• Similar articles in news media throughout the world, including The Times of India, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the BBC, Le Monde, Deutsche Welle, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and The Chosun Ilbo of South Korea.

The 9/11 Commission Report disclosed prior warnings of varying detail of planned attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda. The report said that the government ignored these warnings due to a lack of communication between various law enforcement and intelligence personnel. For the lack of inter-agency communication, the report cited bureaucratic inertia and laws passed in the 1970s to prevent abuses that caused scandals during that era. The report faulted the Clinton and the Bush administration with “failure of imagination”. Most members of the Democratic and the Republican parties applauded the commission's work.

Some members of the 9/11 Commission have criticized how the government formed and operated the commission, and allege omissions and distortions in the 9/11 Commission Report. Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton wrote in their book "Without Precedent" that the 9/11 Commission was "set up to fail," and in an interview with CBC News, Mr. Hamilton complained of "poor access" and said that the Commission was unable to answer many of its questions about FAA and NORAD and White House activity. He also acknowledged that NORAD had told the Commission things that were not true. According to an article in Harpers, the Commissioners wrote that they threatened to seek prosecution of officials for criminal obstruction.

Variants

Most 9/11 conspiracy theories generally originate from dissatisfaction with the mainstream account of 9/11. Less extensive theories allege that official reports have covered up incompetence or negligence from U.S. personnel, or involvement of a foreign government or organization other than al-Qaeda. The most prevalent theories can be broadly divided into two main forms:

• LIHOP ("let it happen on purpose") - suggests that key individuals within the government had at least some foreknowledge of the attacks and deliberately ignored them or actively weakened America's defenses to ensure the hijacked flights were not intercepted.
• MIHOP ("made it happen on purpose") - that key individuals within the government planned the attacks and collaborated with or framed, al-Qaeda in carrying them out. There is a range of opinions about how this might have been achieved.

Main issues

Foreknowledge

Main article: 9/11 advance-knowledge debate

The issue of whether anyone outside al-Qaeda was aware that the attacks were going to take place has been a subject of some theories. Among the theories are: whether activities at the World Trade Center in the days prior to 9/11 were consistent with preparation for a controlled demolition; whether the Bush Administration or military knew about the plan of using planes as missiles; what the intelligence agencies knew about al-Qaeda activities inside the United States; whether the put options placed on United Airlines and American Airlines, and other trades considered questionable by theorists, indicate foreknowledge; whether there were warnings from foreign countries that were specific enough to have warranted action; whether there was any intelligence information gathered about imminent al-Qaeda attacks and whether it was specific enough to have warranted action; whether the alleged hijackers were under surveillance prior to the attacks and, if so, to what extent; and whether agents of the Mossad or the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence were aware that the attacks were going to take place.

It has been claimed that action or inaction by U.S. officials with foreknowledge was intended to ensure that the attacks took place successfully. For example, Michael Meacher, former British environment minister and member of Tony Blair's Cabinet until June 2003, was widely criticized for claiming that America knowingly failed to prevent the attacks.

Lack of effective defenses

See also: U.S. military response during the September 11 attacks

Many 9/11 theories claiming government involvement allege that the U.S. air defense system, NORAD, was deliberately stood down or rendered ineffective. This claim originates from the 9/11 Commission Report account of the actions taken by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), NORAD and other military personnel. Some note that "FAA standard procedures for NORAD interception of off course or ceased responding aircraft" were activated on 129 occasions in the year 2000 and on 67 occasions in the period from September 2000 to June 2001 but failed to do so on 9/11.

The interception failure was due to a change in protocol. Prior to 9/11 standard procedure was for the FAA to contact NORAD who then immediately scrambled fighters to intercept non responding craft. In July 2001 the procedure was changed. The FAA now had to contact the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center and the United States Secretary of Defense would then have to approve the use of military aircraft for the intercept. The Pentagon would then contact the relevant NORAD Air Defense Sector. On 9/11 the new protocol broke down. The FAA could not get a response from the Pentagon until 8:34, some 21 minutes after the first hijack and were then told they needed to call the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) themselves. Air traffic controller Joseph Cooper then contacted NORAD directly. As the operator should not have received that call he then passed it on to his superior. Protocol broke down again and NORAD scrambled without the secretary of defense's authorisation.

Although the military first learned of the hijacking of Flight 11 from Boston Center at 8:40, just 6 minutes before its impact, it was able to scramble two F-15 fighter jets from the 102nd Fighter Wing from Otis Air National Guard Base just 12 minutes later at 8:52, six minutes after Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. However, the 33 minute flight time didn't allow them to reach Manhattan until 9:25, 22 minutes after the crash of Flight 175 into the South Tower. One of the pilots later commented, "As we're climbing out, we go supersonic on the way, which is kind of nonstandard for us. And, Nasty even called me on the radio and said, Duff, you're super. I said yeah, I know. You know, don't worry about it. ... I just wanted to get there quickly."

The 9/11 Commission Report timeline of events in the FAA and NORAD contradicts the timeline released by NORAD shortly after the event. The Washington Post reported in its August 3, 2006 edition that:

"For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances... Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial account of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public... Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted".

Since the 9/11 Commission places the primary blame on communication failures within the FAA, David Ray Griffin, who has written several books alleging that the 9/11 conspiracy was considerably larger than the government claims, has questioned why the U.S. Military would lie to cover up the mistakes made by that agency.

There were a number of war games and military exercises taking place during the attacks, including Northern Vigilance, a NORAD operation which involved deploying fighter aircraft to locations in Alaska and northern Canada to respond to a war game being conducted by Russia; Global Guardian, an annual command-level exercise organized by United States Strategic Command in cooperation with Space Command and NORAD; and Vigilant Guardian, a semiannual NORAD Command Post Exercise (CPX) (meaning it is conducted in offices and with computers, but without actual planes in the air) involving all NORAD command levels in which one scenario being run on September 11 was a simulated hijacking. Additionally, a National Reconnaissance Office drill was being conducted on September 11 in which the event of a small aircraft crashing into one of the towers of the agency's headquarters, was to be simulated, and the Office of Emergency Management were preparing for Operation Tripod, a bioterrorism exercise due to take place on September 12.

Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement question whether the story that such an array of war games and exercises were due to take place on that day by coincidence, is plausible. United States Representative Cynthia McKinney, former head of the Strategic Defense Initiative; Dr. Robert M. Bowman; economist Michel Chossudovsky; publisher/editor Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness and many others have suggested that the war games were deliberately planned to coincide with the attacks to create confusion. Webster Tarpley, in his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA claims that the war games were the "perfect cover for conducting the actual live-fly components of 9/11 through a largely un-witting military bureaucracy. Under the cover of this confusion, the most palpably subversive actions could be made to appear in the harmless and even beneficial guise of a drill."

In testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta said that he was not present when the order was given to shoot down the airplanes. He stated that he became aware of the order when he entered the Presidential Emergency Operation Command in the bunker underneath the White House where Dick Cheney was in command. He describes the following exchange, between Cheney and a "young man", as taking place sometime between him entering the bunker and the time the Pentagon was hit at 9:37.

There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

However, the 9/11 Commission report concluded, based on testimony from the other members who were in the bunker and overhead the conversation, that the young man was referring to Flight 93, and that the young aide first entered and stated that the aircraft was 80 miles out "at some time between 10:10 and 10:15", after Flight 93 had crashed, but was believed to still be on its way toward Washington, D.C. Mineta did not know at the time what the orders referred to, and he learned only later that 'shoot down orders' had been given that day. However, it has been suggested that the orders spoken of could have been an order not to shoot down the approaching plane. This theory is based on an interpretation of the young man's question as an expression of his surprise about the order. Therefore, because shooting down the approaching plane would be the accepted action, the unusual nature of an order not to shoot down the plane would explain the young man's putative disbelief. Still others believe that the young aide's repeated questioning was due to ethical concerns over shooting down a commercial aircraft with innocent civilians on board.

World Trade Center collapse

Main article: World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories

The controlled demolition conspiracy theories state that the collapse of the North Tower, South Tower and 7 WTC was due to the use of explosives or incendiaries. It plays a central role in the 9/11 conspiracy theories that assert that the U.S. Government is responsible for the attacks. Steven E. Jones, a retired professor of Brigham Young University, suggests that the working hypothesis, as outlined in NIST's 2004 interim report, that fire and debris induced the collapse of 7 WTC, is false. He has produced a peer-reviewed paper in the university's Chemical Physics Journal which analysed dust samples from the collapses. Discovered throughout the samples were, from the conclusions in the paper, "unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology [...] a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."

Some conspiracy theorists have also recently suggested that the 757 aluminum nosecones and fuselages could have been used as giant shaped charge warheads, driving and compressing the massive fuel loads inside the towers. It has been claimed that the effect of compressed Jet-A fuel in a steel chamber would have been similar to a fuel-air or thermobaric explosive.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency Report of 2002 and the later National Institute of Standards and Technology report of 2005 regarding the reconstruction of the collapse events of the Twin Towers and Seven World Trade Center both contradict the controlled demolition conspiracy theories. On August 21, 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology released a 77 page report on the cause of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. It concluded that the collapse occurred because the building was set on fire by falling debris from the other burning towers, that catastrophic failure occurred when the 13th floor collapsed weakening a critical steel support column and that the collapse of the nearby towers broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water. The theories that the collapse was caused by explosions or fires caused by diesel fuel in the building was investigated and ruled out.

The Pentagon

The first of the five video frames leaked in 2002 showing the Pentagon just before impact.

File:Lawn1.jpg

The Pentagon, after collapse of the damaged section.

Debris scattered near the Pentagon.

Some contend that a commercial airliner did not crash into the Pentagon; this position is debated within the Truth Movement, many of whom believe that AA Flight 77 did crash there, but that it was allowed to do so via an effective stand down of the military. Claims that the Pentagon was hit by something other than the Boeing 757 of Flight 77 have been raised, based on photographs taken after the attack, in which there appears to be a lack of expected debris or damage in and around the impact area, along with the FBI seizure and refusal to release nearby security camera footage which, it is assumed, would have captured the attack on video. The first proponent of the "No Boeing" theory was Thierry Meyssan through his book 9/11: The Big Lie and website Hunt the Boeing! His claims have been further popularized by the Internet videos Loose Change and "911 In Plane Site".

On March 8, 2002, five video frames captured by a security camera at the Pentagon were leaked. Only the first frame preceded the impact: this frame shows what may be an object heading for the Pentagon. On May 16, 2006, the security camera footage was released as part of a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act request. However, due to a low number of frames per second, the videos are also inconclusive, thus keeping the "No Boeing" theory alive. Security camera footage from a nearby Citgo gas station, from a local Doubletree Hotel, and from the Virginia Department of Transportation, was swiftly confiscated by the FBI. The footage from both the gas station and the hotel were later released following successful FOIA Requests, but neither captured the impact. Additional photographs were released in 2006 after the Zacarias Moussaoui trial and several FOIA requests.

In an interview for Parade magazine on October 12, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apparently referred to "the missile to damage [the Pentagon]". Some have interpreted this as a faux pas admission that it was not Flight 77 that hit the building. Others have suggested that the word may have been carefully chosen disinformation, designed to "trap 9/11 skeptics," citing this as the real reason why photographs and video footage have not been forthcoming. Parade magazine subsequently stated that this interpretation of Rumsfeld's words was a misunderstanding caused by a transcription error. Jim Hoffman states:

"Experts at psychological operations, the perpetrators could have anticipated that skeptics would divide into two groups: those persuaded by eyewitness evidence that a 757 had crashed, and those persuaded by physical evidence that one had not. The ongoing controversy could then be exploited by the perpetrators to several ends: 1) to keep the skeptics divided, 2) to divert skeptics' resources from other more productive lines of inquiry and 3) to provide a bizarre-sounding theory with which to tar the entire 9/11 Truth Movement."

Jim Hoffman and other members have produced essays examining the "No Boeing" claims and have concluded that Flight 77 did hit the Pentagon. Several researchers have argued that the wings would cause less damage than the plane's main body, that photographs of large amounts of wreckage and debris matching a 757 have become available, that the appearance of the size of the hole is typically misrepresented; and that the actual fuselage diameter of 12 feet is a much more relevant dimension for the deepest parts of the hole than the overall 44-foot height of the 757's tail. They also emphasize reports from numerous eyewitnesses, including commuters on nearby roads, nearby apartment buildings, and other surrounding locations. Many witnesses saw the aircraft close up as it approached the Pentagon and described it as an American Airlines Boeing 757. The remains of all but one of the victims of Flight 77 have been identified using DNA testing.

Flight 93

United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in an open field in Pennsylvania as a result of an attempted cockpit invasion. However, there have been claims that it was actually shot down by U.S. fighter jets. This idea is promoted by author David Ray Griffin in his book The New Pearl Harbor. Two debris fields from Flight 93 were found at three (Indian Lake) and eight (New Baltimore) miles from the crash site, and there are also some eyewitness reports of debris falling from the sky like confetti. However, Flight 93 was flying south-east toward Washington, D.C. when it crashed. Both Indian Lake and New Baltimore are 3 miles and 8 miles, respectively, south-east of the crash site, in the direction the plane was heading but never flew over. Many websites say this contradicts the claim that the plane shed debris for 3–8 miles before its crash, in which case the debris would have been found north-west of the crash site along the plane's flight path. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from 9/14/2001 describes the material as "mostly papers", "strands of charred insulation", and an "endorsed paycheck". The same article quotes FBI agent Bill Crowley that, "Lighter, smaller debris probably shot into the air on the heat of a fireball that witnesses said shot several hundred feet into the air after the jetliner crashed. Then, it probably rode a wind that was blowing southeast at about 9 MPH." Popular Mechanics argued that debris such as an engine exploding away and landing far from the crash scene is not a unique occurrence in commercial airline accidents.

Some conspiracy theorists believe a small white jet seen flying over the crash area may have fired a missile to shoot down Flight 93. However, government agencies such as the FBI assert this was a Dassault Falcon business jet asked to descend to an altitude of around 1500 ft to survey the impact. Ben Sliney, who was the FAA operation manager on September 11, 2001, says no military aircraft were near Flight 93.

Jim Hoffman claims there is a three-minute discrepancy in the cockpit voice recording immediately prior to the flight's crash. Seismological observations recorded an impact at 10:06:05 a.m., +/- a couple of seconds, but the 9/11 Commission Report decided that the seismological information was not definitive and concluded that the crash occurred at 10:03 a.m.

According to some theories the plane had to be shot down by the government because passengers had found out about the "plot".

Some internet videos, such as Loose Change, speculate that Flight 93 safely landed in Ohio, and a substituted plane was involved in the crash in Pennsylvania. Often cited is a preliminary news report that Flight 93 landed at a Cleveland airport; it was later learned that Delta Flight 1989 was the plane confused with Flight 93, and the report was retracted as inaccurate. Several websites within the 9/11 Truth Movement dispute this claim, citing the wreckage at the scene, eyewitness testimony, and the difficulty of secretly substituting one plane for another, and claim that such "hoax theories... appear calculated to alienate victims' survivors and the larger public from the 9/11 truth movement". The editor of the article has since written a rebuttal to the claims.

Autopilot

Jim Hoffman and the Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice are among those who have said the Flight Management Computer Systems on board Flights 11, 175 and 77 could have been loaded with a preset route that guided the planes to their targets. Hoffman suggests that Flight 77 performed the unusual spiral dive it made on its approach to the Pentagon with the help of the onboard computer.

Some theories suggest that, rather than having preset routes entered into the planes' on-board computers, the planes were flown by remote control. The controllers of the planes may have been on the ground or, as in the "doomsday plane" theory, in another aircraft. This theory argues that a blurry white object seen in the sky in videos of the World Trade Center, was a plane containing the remote controller of Flights 11 and 175, and that an aircraft that flew away from The Pentagon after that impact contained the remote controller of Flight 77. The aircraft at the Pentagon was later identified as a E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) plane, a militarised version of a Boeing 747-200, taking part in the Global Guardian exercise.

Theories of remotely controlled aircraft have been criticised for ignoring phone calls made by passengers which state that their aircraft had been hijacked.

Hijackers

The BBC and the Daily Telegraph reported on September 23 that some of the people named as the hijackers by the FBI were actually "alive and well". One of them was Waleed al-Shehri, who they said they had found in Casablanca, Morocco. Abdulaziz Al Omari, Saeed Alghamdi, and Khalid al-Midhar, three other hijackers, were all said to be living in the Middle East. On September 19, the FDIC distributed a "special alert" which listed al-Mihdhar as alive (the Justice Department later said this was a typographical error). These reports have led to claims that the names of the hijackers may be incorrect, or that the hijacking scenarios outlined in the 9/11 Commission Report may not be the truth.

All of the reports have since been acknowledged as cases of mistaken identity by the publications involved and by other news organizations such as the New York Times. The BBC said that confusion may have arisen because the FBI names were common Arabic and Islamic names. In 2002, Saudi Arabia asserted that the names of the hijackers were correct.

Some attention has been given to news reports that might indicate that the named hijackers were not typical Islamic extremists. For example, Mohammad Atta reportedly ate pork, drank alcohol, gambled in casinos, and went to strip clubs. It is however controversial whether terrorists are motivated primarily by religious belief.

By January 2009 remains from thirteen of the nineteen hijackers have been identified through DNA mapping. The remains are at an undisclosed location. No requests have been made to return them and no decision has been made on what to do with them. According to Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at UCLA and an authority on Islamic law if a family member of a suspected hijacker were to ask for the remains it would put themselves and their families in Saudi Arabia and Egypt at risk for harm because it would be seen as admitting that their relatives were 9/11 hijackers in countries where the prevalent belief is that the 9/11 attacks were an anti-Arab conspiracy carried out by the Bush Administration.

Phone calls

Air phone calls and cell phone calls were placed from the hijacked planes. Conspiracy theorists say cell phone calls should either be impossible or rarely possible from commercial planes, and therefore the hijackings were staged and the phone calls were faked.

After 9/11, cellular experts said that they were surprised calls were able to be placed from the hijacked planes, and that they lasted as long as they did. They said that the only reason that the calls went through in the first place is that the aircraft were flying so close to the ground. Alexa Graf, an AT&T spokesperson said it was almost a fluke that the calls reached their destinations. Other industry experts said that it is possible to use cell phones with varying degrees of success during a flight. Marvin Sirbu, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University said on September 14, 2001, that "The fact of the matter is that cell phones can work in almost all phases of a commercial flight."

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, 13 passengers from Flight 93 made a total of over 30 calls to both family and emergency personnel (twenty-two confirmed air phone calls, two confirmed cell phone and eight not specified in the report). The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force testified that all but two calls from Flight 93 were made on air phones. Brenda Raney, Verizon Wireless spokesperson, said that Flight 93 was supported by several cell sites. There were reportedly three phone calls from Flight 11, five from Flight 175, and three calls from Flight 77 which American Airlines later confirmed did not have airphones fitted; two calls from these flights were recorded, placed by flight attendants Madeleine Sweeney and Betty Ong on Flight 11. A conspiracy theory web site claims anomalies relating to the nature of the phone call transcripts.

Cover-up allegations

Conspiracy theorists say they detect a pattern of behavior on the part of officials investigating the September 11 attack meant to suppress the emergence of evidence that might contradict the mainstream account. They associated news stories from several different sources with that pattern.

Cockpit recorders

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the cockpit voice recorders (CVR) or flight data recorders (FDR), or "black boxes", from Flights 11 and 175 were not recovered from the remains of the WTC attack; however, two men, Michael Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi, who worked extensively in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, stated in the book "Behind-The-Scenes: Ground Zero" that they helped federal agents find three of the four "black boxes" from the jetliners:

"At one point I was assigned to take Federal Agents around the site to search for the black boxes from the planes. We were getting ready to go out. My ATV was parked at the top of the stairs at the Brooks Brothers entrance area. We loaded up about a million dollars worth of equipment and strapped it into the ATV. There were a total of four black boxes. We found three."

However, information has since surfaced which casts doubt on the credibility of this claim. The New York Post reported in April 2004, shortly before the book was published, that Michael Bellone was in serious financial difficulty, owing more than $220,000 to his publisher as well as in unpaid bills, "including hotel rooms, flights, FDNY shirts, business cards and even prescription drugs." Many have speculated that a possible motive for the "We found three [of the black boxes]" claim would have been to boost book sales, and there have been several recorded accounts of flight recorders being destroyed in aircraft accidents. On September 27, 2005, Michael Bellone, who had called himself an "honorary New York firefighter", was arrested for stealing an FDNY Scott air tank, harness, regulator and mask, and was charged with grand larceny, criminal impersonation and possession of stolen property. Conrad Tinney, one of the New York Fire Marshals who arrested Bellone, described him as a "fraud" and stated, "He's saying he was made an honorary firefighter by New York Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. That's a fallacy." On September 28, 2005, it was revealed that Michael Bellone had been using the firefighter equipment, as well as other historical artifacts stolen from Ground Zero, as part of a charity fraud. An unnamed firefighter in a NY Daily News article said of Bellone's book promotion and charity fraud that, "It's very ghoulish. He may have helped firefighters at the time, but now he's making a living on this."

The cockpit voice recorder from Flight 77 was heavily damaged from the impact and resulting fire.

Ted Lopatkiewicz, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, remarked that "It's extremely rare that we don't get the recorders back. I can't recall another domestic case in which we did not recover the recorders."

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, both black boxes from Flight 77 and both black boxes from Flight 93 were recovered. However, the CVR from Flight 77 was said to be too damaged to yield any data. On April 18, 2002, the FBI allowed the families of victims from Flight 93 to listen to the voice recordings. In April 2006, a transcript of the CVR was released as part of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial. Some conspiracy theorists do not believe that the black boxes were damaged and that instead there has been a cover up of evidence.

Flight 93 and Flight 77 passengers

Conspiracy theorists have claimed that passengers of one or both of those flights were murdered or they were relocated, with the purpose of which never being found.

bin Laden tapes

Main article: Videos of Osama bin Laden

A series of interviews, audio and videotapes have been released since the 9/11 attacks that have been reported to be from Osama bin Laden. At first the speaker denied responsibility for the attacks but over the years has taken increasing responsibility for them culminating in a November 2007 videotape in which the speaker claimed sole responsibility for the attacks and denied the Taliban and the Afghan government or people had any prior knowledge of the attacks. The Central Intelligence Agency has confirmed the speaker was or was likely to be Osama Bin Laden. Some people in the Muslim World doubted the authenticity of the tape. Steve and Paul Watson of Infowars.net claim that the organization handling the tapes is a front for the Pentagon and that the tapes are "highly suspect". Professor Bruce Lawrence head of Duke University’s Religious Studies Department and author of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden believes the tapes are fake and that Bin Laden has been dead since 2001.

Other theories

Foreign governments

See also: Responsibility for the September 11 attacks § Other alleged responsibility

See also: 9/11 advanced-knowledge debate § Foreign government foreknowledge

There are allegations that individuals within the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence may have played an important role in financing the attacks. There are also claims that other foreign intelligence agencies, such as the Israeli Mossad, had foreknowledge of the attacks, and that Saudi Arabia may have played a role in financing the attacks. Francesco Cossiga, former President of Italy from 1985 until his resignation over Operation Gladio, asserts that it is common knowledge among intelligence services the 9-11 attacks were a joint operation between elements in the U.S. Government and Mossad. General Hamid Gul the former head of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence believes the attacks were an “inside “job” originating in the United States perpetrated by Israel or neo-conservatives.

The theory that such foreign individuals outside of al Qaeda were involved is often part of larger "inside job" theories, although it has been claimed that, while al Qaeda deserves most of the responsibility, the alleged role played by Pakistan, Israel or Saudi Arabia was deliberately overlooked by the official investigation for political reasons..

"No plane" theories

The "no plane theory," promoted by internet-only videos like 911 Taboo, asserts that this shot of the second impact, taken from a news helicopter, depicts a video composite of a Boeing 767 accidentally appearing from behind a Layer Mask.

Some individuals, primarily on the internet, have made the claim that no hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Center towers ('No Boeing Theories' or 'No Plane Theories'). Supporters of this claim have been described as "no-planers," or "Pod people," by members of the 9/11 truth movement who generally maintain that the claim is a case of poisoning the well — an effort which is intended to broadly discredit the more credible theories. According to "no-planers," live television, video and photographs that purport to show Boeing airliners on September 11 all had fake airplane images composited into them. Many prominent members of the 9/11 Truth Movement have rejected the claims.

Those describing the no plane claims as poisoning the well often refer to proponents like Morgan Reynolds, former Labor Department chief economist under George W. Bush, who calls himself the "black sheep" of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Reynolds claims it is physically impossible that the Boeing planes of Flights 11 and 175, being largely aluminium, could have penetrated the steel frames of the Towers, and has also proposed that digital compositing was used to depict the plane crashes in both news reports and subsequent amateur video. Numerous papers by 9/11 Truth Movement researchers have rejected the claims.

President Bush's behavior

President Bush was promoting the passage of his education plan at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, on the morning of September 11. He was already aware of the first plane impact before he entered the school, believing it to have been a "horrible accident". There is confusion about his description of having seen the first impact on television, long before the single piece of footage of that event (taken by the Naudet brothers) had been shown anywhere. He was sitting in a classroom reading The Pet Goat with the children when, at 9:05am, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered in his ear that "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." That the president chose to stay in the classroom for an additional 7 minutes, without asking for additional information from his staff, and that those staff did not volunteer any additional information or take him to a place of safety, has led to allegations that he knew that the attack was taking place and knew he was not a target. A response is that Bush's intention was to "project strength and calm," i.e., that he did not want to cause more panic by fleeing the room, as the footage would probably have been replayed over and over on news coverage.

Jewish involvement

Some groups propose theories that 9/11 was part of an international Zionist conspiracy. According to the Anti-Defamation League, "anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have not been accepted in mainstream circles in the U.S.," but "this is not the case in the Arab and Muslim world." The Anti-Defamation League has published a paper, Unraveling Anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, identifying the claims made and responding to them.

One of the most popular claims in these theories is that 4,000 Jewish employees skipped work at the WTC on September 11. This was first reported on September 17 by the Lebanese Hezbollah-owned satellite television channel Al-Manar and is believed to be based on the September 12 edition of the Jerusalem Post that stated "The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has so far received the names of 4,000 Israelis believed to have been in the areas of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon at the time of the attacks.". Both turned out to be incorrect; the number of Jews who died in the attacks is variously estimated at between 270 to 400. The lower figure tracks closely with the percentage of Jews living in the New York area and partial surveys of the victims' listed religion. The U.S. State Department has published a partial list of 76 in response to claims that fewer Jews/Israelis died in the WTC attacks than should have been present at the time. Five Israeli citizens died in the attack.

Several websites of the 9/11 truth movement have worked to debunk the anti-Semitic claims and expose websites and individuals engaging in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. On the internet, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has indignantly denied the rumour and attacked Shias, Hezbollah and Iran for spreading it, claiming, “the objective behind this lie is to deny that the Sunnis have heroes who harm America as no one has harmed it throughout its history.” and that Iran's aim is to cover up its involvement in the invading of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Motives

Pax Americana

In suggesting motives for the U.S. Government to have carried out the attacks, Professor David Ray Griffin claims that a global "Pax Americana" was a dream held by many members of the Bush Administration. This dream was first articulated in the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, drafted by Paul Wolfowitz on behalf of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, in a document that has been called "a blueprint for permanent American global hegemony" and has been echoed in the writings of the neoconservatives. In his lecture, "9/11: The Myth and the Reality," Griffin states that:

"Achieving this goal (American global hegemony) would require four things:

[1] getting control of the world's oil, especially in Central Asia and the Middle East — and the Bush-Cheney administration came to power with plans already made to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.

[2] a technological transformation of the military, in which fighting from space would become central.

[3] an enormous increase in military spending, to pay for these new wars and for weaponizing space.

[4] to modify the doctrine of preemptive attack, so that America would be able to attack other countries even if they posed no imminent threat.

These four elements would, moreover, require a fifth: an event that would make the American people ready to accept these imperialistic policies."

Some of the most widely cited writings of the neoconservatives come from the think-tank the "Project for a New American Century". This group contained numerous members of the Bush Administration including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush. A document published in 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" called for increased spending in order to transform the military. It goes on to say:

"This process of transformation... is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor."

Matt Taibbi, in his book The Great Derangement argues that this is "taken completely out of context", and that the "transformation" referenced in the paper is explicitly stated to be a decades-long process to turn the Cold War-era military into a "new, modern military" which could deal with more localized conflicts. He further ridicules this position by pointing out that, for this to be evidence of motive, that either those responsible decided to openly state their objectives, or read the paper in 2000 and quickly laid the groundwork for the 9/11 attacks using it as inspiration. In either case, he argues that this is a form of "defiant unfamiliarity with the actual character of America's ruling class" and constitutes part of a "completely and utterly retarded" narrative to explain the attacks.

The War on Terror is seen by many as the pretext for achieving the goals of the neoconservatives. Jim Hoffman is among those who claim that a key motive for 9/11 may have been to create a "perpetual threat", terrorism, to function in a similar way to communism during the Cold War. He cites an article in the Washington Post in which Dick Cheney says of the War on Terror: "It may never end. At least, not in our lifetime."

Since 9/11, the U.S. Government have introduced numerous acts of Congress which, some people say, is an invasion of their civil liberties and are "in direct contradiction with the U.S. Constitution". These claims normally refer to the PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Bill, the militarization of the police force, the nullification of the Posse Comitatus Act, and the changes in laws relating to rights of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

New World Order

The perpetrators of the attacks are sometimes thought to be a "shadow government" controlling the White House and both major political parties. They are also said to control certain foreign governments, global corporations and the mainstream news media, and are referred to as the "New World Order". Some of the individuals believed to be working for this group are members of such groups as the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. The term itself gained popularity following its use in the early 1990s, first by President George H W Bush when he referred to his "dream of a New World Order" in his speech to Congress on September 11, 1990, and second by David Rockefeller in a Statement to the United Nations Business Council in September 1994:

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."

Also interesting is the idea that the Illuminati which worked to undermined the Monarchies in Europe for centuries, also choose September 11 2001 because of the symbolism of September 11 1611, the birthdate of Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne in France whom was a pet of the Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu. Whom some have supposed Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu to be the true founder of the Illuminati and New World Order and a Satanist.

The concept of this shadow government pre-dates 1990 and they are accused of being the same group of people who, among other things, created the Federal Reserve Act (1913), supported the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), and supported the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, all for their own agenda. Indeed, the domestic agenda of the Bush Administration since 9/11 has been compared to that of the Nazi Party following the Reichstag Fire of 1933. The World Bank and national central banks are said to be the tools of the New World Order; war generates massive profits for central banks, as government spending (hence borrowing at interest from the central banks) increases dramatically in times of war.

Invasions

There are claims that the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was being planned before 9/11. On June 26, 2001, the Indian public affairs magazine News Insight revealed plans for a joint US-Russian invasion of Afghanistan to remove the Taliban government. It reported that India and Iran would 'facilitate' the invasion. The BBC reported on September 18, 2001 that Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. MSNBC reported on May 16, 2002 that unspecified "U.S. and foreign sources" said President George W. Bush received plans to begin a worldwide war on al-Qaeda on September 9, 2001.

Conspiracy theorists have questioned whether the Oil Factor and 9/11 provided the United States and the United Kingdom with a reason to launch a war they had wanted for some time, and suggest that this gives them a strong motive for either carrying out the attacks, or allowing them to take place. For instance, Andreas von Bülow, a former research minister in the German government, has argued that 9/11 was staged to justify the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The role of 9/11 in prompting the Afghanistan invasion has been widely acknowledged; Tony Blair said to the Commons Liaison Committee in July 2002 that "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11".

It has also been suggested that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was on President Bush's 'to-do' list from the time he was elected into office and even before. Although the pretext for the war was that Saddam was in possession of 'weapons of mass destruction,' some say that 9/11 was part of a plan to create a 'climate of fear' to win support for an invasion, followed by a long period of occupation. Paul O'Neill, George Bush's first Treasury Secretary, reported that in a meeting in January 2001, the president discussed an invasion and occupation of Iraq. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" O'Neill told CBS. Likewise, America's elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan has declared that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

Suggested historical precedents

The media, such as Time Magazine, and academics often draw parallels between events which inspired past conspiracy theories and those which inspire 9/11 conspiracy theories — such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Conspiracy theorists, such as those associated with the 9/11 Truth Movement , argue that the similarities between authorities' actions surrounding the attacks and their actions surrounding the false flag operations they cite indicate that they are both plausible and may operate with a long-term, hidden, agenda. Some examples which have been used include the attack on USS Maine, the Reichstag fire, the Gleiwitz incident (Operation Himmler), the attack on Pearl Harbor (specifically, the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge debate), Operation Gladio, Operation Northwoods, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the "Kuwaiti incubator baby hoax".

Media reaction

While discussion and coverage of these theories is mainly confined to internet pages, books, documentary films, and conversation, a number of mainstream news outlets around the world have covered the issue.

The Norwegian version of the July 2006 Le Monde diplomatique sparked interest when they ran, on their own initiative, a three page main story on the 9/11 attacks and summarized the various types of 9/11 conspiracy theories (which were not specifically endorsed by the newspaper, only recensed). The Voltaire Network, which has changed position since the September 11 attacks and whose director, Thierry Meyssan, became a leading proponent of 9/11 conspiracy theory, explained that although the Norwegian version of Le Monde diplomatique had allowed it to translate and publish this article on its website, the mother-house, in France, categorically refused it this right, thus displaying an open debate between various national editions. In December 2006, the French version published an article by Alexander Cockburn, co-editor of CounterPunch, which strongly criticized the endorsement of conspiracy theories by the U.S. left-wing, alleging that it was a sign of "theoretical emptiness.";

Also, on the Canadian website for CBC News: the fifth estate, a program titled, "Conspiracy Theories: uncovering the facts behind the myths of Sept. 11, 2001" was broadcast on October 29, 2003, stating that what they found may be more surprising than any theories. More recently on March 19, 2008, the fifth estate aired, "The lies that led to war".

An article in the September 11, 2006 edition of Time Magazine comments that the major 9/11 conspiracy theories “depend on circumstantial evidence, facts without analysis or documentation, quotes taken out of context and the scattered testimony of traumatized eyewitnesses”, and enjoy continued popularity because “the idea that there is a malevolent controlling force orchestrating global events is, in a perverse way, comforting”. It concludes that “conspiracy theories are part of the process by which Americans deal with traumatic public events” and constitute “an American form of national mourning.”

The Daily Telegraph published an article titled "The CIA couldn't have organised this..." which said "The same people who are making a mess of Iraq were never so clever or devious that they could stage a complex assault on two narrow towers of steel and glass" and "if there is a nefarious plot in all this bad planning, it is one improvised by a confederacy of dunces". This article mainly attacked a group of scientists led by Professor Steven E. Jones, now called Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. They said "most of them aren't scientists but instructors... at second-rate colleges".

A major Australian newspaper "The Daily Telegraph", published an article in May 2007 that was highly critical of Loose Change 2, a movie which presents a 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Doug MacEachern in a May 2008 column for the Arizona Republic wrote that while many "9/11 truthers" are not crackpots they espouse "crackpot conspiracy theories". He wrote that supporters of the theories fail to take into account both human nature and that nobody has come forward claiming they were participants in the alleged conspiracies. A view seconded by Timothy Giannuzzi a Calgary Herald op-ed columnist specializing in foreign policy..

On June 7, 2008, The Financial Times Magazine published a lengthy article on the 9/11 Truth Movement and 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Charlie Brooker a British multimedia personality in a July 2008 column published by The Guardian as part of its Comment is free series agreed that 9/11 conspiracy theorists fail to take in account human fallacies and added that believing in these theories gives theorists a sense of belonging to a community that shares privileged information thus giving the theorists a delusional sense of power. The commentary generated over 1700 online responses the largest in the history of the series.

On September 12, 2008, Russian State Television broadcast in prime time a documentary made by Member of the European Parliament Giulietto Chiesa entitled Zero sympathetic to those who question the mainstream account of the attacks according to Chiesa. According to Thierry Meyssan in conjunction with the documentary Russian State Television aired a debate on the subject. The panel consisted of members from several countries including 12 Russians whom hold divergent views. The motive of Russian State Television in broadcasting the documentary was questioned by a The Other Russia commentator who noted that Russian State Television had a history of broadcasting programs involving conspiracy theories involving the United States government.

Nasir Mahmood in a commentary printed by the Pakistan Observer wrote favorably about a 9/11 truth lecture and film festival held in California and quoted a Jewish speaker at that festival who said that none of the 19 suspected hijackers had been proven guilty of anything and compared racism against Muslims resulting from what he called false accusations to the racism against Jews in the Nazi era.

On November 10, 2008, ITN broadcast a story summarizing various 9/11 conspiracy theories.

In June 2005 the popular murder mystery German State Television program Tatort ran an episode in which a women who claims the 9/11 attacks were instigated by the Bush family for oil and power is targeted by FBI and CIA hitmen after her male roommate is found dead. The roommate was trained to be a 9/11 pilot but was left behind. The episode viewed by 7 million people ended when the detectives investigating the death believed her and she escapes to an unnamed Arab country. A Rescue Me episode scheduled for April 2009 broadcast will feature a character played by actor Daniel Sunjata who is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist in real life, explaining to a French journalist that the 9/11 attacks were a “neoconservative government effort” to create a new Pearl Harbor to control oil and increase military spending. According to Dennis Leary major plot lines in the first 10 episodes of the shows season 5 will revolve around reinvestigation and conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

Criticism

Critics of these conspiracy theories say they are a form of conspiracism common throughout history after a traumatic event in which conspiracy theories emerge as a mythic form of explanation. A related criticism addresses the form of research on which the theories are based. Thomas W. Eagar, an engineering professor at MIT, suggested they "use the 'reverse scientific method'. They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion." Eagar's criticisms also exemplify a common stance that the theories are best ignored. "I've told people that if the argument gets too mainstream, I'll engage in the debate." This, he continues, happened when Steve Jones took up the issue.

Michael Shermer, writing in Scientific American, said: "The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking. All the evidence for a 9/11 conspiracy falls under the rubric of this fallacy. Such notions are easily refuted by noting that scientific theories are not built on single facts alone but on a convergence of evidence assembled from multiple lines of inquiry."

Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, and The Skeptic's Dictionary have published articles that rebut various 9/11 conspiracy theories. Proponents of these conspiracy theories have attacked the contribution to the Popular Mechanics article by senior researcher Ben Chertoff, who they say is a cousin of Michael Chertoff — former head of Homeland Security. However, U.S. News says no actual connection has been revealed and Ben Chertoff has denied the allegation. Popular Mechanics has published a book entitled Debunking 9/11 Myths that expands upon the research first presented in the article. In the foreword for the book Senator and Republican Party Presidential nominee John McCain wrote that blaming the U.S. government for the events "mars the memories of all those lost on that day" and "exploits the public's anger and sadness. It shakes Americans' faith in their government at a time when that faith is already near an all-time low. It trafficks in ugly, unfounded accusations of extraordinary evil against fellow Americans." Der Spiegel dismissed 9/11 conspiracy theories as a "panoply of the absurd", stating "as diverse as these theories and their adherents may be, they share a basic thought pattern: great tragedies must have great reasons." David Ray Griffin has published a book entitled Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, and Jim Hoffman has written an article called 'popular mechanics assault on 9/11 truth." where he attacks the methods Popular Mechanics uses in forming their arguments.

Journalist Matt Taibbi, in his book The Great Derangement, discusses 9/11 conspiracy theories as symptomatic of what he calls the "derangement" of American society; a disconnection from reality due to widespread "disgust with our political system". Drawing a parallel with the Charismatic movement, he argues that both "chose to battle bugbears that were completely idiotic, fanciful, and imaginary," instead of taking control of their our lives. While critical, Taibbi explains that 9/11 conspiracy theories are different from "Clinton-era black-helicopter paranoia", and constitute more than "a small, scattered group of nutcases [...] they really were, just as they claim to be, almost everyone you meet."

While not supporting theories that the Twin Towers were brought down by pre-planted explosives, James Quintiere, Ph.D., the former Chief of the Fire Science Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and who was a Popular Mechanics panel member for their debunking of 9/11 Truth article disagreed with their conclusions. Calling for NIST's investigation to be peer reviewed and for researchers and engineers to scientifically re-examine the WTC collapses he stated "The official conclusion NIST arrived at is questionable....I hope to convince you to perhaps become Conspiracy Theorists, but in a proper way".

Historian Kenneth J. Dillon argues that 9/11 conspiracy theories represent an overly easy target for skeptics and that their criticisms obfuscate the underlying issue of what actually happened if there wasn't a conspiracy. He suggests that the answer is criminal negligence on the part of the president and vice president, who were repeatedly warned, followed by a cover-up conspiracy after 9/11.

In 2006, South Park aired an episode entitled "The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" which satirized contemporary events surrounding the resolution of the 9/11 attacks, including conspiracy theories and the Bush Administration — according to IGN's reviewer, the episode was "a way to explain to people just how crazy the government conspiracy idea really is." The episode especially parodied the "ridiculous nature of both our government and the easily influenced members of our society.". In 2008 calls for the resignation of Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories for the United Nations, were partially based on his support investigating the validity of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Canadian Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion forced a candidate from Winnipeg Lesley Hughes, to terminate her campaign after earlier writings from Hughes surfaced in which Hughes wrote that U.S., German, Russian and Israeli intelligence officials knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. Hughes plans to run as an independent candidate. Earlier Peter Kent Deputy Editor of Global Television News a Canadian TV network and Conservative Party candidate in the 2008 Election had called for Hughes's resignation saying that the 9/11 truth movement is "one of Canada’s most notorious hatemongering fringe movements" composed of "conspiracy theorists who are notorious for holding anti-Semitic views." Later another Conservative Party candidate called for the leader of the Ottawa New Democratic Party to fire a candidate for her pro 9/11 truth views.. In February 2009 a Aymeric Chauprade a professor of geopolitics at CID military college in Paris was fired by French Defence Minister Herve Morin for writing a book entitled ’’Chronicle of the Clash of Civilizations’’ that espoused 9/11 conspiracy theories.

British historian Antony Beevor wrote in January 2009 that "studies of internet sites reveal an unholy alliance between left-wing 9/11 conspiracy theorists, right-wing Holocaust deniers and Islamic fundamentalists". He claimed that 9/11 and other conspiracy theories are a result of a "Wikipedia age" phenomenon that author Damian Thompson dubbed "counterknowledge". It allegedly involves people "seizing upon one or two minor discrepancies in a government report, then joining up all the wrong dots to create a monstrous fable". He believes "counterknowledge" is potentially greater threat to liberal democracy than Hitler and Stalin.

David Aaronovitch a columnist for The Times in his book entitled The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History that is to be published in May 2009 claimed that the theories strain credulity.

Court cases

A number of court cases have been filed which use certain conspiracy theories as a central basis of their allegations. Two of them were qui tam cases, filed by Judy Wood and Morgan Reynolds, against private contractors, airlines, and individuals, alleging fraud pursuant to the False Claims Act, alleging that the defendants misled NIST and the United States about the nature of the destruction of the WTC, citing directed energy weapons, video fakery, and alleging that no airplanes hit the Twin Towers. Both Wood's complaint and Reynolds' complaint were dismissed by the court on June 26, 2008. The general claims made by Reynolds, Wood and Fetzer have also been widely rejected within the truth movement.

Ellen Mariani, the widow of a 9/11 victim, filed suit in 2001 against United Airlines and President George W. Bush, seeking "the truth of what happened on Sept. 11", and claiming damages under the RICO act, and for negligence. Ms. Mariani also filed a lawsuit against President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and others in September 2003, which was dismissed in April 2004. William Rodriguez, a former janitor at the World Trade Center, filed a similar lawsuit in October 2004, which was dismissed in July 2006. Former Dole chief of staff, Stanley Hilton, filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 400 families of 9/11 victims, alleging that "George W. Bush allow[ed] the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to take place, [...] in order to rally the country into a frenzy...", which was dismissed in 2004 based upon the legal theory of sovereign immunity and a failure by the plaintiffs to "establish the required causal connection between [their] alleged injuries and these defendants' conduct".

Jim Hoffman has speculated that the poor quality of the legal cases could be the result of an effort to discredit them.

See also

• 9/11 Commission
• 9/11 Commission Report
• Criticism of the 9/11 Commission
• Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories

References

Books

• Begin, Jeremy (2007). Fighting for G.O.D. (Gold, Oil, and Drugs). Trine Day Press. ISBN 978-0-9777953-3-8.
• Barkun, Michael (2003). A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23805-2.
• Broeckers, Mathias (2006). Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories, and the Secrets of 9/11. Progressive Press. ISBN 0930852230.
• Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York's World Trade Center.
• Editors of Der Spiegel (2002). Inside 9-11: What Really Happened. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-30621-0. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)
• Editors of Popular Mechanics (2006). Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. New York: Hearst Books. ISBN 1-58816-635-X. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)
• Forward to Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts by Senator John McCain
• Fetzer, James H. (2007). 9/11 Conspiracy. Open Court Publishing Company, U.S. p. 342. ISBN 0812696123.
• Griffin, David Ray (2007). Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory. Olive Branch Press. ISBN 1566566865. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
• Griffin, David Ray (2006). 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Vol. 1. Olive Branch Press. ISBN 1566566592.
• Griffin, David (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Olive Branch Press. ISBN 1566565847.
• Griffin, David Ray (2004). The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press. ISBN 1566565529. Retrieved 2007-07-26. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Henshall, Ian (2007). 9.11: The New Evidence. Robinson Publishing. p. 256. ISBN 1845295145.
• Hufschmid, Eric (2002). Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack. Ink & Scribe. p. 158. ISBN 1931947058.
• Johnston, Patrick, S. (2006). Mission Accomplished (Novel). Dog Ear. ISBN 1-59858-244-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Laurent, Eric (2004). La face cachée du 11 septembre. Plon. ISBN 2-259-20030-3.
• Marrs, Jim (2006). The Terror Conspiracy: Deception, 9/11 and the Loss of Liberty. Disinformation Company. ISBN 1932857435.
• Meyssan, Thierry (2002). 9/11: The big lie. Carnot Editions. ISBN 2912362733.
• Meyssan, Thierry (2003). Pentagate. USA Books. ISBN 1592090281.
• Morgan, Rowland. 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0393060411.
• Paul, Don (2004). Waking up from our Nightmare: The 9/11 Crimes in New York City. Harts Spring Works. ISBN 0-943096-10-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Ruppert, Michael. Crossing the Rubicon.
• Ridgeway, James. The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11.
• Tarpley, Webster Griffin. 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.
• Thompson, Paul (2004). The Terror Timeline. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Williams, Eric D. (2006). 9/11 101: 101 Key Points that Everyone Should Know and Consider that Prove 9/11 Was an Inside Job. Booksurge Publishing. ISBN 1419624288.
• Wright, Lawrence (2006). The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Knopf. ISBN 037541486X.
• Zwicker, Barrie (2006). Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11. New Society Publishers. p. 416. ISBN 0865715734.
• Taibbi, Matt (2008). 'The Great Derangement' A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire. Spiegel & Grau. p. 288. ISBN 9780385520348.
• Roeper, Richard (2008). Debunked!: Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century. Chicago Review Press. p. 224. ISBN 9781556527074.
• Manjoo, Farhad (2008). True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. Wiley. p. 256. ISBN 9780470050101.

External links

Websites

• "911truth.org: The 9/11 Truth Movement". Retrieved 2007-10-09.
• "9-11 Research: An Attempt to Uncover the Truth About September 11th, 2001 (WTC 7)". Retrieved 2006-07-30.
• "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth!". Retrieved 2007-07-30.
• "Pilots for 9/11 Truth". Retrieved 2007-10-24.
• "Scholars for 9/11 Truth". Retrieved 2007-10-09.
• "OpEdNews.Com - Progressive News Portal that contains pro 9/11 truth movement articles and columns". Retrieved 2008-07-15.
• debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories
• "Telegraph UK - 30 Greatest Conspiracy Theories".
• "Eyewitness Accounts".
• "What Really Happened".
• "Shermer Responds to 9/11 Truthers".

Official documents

• U.S. Department of State Article: The Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories, 19 September 2006
• U.S. Department of State - September 11 Conspiracy Theories - links to refutations of various 9/11 conspiracy theories, 20 January 2006
• NIST Frequently Asked Questions, 30 August 2006
• Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation
• Final NIST Report on the collapse of World Trade Center 7

Articles

• eSkeptic Newsletter - 9/11 Conspiracy Theories - article by Phil Molé.
• Popular Mechanics - Debunking The 9/11 Myths.
• Scientific American - 9/11 has generated the mother of all conspiracy theories - article by Michael Shermer.
• Anti-Defamation League - Unraveling anti-semitic 9/11 conspiracy theories.
• "9/11 third tower mystery 'solved'". BBC News. 2008-07-04. Retrieved 2008-08-05. - BBC
• "The curious tale of the 'other' WTC tower by Kevin Booker Calgary Herald". Retrieved 2006-07-30.
• "BBC Two The Conspiracy Files: The Third Tower Airdate July 6, 2008". Retrieved 2008-06-23.
• "The evolution of a conspiracy theory". BBC News. 2008-07-04. Retrieved 2008-08-05. - BBC
• The conspiracy file - BBC
• Claim of new evidence that videos of planes crashing into towers are fakes article by Jim Fetzer
• Debunking NIST's Conclusions about WTC 7: Easy as Shooting Fish in a Barrel
• 6 Debunked 9/11 Conspiracy Claims From Today's NIST Report by Arianne Cohen for Popular Mechanics
• Enough Conspiracies! by Dr. Zein Al Abdeen Al Rekabi for Asharq Alawsat
• Article that categorizes theories and discusses 9/11 Truth Movement Randy LoBasso for OpEdNews 30 December 2008

Videos

• Template:Google video
• "Conspiracy Theories". CBC Television. Retrieved 2006-07-30.
• Template:Google video
• "Loose Change". Retrieved 2006-07-30.
• Alex Jones' Template:Google video