9/11 Conspiracy Theories Abound

They Started Before the Second Plane Plunged into the South Tower

I was in the car on my way to work when I heard the news of a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers and thought "How blind can the pilot be? Those towers are huge." I was just parking the car when the announcer said that a second plane had struck the south tower. I instantly recognized it was terrorists - I had no doubt.

By the time I reached my office on the 13th floor there were already groups gathered discussing the attack and its meaning. I joined the group just in time to hear someone say "I'll bet we'll find out it was the Republicans behind this so that they can make an excuse to drill in ANWR".

I point this out to illustrate the propensity for people to assign ulterior/nefarious motives to anything and everything when it comes to human interaction. Conspiracies are fun and cathartic. Nothing is what it seems makes for great fictional movie plots, and let's face it in so much of our modern life truth is stranger than fiction.

Concerning the 9/11 conspiracy the sheer magnitude of the "event" makes it ripe. We are still debating the murder of John F. Kennedy 42 years later for heaven's sake. In recent surveys it seems that 36% of the respondents said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."

This does not surprise me one bit considering how the MSM and Chris Matthews continually infer that "Bush Lied and People Died" when it comes to the Iraq war.

Currently there is a 9/11 Conspiracy DVD going around that we are encouraged to copy and distribute quickly before the Patriot Act has the Feds knocking down our doors. The DVD is fairly well made with nice footage, some CGI graphics and compelling theories and dangling questions. The only part of the DVD that was concerning to me was the attack on the Pentagon. There were some things that didn't seem to add up. The rest of it was basically wild speculation and first person interviews that were obviously chosen to bolster the conspiracy angle.

Let me say that I think America was caught with our pants down on 9/11. There were warnings and of course there was Richard Clark and his self inflating ego ringing pre-9/11 bells. The fact that FEMA and other government agencies used the image of the WTC towers in the cross-hairs on there terrorist preparation documents didn't strike me as odd since the WTC was the target of a terrorist attack 8 years before Bush became president. Also, the fact that there were training exercises that supposedly took American fighter jets further away from New York and Washington DC does not strike me as conspiratorial - it was the first full week after Labor Day and many, many things start up in earnest after the official end of summer.

The financial angle touched on in the video seemed a stretch too. The owner of the WTC complex after plunking down millions sought to take out an insurance policy against terrorism on building that had been struck by terrorists less than a decade earlier. The "cut" trading done in UA and Boeing stock in the days and weeks leading up to the attacks was odd but it wasn't indicated who did it - why it could have been al Qaeda itself!

The overwhelming majority of the DVD focused on the collapse of the Twin Towers and the physics of jet fuel and implosion. This was the least convincing aspect to me. Having seen Discovery channel and other MSM specials on this topic I think it was fairly well proven that the unique design of the WTC towers and the sheer kinetic energy of jet liners (with full fuel tanks) crashing into building at such speeds COULD and DID bring the buildings down. Focusing on the temperature at which structural steel melts and the temperature that jet fuel burns while ingnoring the fact that steel does not have to "melt" to be structurally compromised is a fools game. Comparing the collapse of the Twin Towers to controlled implosions of vastly smaller structures was unconvincing to me. Trying to convice us that puffs of smoke or debris falling from a building that was just struck by an airliner were actually controlled explosions of a planned implosion did not seem compelling. As the floors pancake on each other during the collapse there is going to be windows blown out on the lower floors and dust and debris will spew out.

The DVD producers also chronicled example after example of other highrise buildings that burned but did not collapse as proof that the WTC towers were deliberately imploded. There was one mitigating circumstance ignored by the producers of the DVD - namely, none of those buildings had been struck by a speeding jet liner.

Aspects of the Pentagon attack, as I mentioned earlier, did have some very unnerving facts and speculations that did not sit well with me. Most of it is addressed to my satifaction in the Popular Mechanics study called Debunking The 9/11 Myths of March 2005. If you ever see this DVD I urge you to have a copy of this article handy. However the topic of the jet engines from Flight 77 is not addressed in the article. According to the DVD there was simply no evidence of the engines at the crash site. Engines of this size and made of titanium should have survived somewhat intact. The only identifiable piece was a turbo fan that experts claim could not have come from a 757??? Yet there were many eyewitnesses who say a plane hit the Pentagon there was the famous wife of a Bush administration official who never stepped off flight 77 that day. Barbara Olson a Fox News TV commentator was the wife of Ted Olson who was President Bushs' Solicitor General. She has never been heard from since her fateful cell phone call to her husband on Sept. 11 2001.

The Popular Mechanics piece is extensively credited on the last page with dozens of qualified experts in various fields. The DVD cites a few "so-called" experts and interviews the late Hunter S Thompson, a famous rabble rouser and LSD head. I'll let you decide which is the more credible.

The bottom line for me is that I find it impossible to believe that a conspiracy of this magnitude could be perpetrated. It would take hundreds if not thousands to be involved to cover something like this up. Since we can't even keep CIA operatives (this is an orginization that relies on lies and conspiracies to do its job) from leaking national security secrets to the press - how is the "secret government" going to keep hundreds of people from dozens of agencies and organizations quiet? It is more likely that a small group of men with no love for this country using the financial backing of state and non-state players (who also have no love for this country) to pull something like this off. It would far easier to pull this attack off than it would be to cover it up. The truth is easier than a lie!


CW