Thanks to the power of the web and live broadcasts on television, the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11 - when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington - have surpassed those of Roswell and JFK in traction.
The official line is that on September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying at least two nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon and a fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers and flight crew revolted. We shall look at the third and fourth plane individual in a different post.
Despite repeated claims by al-Qaeda that it planned, organised and orchestrated the attacks, several official and unofficial investigations into the collapse of the Twin Towers which concluded that structural failure was responsible and footage of the events themselves, the conspiracy theories continue to grow in strength.
Incredibly some believe the American Government allowed or actively helped the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Those who question the official version believe the World Trade Centre buildings were actually demolished by explosives; others ask why there was so little damage to the Pentagon's outer wall if a plane really had hit it.
And why was America so unprepared when terror attack warnings had been received?
At the milder end of the spectrum are the theorists who believe that the US government had prior warning of the attacks but did not do enough to stop them. Others believe that the Bush administration deliberately turned a blind eye to those warnings because it wanted a pretext to launch wars in the Middle East to usher in another century of American hegemony. A large group of people - collectively called the 9/11 Truth Movement - cite evidence that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon and that the World Trade Centre could not have been brought down by airliner impacts and burning aviation fuel alone. This final group points to video evidence which they claim shows puffs of smoke - so-called demoliton squibs - emerging from the Twin Towers at levels far below the aircraft impact zones and prior to the collapses. They also believe that, on the day itself, the US air force was deliberately stood down or sent on exercises to prevent intervention that could have saved the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
Many witnesses - including firemen, policemen and people who were inside the towers at the time - claim to have heard explosions below the aircraft impacts (including in basement levels) and before both the collapses and the attacks themselves. As with the assassination of JFK, the official inquiry into the events - the 9/11 Commission Report - is widely derided by the conspiracy community and held up as further evidence that 9/11 was an "inside job". Scientific journals have consistently rejected these hypotheses.
There are certainly many questions to be asked, a few of which we shall touch up on here.
Could the US Air Force have prevented the attacks?
To sceptics of the official account of 9/11, the idea of 19 fundamentalists hijacking commercial airliners and outsmarting the world's most advanced air defence system seems simply incredible.
Some 9/11 conspiracy theories argue that the US Air Force should have succeeded in intercepting at least some of the hijacked planes, and that someone, therefore, must have prevented them from doing so.
The official version - 9-11 Commission Report - holds that on the morning of 11 September, 2001 a major defence training exercise was taking place.
This exercise caused confusion, as some personnel initially thought the hijack reports were a drill. Even when the reports were confirmed, it still took nine minutes for the pilots to be scrambled. And once airborne, they were still unsure about where they were going: the fighters scrambled from Washington headed out to sea, rather than towards the hijacked airliners.
Davin Coburn, a reporter with the magazine Popular Mechanics, offers an explanation. The military, he argues, responded so poorly because they were simply unprepared.
A passenger airline had not been hijacked in the USA since 1979 - and all of a sudden there were now four at once with many other reports of suspect flights.
Also, the hijackers switched off the aircraft transponders - making the planes much more difficult to trace as they diverted from their scheduled flight paths.
But following the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report it emerged that the Commissioners were concerned they might have been deliberately misled by the military about the timeline of their response to events on the day.
Suspicions of a cover up by the military were recently addressed by a report from the Pentagon Inspector General.
The report found that there had been no deliberate attempt to mislead the 9/11 Commission, and that the discrepancies in their testimony to the Commission were the result of "a lack of capabilities and thoroughness" within the military
Were the Twin Towers deliberately demolished by explosives?
After 9/11, investigations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) determined that the collapse of the Twin Towers was due to the impact of the planes and the large quantities of exploding jet fuel released into the buildings.
Those questioning this account point to the lateral puffs of smoke that emerged from the towers just ahead of their collapse. Could these be explosive devices planted as part of a conspiracy?
They also argue that jet fuel, which has a far lower burning temperature than the melting point of steel, is unlikely to have weakened the steel supporting framework sufficient to prompt the collapse of the Twin Towers.
Jet fuel burns at 800 degrees Celsius whereas temperatures must reach 1,500 degrees Celsius for steel to melt.
The explanation for the puffs of smoke offered by the authors of the Popular Mechanics study is that as the floors crashed down of top of one another, a pressure wave forced dust and smoke out of the windows.
As for the fuel temperature - the official explanation holds that whilst steel does indeed melt at 1,500 degrees Celsius, it loses half its strength at a much lower temperature of 650 degrees Celsius.
The fuel might not have melted the steel columns, but it weakened the structure, and especially the trusses that supported each floor, to the point that they could no longer support the weight on the building
Was WTC7 deliberately demolished by explosives?
In the afternoon of 11 September 2001, World Trade Centre Building 7, a 47 storey office block close by the Twin Towers collapsed without even being hit by the planes.
The building had been evacuated and there were no casualties and with so much else happening that day, its collapse was barely reported.
WTC 7 was home to local offices of the CIA, Department of Defence, the United States Secret Service and the city's Office of Emergency Management, among others.
Sceptics of the official account, including those at Scholars for 9/11 Truth argue that the building was deliberately destroyed in a controlled demolition, perhaps in order to conceal important information about a pre-9/11 plot by the authorities.
The collapse of WTC has been investigated by FEMA. Their interim report found that when the North Tower collapsed, debris crashed into Building 7.
This was the likely cause of fires which quickly took hold. The sprinkler system did not work effectively because the water main in Vesey Street had been knocked out when the Twin Towers came down.
With the intense fires burning unabated, the steel structure supporting the building was fatally weakened. But the FEMA investigators conceded that this hypothesis had a low probability of occurring.
Were Jews forewarned about the attacks?
Shortly after the attacks a rumour started in the Middle East and spread around the world which claimed that 4,000 Jewish employees at the World Trade Centre had not turned up for work on 11 September. Were they warned to stay away?
One conspiracy theory suggests that 9/11 was an Israeli plot to discredit the Arab world; another that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, found out about the attacks beforehand and warned the Jewish community in New York.
The rumour started after the Jerusalem Post reported that roughly 4,000 Israelis were believed to be living or working in New York and Washington.
Crucially it did not say they were dead or missing - just people in the immediate areas of the attacks who might have been affected.
This report was picked up by Arabic media outlets, including Al Manar, the Beirut satellite TV station linked to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.
Al Manar TV added a spin to the story. It reported that 4,000 Israelis working at the World Trade Centre had not shown up for work on 9/11. As the anti-Semitic rumour spread, the details became embellished - like in a game of Chinese whispers.
According to official figures, of the 2,749 victims of the World Trade Centre attacks, 2,071 were occupants of the buildings.
Research by The Conspiracy Files shows that of these 2,071 victims, 119 were confirmed Jewish and a further 72 were believTed to be Jewish.
This would make a total of 191 - or 9.2% of victims. This figure is broadly in line with the 9.7% of New York's commuting population
Questions about the day itself
a. It is well documented that the officials topping the chain of command for response to a domestic attack - George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Myers, Montague Winfield - all found reason to do something else during the actual attacks, other than assuming their duties as decision-makers.
b. Who was actually in charge? Dick Cheney, Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta and the 9/11 Commission directly conflict in their accounts of top-level response to the unfolding events, such that several (or all) of them must be lying.
Air Defense Failures
a. The US air defense system failed to follow standard procedures for responding to diverted passenger flights.
b. Timelines: The various responsible agencies - NORAD, FAA, Pentagon, USAF, as well as the 9/11 Commission - gave radically different explanations for the failure (in some cases upheld for years), such that several officials must have lied; but none were held accountable.
c. Was there an air defense standdown?
So if the thories are correct the planes did not bring those towers down; bombs did. So why use planes? It seems they were a diversionary tactic- a grand spectacle. Who would want to divert our attention from the real cause of the collapse of those towers? It must be those who benefited most from these attacks. Let's recount some facts of that dreadful day.
Any time an aircraft deviates from it's course, the air traffic controller requests a military intercept according to military response code 7610-4J. This was the first time interceptors were not sent up in the history of this policy. The intercept pilots are trained to make a visual check of the cockpit. could this be the reason these interceptors were intercepted? Planes were sent to the New York area, after unprecedented delay, from Falmouth, Massachusetts rather than nearby Ft. Dix or Laguardia. Of course, they didn't arrive in time - there was no visual scan of the cockpits.
Captain Kent Hill, retired from the Air Force, explained that the U.S. had flown unmanned aircraft, similar in size to a Boeing 737, on preprogrammed flight paths from Edwards Air Force Base, California to Australia on several occasions. He believes the airliners used in the attacks had their on board computers knocked out and were subsequently choreographed by an Airborne Warning and Control System. Along side Captain Hill, an Air Force officer with more than 100 sorties in Vietnam stated, 'Those birds either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat, or they were being maneuvered by remote control.' We know that the technology exists to fly hijacked commercial airliners by remote control - it's called 'Globalhawk.' We also know that the military has had an unmanned drone aircraft known as the 'Predator,' since 1994. A saboteur would merely have to reprogram the controls to switch from manual to remote; those airliners practically fly themselves already with the autopilot. This would require electronic security codes. acquisition of electronic codes would also explain the lapse of interceptor response due to sabotage. Furthermore, it's a fact that Air Force One codes were known and punched in by a rogue source on 9/11, proving the presence of an inside, subversive element.
As usual, it's not a good conspiracy, if it doesn't involve a Bush! Introducing Marvin Bush - brother of George Jr. Marvin is a substantial shareholder and was on the Board of Directors until 2000 of a security company aptly named Securacom. This is not an ordinary security force with canvas badges and walkie-talkies; it's an electronic security company, which was 'coincidentally' involved with Dulles Airport until 1998. Handling electronic security at Dulles seems like an excellent way to gain access to Air Traffic Control communication codes with NORAD, which is in charge of intercept missions. According to CEO Barry McDaniel, the company 'handled some of the security at the World Trade Center up to the day the buildings fell down.' How convenient, huh? Bombs were in those towers. Bush's presidency was saved by these attacks - just something to think about.
Five of the twenty 'suicide hijackers' are alive and well according to the BBC and they want their names cleared. So who was flying those planes? We may never know exactly what happened with those jets; what we do know is that the official version crumbles under scrutiny. These planes were merely a diversion, as proven by the presence of bombs. that's right, PROVEN!
Could the attacks have been prevented?
Were there chances to stop the attacks prior to 9/11? If so, was this failure deliberate?
The CIA knew that two al-Qaeda terrorists had entered the United States as early as January 2000. But the CIA never passed on this information to the FBI - so the FBI did not know to look for them.
The two future hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar settled in San Diego, where they started to take lessons at a local flying school. They used their real names in official documents and one of them - al-Hazmi - was even listed in the local phonebook.
Had the CIA tipped off the FBI that two known al-Qaeda operatives had travelled to America, it would have been easy to track them down - and possibly the 9/11 attacks could have been thwarted.
But Dale Watson, who led the FBI's investigation of 9/11, told The Conspiracy Files that there was no deliberate CIA plot to keep information from the FBI.
He said: "In large organisations you do have breakdowns in communications at the lower end. There was never any top down orders either by the FBI or the CIA. And anybody that believes that - they're wrong."
After the attacks, government officials were summoned to give evidence before a Congressional Inquiry set up to investigate the intelligence failure before 9/11.
It seems that the CIA information about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar was "lost in the system".
But Co-chairman Senator Bob Graham told The Conspiracy Files of his frustration at the lack of co-operation from the FBI in that inquiry, and by the government's decision to censor over 30 pages of his report which related to Saudi Arabia.
"Within 9/11 there are too many secrets," he said, "and that withholding of those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government as it relates to their own security."
Any time an aircraft deviates from its course, the air traffic controller requests a military intercept according to military response code 7610-4J. This was the first time interceptors were not sent up in the history of this policy. The intercept pilots are trained to make a visual check of the cockpit. Could this be the reason these interceptors were intercepted? Planes were sent to the New York area, after unprecedented delay, from Falmouth, Massachusetts rather than nearby Ft. Dix or Laguardia. Of course, they didn't arrive in time - there was no visual scan of the cockpits.
Captain Kent Hill, retired from the Air Force, explained that the U.S. had flown unmanned aircraft, similar in size to a Boeing 737, on pre-programmed flight paths from Edwards Air Force Base, California to Australia on several occasions. He believes the airliners used in the attacks had their on board computers knocked out and were subsequently choreographed by an Airborne Warning and Control System.
