Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11

[A.Rahman]

Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11
by Bill Christison

www.dissidentvoice.org
August 14, 2006



However horrendous the crimes of two of the world’s great liars and terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon, it is imperative that we not let the deeds of Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush distract us from another recent event.

The U.S. alliance with Israel and the power of the lobby that lets Israel so easily influence U.S. foreign policy have been major factors in allowing the monstrous slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. What is happening in these lands may also encourage Olmert and Bush to start new hostilities in Syria and heavy, possibly nuclear, bombings in Iran -- and this entire mess of neocon pottage may lead to a new World War and clashes of civilizations and religious fundamentalisms that these two wretched politicians seem quite literally to want to impose on the rest of us. It’s a tough case to make that anything else going on in the world -- anywhere -- could possibly be of equal importance.

But on July 29 and 30, and then again on August 1, something else happened that increasing numbers of people believe is of equal importance. On these dates C-SPAN rebroadcast a panel discussion, held originally in late June, sponsored by an organization called the American Scholars’ Symposium to discuss what really happened on September 11, 2001.

Held in Los Angeles, the meeting lasted two days, and the C-SPAN rebroadcast covered one almost two-hour wrap-up session. The meeting was attended by 1,200 people interested in hearing something other than the official story of 9/11. The TV audience was evidently large enough to spur C-SPAN to broadcast the panel discussion five separate times in four days.

Even a month late, this is a lot of airtime for stories that many people call conspiracy theories -- and for which many others use nastier descriptions. It is possible that the head of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, so strongly disbelieves the conspiracy theories that he felt giving them ample publicity would discredit them further. It is equally possible, however, that Lamb, who seems honestly to believe in presenting various sides of most issues as fairly as he can (although not always giving every side equal time), tried to do exactly that on the many legitimate questions raised about what actually happened on September 11. In any event, C-SPAN has made a major effort to bring information on the principal theories about 9/11 to the mainstream U.S. media. Lamb cannot be blamed for the coincidence that recent heavy military activity in Gaza and Lebanon is nearly drowning out his efforts.

Let’s address the real issues here. Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available.

ONE: An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. Hard physical evidence supports this conclusion; among other things, the hole in the Pentagon was considerably smaller than an airliner would create. The building was thus presumably hit by something smaller, possibly a missile, or a drone or, less possibly, a smaller manned aircraft. Absolutely no information is available on what happened to the original aircraft (American Airlines Flight 77), the crew, the “hijackers,” and the passengers. The “official story,” as it appeared in The 9/11 Commission Report simply says, “At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilians and military personnel in the building, were killed.” This allows readers to assume that pieces of the aircraft and some bodies of passengers were found in the rubble of the crash, but information so far released by the government does not show that such evidence was in fact found. The story put out by the Pentagon is that the plane and its passengers were incinerated; yet video footage of offices in the Pentagon situated at the edge of the hole clearly shows office furniture undamaged. The size of the hole in the Pentagon wall still remains as valid evidence and so far seems irrefutable.

TWO: The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them. A plane did not hit Building 7 of the Center, which also collapsed. All three were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. A substantial volume of evidence shows that typical residues and byproducts from such demolition charges were present in the three buildings after they collapsed. The quality of the research done on this subject is quite impressive.

If the judgments made on Points ONE and TWO above are correct, they raise many “Who done it” questions and strongly suggest that some unnamed persons or groups either inside or with ties to the government were actively creating a “Pearl Harbor” event, most likely to gain public support for the aggressive foreign policies that followed -- policies that would, first, “transform” the entire Middle East, and second, expand U.S. global domination.

These first two points provide the strongest evidence available that the “official story” of 9/11 is not true. If the government could prove this evidence false, and its own story on these points correct, all the other data and speculation supporting the conspiracy theories would be undermined. It has provided no such proof and no answers to growing questions.

Other, less important points supporting the theories include the following.

THREE: For at least one hour and 45 minutes after the hijacking of the first aircraft was known, U.S. air defense authorities failed to take meaningful action. This strikes some “conspiracy theorists” as valid evidence that the U.S. Air Force was deliberately restrained from acting. Maybe so, but my own skepticism tells me that the inefficiency of U.S. defense forces is likely to be just as plausible an explanation.

FOUR: Some of the theorists believe that the 19 named hijackers were not actually the hijackers. One claim is that the names of the hijackers were not on the manifests of any of the four aircraft.

FIVE: None of the 19 hijackers’ bodies were ever autopsied (since they were allegedly totally destroyed in the crashes, including even the people in the Pennsylvania crash).

SIX: At least five of the alleged hijackers (or persons with identical names) have since turned up alive in the Middle East. Nonetheless, the FBI has never bothered to re-investigate or revise the list of hijackers. Does this suggest that the FBI knows that no one in the administration is interested in reopening any further investigations?

SEVEN: Numerous pilots have allegedly told the theorists that none of the 19 hijackers could have flown the airliners well enough to hit the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon with as much accuracy as was displayed. The debate on this issue simply raises more doubt about the government’s charge that the people it has named as hijackers are the real hijackers.

EIGHT: No one, except possibly government investigators who are not talking, has seen the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Some of the conspiracy theorists suggest that it was deliberately destroyed before it hit the ground; others suggest that the plane actually landed in Cleveland and that passengers then were whisked away to some unknown destination. What happened to them at that point is simply a large question mark that makes it more difficult to believe this particular scenario.

NINE: Machinations in the U.S. stock market in the days before 9/11 suggest that some inside players in the market knew or suspected that United and American Airlines stock would soon drop. Two of the four of the aircraft involved in 9/11 were, or course, United planes and the other two were American Airlines planes.

It should be reemphasized that these items do not make up a complete list of all the charges made by the theorists, but they are a good sample. Anyone interested in perhaps the best summary of these charges should watch the video “Loose Change.”

To repeat, points ONE and TWO above are the most important. If something other than an airliner actually did hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and if the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center actually were dropped to the ground by controlled demolitions rather than by anything connected to the hijackings, the untrue stories peddled by The 9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into major political issues.

A Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll taken from July 6 to 24, 2006 concluded that “more than a third [36 percent] of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them, so that the United States could go to war in the Middle East.” The poll also found that “16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.”

A poll done by the Zogby polling organization two months earlier, between May 12 and 16, 2006, and using questions worded somewhat differently, suggested even more strongly that the issue could become a “big one” if aggressively publicized. This poll concluded that 42 percent of Americans believed there had indeed been a cover-up of the true events of 9/11, and an additional 10 percent of Americans were “unsure.” The co-author of the poll, W. David Kubiak, stated that, “despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash, and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can’t even muster 50 percent popular support.”

Whichever of these polls is closer to the truth, it would seem that there is considerable support for making a major political issue of the subject.

This should be worked on at two different levels. At the first level, the objective should be long-term, centered on making a maximum effort to find out who the individuals and groups are that carried out the attacks in New York and Washington. Then, these people should be tried in an international court and, if possible, convicted and punished for causing so many deaths. Such a trial, accompanied by actual change in U.S. policies, would show that some people on this globe are at least trying to move closer to more just and decent behavior in human relationships around the world.

At the second level, the short term, the task should be to immediately set to work as hard as is humanly possible to defeat in this year’s congressional election any candidate who refuses to support a no-holds-barred investigation of 9/11 by the Congress or a high-level international court. No more evidence than is now available is needed in order to begin this process.

A manageable volume of carefully collected and analyzed evidence is already at hand on both items ONE and TWO above. Such evidence should be used right now to buttress charges that elements within the Bush administration, as well as possibly other groups foreign or domestic, were involved in a massive fraud against the American people, a fraud that has led to many thousands of deaths.

This charge of fraud, if proven, involves a much greater crime against the American people and people of the world than any other charges of fraud connected to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is a charge that we should not sweep under the rug because what is happening in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Iran seems more pressing and overwhelming. It is a charge that is more important because it is related to all of the areas just mentioned -- after all, the events of 9/11 have been used by the administration to justify every single aspect of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11. It is a charge that is more important also because it affects the very core of our entire political system. If proven, it is a conspiracy, so far successful, not only against the people of the United States, but against the entire world. Finally, it is a charge too important to ignore simply because the U.S. government refuses to discuss it. We must force the Bush administration to discuss it.

Discussions aggressively pushed day after day about what really happened on 9/11 will be one of the most important tasks between now and early November. Such discussions can, one hopes, provide progressives with a way to jolt voters out of their apathy and inchoate willingness to support the status quo that they think gives themsecurity -- and encourage more voters to stop supporting Bush, the Republicans, and the wobbly Democratic politicians who might as well be Republicans. A major issue like this, already supported by many voters, may prove particularly important in a congressional election year when new uncertainties in the Middle East, new possibilities of terrorism against the U.S. in retaliation for recent large-scale acts of Israeli/U.S. terrorism in Gaza and Lebanon, and the corrupt almost-single-party U.S. political system combine to make it more likely that supporters of Bush will retain their majority this November.

In terms of electoral impact, it would not matter whether heavy publicity did in fact force the administration to accept a new high-level investigation of the 9/11 events. Initially, the principal goal would be to contribute heavily to the defeat of both Republicans and Democrats who refuse to support wholeheartedly a major new investigation by Congress or an international court. This might result in the defeat of more Republicans than Democrats in November, but ultimately the hoped-for goal should be the end of a system in which Democrats are barely different from Republicans, along with cutbacks in the political power of wealth and the foreign and domestic lobbies paid for by wealth. These are the dominant features of our system today that have practically eliminated meaningful democracy in the U.S. This failure of democracy has happened before in U.S. history, but this time it is likely to last longer -- at least until U.S. policies begin to pay as much attention to the needs of the world as they do to selfish or thoughtless needs of the U.S. and of its military-industrial complex. Attacks on the criminal events surrounding 9/11 might speed this process.

Virtually no members of Congress, Democratic or Republican, will relish calling for a further investigation of 9/11. For right now, in addition to other motives, the issue should be used to go after those political prostitutes among elected office-holders who should also be defeated because they are so easily seduced by money and power to vote for immoral wars against weak enemies.

At the Los Angeles meeting of the American Scholars’ Symposium, one of the main speakers, Webster Tarpley, summarized his own views on the events of 9/11. He emphasized that “neocon fascist madmen” had perpetrated the 9/11 “myth.” He went on to say, “The most important thing is that the 9/11 myth is the premise and the root of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War and the coming attack on Iran. ... We must ... deprive [the myth’s perpetrators] of the ability to stampede and manipulate hundreds of millions of people [with their] ... cynically planned terrorist events.”

Let’s give Webster Tarpley and other mistakenly labeled conspiracists who have labored in the wilderness for so long three cheers.

Bill Christison is a former senior official of the CIA. He was a National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis before his retirement in 1979. Since then he has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies

 

[Awesome]

What and be called a stupid moron and everything that's bad on the planet?

Well I do not give Bin Laden a clean chit, but I do recognize that there was quite a bit of foul play after 9/11. Remember those Palestinians partying after the Sept. 11? Someone just pointed out to me, that 9/11 happened in the day and the partying which was shown LIVE happened in the day. Hello! According to the time difference it should've been night.

I've heard there's a video on the internet which shows the same images from different event where Palestinians are partying and it was cut-pasted and shown as live to piss off Americans when it was most needed.

 

[A.Rahman]

This is an ex-CIA agent....some of the stuff can be true....

 

[TopHatter]

Well I do not give Bin Laden a clean chit, but I do recognize that there was quite a bit of foul play after 9/11. Remember those Palestinians partying after the Sept. 11? Someone just pointed out to me, that 9/11 happened in the day and the partying which was shown LIVE happened in the day. Hello! According to the time difference it should've been night.

I've heard there's a video on the internet which shows the same images from different event where Palestinians are partying and it was cut-pasted and shown as live to piss off Americans when it was most needed.

Oh good, my favorite subject...

I'll leave off refuting that man's nonsense for another time. Instead I'll respond to Asim's belief that it should have been night in Palestine and that the videos of celebrating Palestinians were deliberately designed to " piss off Americans when it was most needed"....as if we needed a reason to be pissed off on September 11


MYTH:

All around the world we are subjected to 3 or 4 huge news distributors, and one of them —as you well know — is CNN. Very well, I guess all of you have been seeing (just as I've been) images from this company. In particular, one set of images called my attenton: the Palestinians celebrating the bombing, out on the streets, eating some cake and making funny faces for the camera. Well, THOSE IMAGES WERE SHOT BACK IN 1991!!! Those are images of Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait! It's simply unacceptable that a super-power of cumminications as CNN uses images which do not correspond to the reality in talking about so serious an issue. A teacher of mine, here in Brazil, has videotapes recorded in 1991, with the very sameimages; he's been sending emails to CNN, Globo (the major TV network in Brazil) and newspapers, denouncing what I myself classify as a crime against the public opinion. If anyone of you has access to this kind of files, serzch for it. In the meanwhile, I'll try to 'put my hands' on a copy of this tape.

But now, think for a moment about the impact of such images. Your people is hurt, emotionally fragile, and this kind broadcast have very high possibility of causing waves of anger and rage against Palestinians. It's simply irresponsible to show images such as those. Finally, I'd like to say that we all regret and condemn all that has happened in the last days; but Nikos has a point here. I really don't want to be misunderstood here, but the truth is that US government had shown no respect for other countries in the last decades. In the 60s and 70s they had halped lots of military coups throughout the world (including Brazil in 64). Later, with Reagan and Bush Father, the Washington Consensus have been demolishing the bases of our economies, making us more and more dependant (and, many of us, prehocupied with this situation).

Your current president quickly made things worse: Kioto Protocol, Star Wars, Colombia Plan, the exchange of rain forest for pieces of external debt, the abandonment of the position of third party in negotiations between IRA and England, and between Palestinians and Israel. All those mistakes in US external politics made your country more hatred than before, and, of course, more vulnerable.

FACT:

This e-mail originated from a Brazilian graduate student named Marcio A.V. Carvalho. He was not able to provide any proof for his claim, and retracted it just a day after his original email was disseminated, according to American Journalism Review (“Anatomy of an Urban Legend,” Nov. 2001). The clip of Palestinians celebrating was filmed Sept. 11, 2001 by a Reuters crew in East Jerusalem.

Oh but wait! You had said...what was it?

Someone just pointed out to me, that 9/11 happened in the day and the partying which was shown LIVE happened in the day. Hello! According to the time difference it should've been night.

Oh really? I wouldn't be too sure of that:

The argument that the video showed Palestinians in broad daylight several hours after the attack, even though Palestinian territory is several time zones AHEAD of New York, is not valid. Eastern Daylight Time in the United States is in fact 6 hours BEHIND the area of the Middle East referred to as Palestine. 9:00 am in NYC would have been 3:00 pm in Palestine, and Jerusalem would still be bathed in sunlight

Questions? Anyone?

Now, in all fairness, there were at least a dozen stories of Middle Easterners, Muslims, etc in the United States were who purportedly celebrating and somebody (usually a celebrity) kicked their ***, or the Bud beer truck driver pulled all of his product out of their store blah blah blah.

THOSE are indeed a bunch of urban legend crap.

 

[Awesome]

not that I support that particular theory, it was mentioned by someone to me.

Anyway, to be fair it wasn't EXACTLY at 9am US CT when the video was shown. It was quite later, right? lets say a 3-4 hrs later? That would put the time in Jerusalem as 6-7pm? In the middle east it's quite dark by then and especially considering that it's september it'd be dark even sooner.

They say its part of the celebrations of the Kuwait invasions or something. The story portrayed the entire city up in jubilation which is a very weird thing to do.

 

[Awesome]

Ok you seem to be the expert, lets bring in some more that I've heard...

Why did the FBI confiscate the security cam tapes from the gas station across the street from Pentagon?

 

[TopHatter]

not that I support that particular theory, it was mentioned by someone to me.

Apologies, I got the impression that you believed it.

Anyway, to be fair it wasn't EXACTLY at 9am US CT when the video was shown. It was quite later, right? lets say a 3-4 hrs later? That would put the time in Jerusalem as 6-7pm? In the middle east it's quite dark by then and especially considering that it's september it'd be dark even sooner.

My best advice is to check out this entry at snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm

You'll find it quite thorough (and better than me wasting PFF bandwidth by posting the entire article here :smile: )

I will post a bit on this though...

They say its part of the celebrations of the Kuwait invasions or something.

"They" say that it's footage of Palestinians celebrating the 1991 (actually happened in 1990, but whatever) Kuwait invasion, however "they" fail to mention how post-1991 automobiles and prominent mentions of Osama bin Laden wound up in that footage.

Ok you seem to be the expert, lets bring in some more that I've heard...

Why did the FBI confiscate the security cam tapes from the gas station across the street from Pentagon?

Oh I'm hardly an expert, but certain things are so ridiculous that I just have to respond. :smile:

Why? I have no idea. Usually the first thing that law enforcement does after an event like this is overreact. Usually for good reason.

 

[Awesome]

Apologies, I got the impression that you believed it.

Naah, as I said before, I don't give Bin Laden the clean chit on this or anything. But with over-demonization of Muslims, it's plausible. This revelation was shared in a recent chit chat with someone.

My best advice is to check out this entry at snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm

You'll find it quite thorough (and better than me wasting PFF bandwidth by posting the entire article here :smile: )

I will post a bit on this though...
"They" say that it's footage of Palestinians celebrating the 1991 (actually happened in 1990, but whatever) Kuwait invasion, however "they" fail to mention how post-1991 automobiles and prominent mentions of Osama bin Laden wound up in that footage.

I've been trying to find that footage, but not been successful.

Why? I have no idea. Usually the first thing that law enforcement does after an event like this is overreact. Usually for good reason.

Well u know there's a theory that a missile hit the pentagon not a plane, since pretty much there are many witnesses who say that. That security cam tapes would pretty much end the debate.

I've heard quite a few theories, but I'm just mentioning those that really stuck with me.

 

[TopHatter]

Well u know there's a theory that a missile hit the pentagon not a plane, since pretty much there are many witnesses who say that. That security cam tapes would pretty much end the debate.

Given the gullibility of people that just love conspiracy theories, I rather doubt that the cam tapes would put it to rest. They'd claim the footage was faked even if it was presented to them right out of the machine mere minutes after that aircraft hit the Pentagon.

Hell, JFK's assassination is on film and you've still got people that want to believe a million different stories.

A somewhat long and detailed thread on the subject of the Pentagon plane is here: http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?p=221574#post221574

I've heard quite a few theories, but I'm just mentioning those that really stuck with me.

There are quite a few that have stuck with me as well.

Mostly due to their asinine nature.

 

[Awesome]

Given the gullibility of people that just love conspiracy theories, I rather doubt that the cam tapes would put it to rest. They'd claim the footage was faked even if it was presented to them right out of the machine mere minutes after that aircraft hit the Pentagon.

There are ways to determine a faked one vs a real one. Hinding it just means that there's something up with it all.

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

not that I support that particular theory, it was mentioned by someone to me.

Anyway, to be fair it wasn't EXACTLY at 9am US CT when the video was shown. It was quite later, right? lets say a 3-4 hrs later? That would put the time in Jerusalem as 6-7pm? In the middle east it's quite dark by then and especially considering that it's september it'd be dark even sooner.

They say its part of the celebrations of the Kuwait invasions or something. The story portrayed the entire city up in jubilation which is a very weird thing to do.

'
Asim,

If you don't support the theory then why did you mention it?

Normally, one does mention things that one does not believe in.

Whatever makes you feel that the jubilation in Kuwait was weird. It is not weird. They celebrated the event. Period.

There will be always a conspiracy theory in anything in life since some just don't want to believe in anything that is told. Nothing wrong. That is how human beings are made!

There is a theory which states the Bush was paid a lot by the Laden family to do this so that Bin Laden becomes famous and that is why he is not being caught. How about that for true? In fact, the movies that was made did suggest a connection between the Bushes and the Ladens, remember?

We all love stories. The weirder the better!

 

[Awesome]

'
Asim,

If you don't support the theory then why did you mention it?

Normally, one does mention things that one does not believe in.

Because I find the explanation plausible? Both. If it's day at the wrong time then surely it raises some questions. If it's day at the right time then its okay.

Not supporting it doesn't mean I downright reject it. It could be true, but TH's explanation about time is not satisfying enough since he's taken the early time period of 9am, while my guess is that it must've taken a few hours before the Palestinian celebrations video showed up. Considering its the Middle East and knowing all two well that during this time the days are very short, it would've been quite dark (what we call maghrib prayer time).

http://www.dnzh.com/webservices/PrayerTimings.aspx

According to that maghrib is 10 minutes before 7pm. In America it's 30 mins after 7pm.

So it all depends. When the video was shown "live". If it was 3-4 hours after 9/11 then it should've been quite dark out there. If immediate, it would've caught some sun sure.

There will be always a conspiracy theory in anything in life since some just don't want to believe in anything that is told. Nothing wrong. That is how human beings are made!

Governments lie all the time. If you accepted them at face value then you'd be screwed over many times. Constant questioning keeps them in check.

There is a theory which states the Bush was paid a lot by the Laden family to do this so that Bin Laden becomes famous and that is why he is not being caught. How about that for true? In fact, the movies that was made did suggest a connection between the Bushes and the Ladens, remember?

I think the movies suggested that Bin Laden was paid by the Bushes. But I've not risen those theories up since that's just "Oh Bin Laden's daddy met Bush's daddy" so there must be a connection type of theories.