Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (28 page)

by Western politicians. Questioning 9/11 is often blocked by the

stance that doing so is ‘disrespectful’ to the victims and their

families. Truthseekers counter that it is more disrespectful not to re-examine every detail of the episode, in the hope that uncovering the real truth might help prevent future atrocities.

It should be noted that the use of the term ‘conspiracy’ in this

context refers to those views which refute the official position; it is a long-noted irony that, for all the establishment’s apparent distaste towards such thinking, the bin Laden/al-Qaeda version

is in itself the precise technical definition of a conspiracy theory, albeit one which postulates covert
external
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against the West rather than ones stemming from within it.

The difference is that for all the rapidity with which the public were fed the external-conspiracy scenario, to this day – despite

the impressions given – no definitive proof for it has ever been

presented. Not that this stopped news broadcasts from blaming

al-Qaeda within minutes of the attacks, before any claimed

intelligence was even released.

If broad doubt over the deaths of Diana and David Kel y

seemed rooted in an immediate instinctual knowing, the

alternative 9/11 ‘inside-job’ theories took a little longer to

percolate, if only because the events themselves initial y seemed so overwhelmingly terrifying that lingering shock and reflex

patriotism helped reinforce a mass conditioning which obscured

any deeper contemplation. Within a year or two, however, with

the emotions subsiding, concerns that had at first been only

whispered began to be heard more loudly. The rise in the use of

the internet as the primary information tool around the same

time also played its part, enabling minority views to be expressed in uncensored forums.

By 2005, the 9/11 ‘truth movement’ was in full swing, with

campaigns being mounted, websites proliferating and polished

documentaries being burned onto DVD in impressive numbers,

distributed by an eager throng of well-meaning individuals, by

now firmly convinced they had been lied to. The passion was

predominantly fired by the fact that the events of 9/11
still mattered
, even years on, because of the resulting ‘War on Terror’, with its associated withdrawal of fundamental freedoms that affected

everyone. The demoralizing and seemingly ill-organized wars

launched by the West against Afghanistan and Iraq were further

reminders of the fateful day’s legacy. An oft-verbalized desire

from various leaders to ‘move on’ from now ‘historical’ events

still continues to be resisted by those who believe that the original attacks were staged not by Middle Eastern terrorists, but by covert forces within Western intelligence services and probably beyond.

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The inside-job hypothesis is the central accusation of the 9/11

truth movement. If it could be demonstrated beyond doubt that

the attacks were either whol y engineered, partial y manipulated

or even simply allowed, then the entire basis of many of today’s

global power games, which threaten the peace of the world, would

be crucial y undermined. The fervour that shines in the eyes of

those who fight for the ‘truth’ of 9/11 is undeniably impressive.

But is it justified?

Again, the full basis for the wide conviction that 9/11 was

a classic false-flag conspiracy can be explored elsewhere in

countless sources that will keep readers occupied for months, but the essential aspects are broadly summed up here.2

The Hijackings

The official y accepted scenario of 9/11 sounds simple enough:

hijackers, under assumed names, boarded each of the relevant

planes and then took control of the flights by attacking or

threatening the cabin and cockpit crew with concealed ‘boxcutter’

blades. Thus under al-Qaeda control, the planes were flown into

their targets.

Yet many unexplained facets present themselves here, from

the seemingly illogical movements of the hijackers themselves on

the way to the airports (Boston, Newark and Washington, DC)

to the fact that the assumed names they apparently used have

never been identified from the passenger lists, definitive versions of which have not been released either. It has to be taken on

trust that the authorities know who they were. Additional y, the

terrorists seen in the security footage purporting to show them

passing through customs do not match the descriptions given

by staff on the day, while the timecodes shown in the videos are

contradictory and inconsistent, suggesting that judicious editing may have taken place.

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Oddly, passenger numbers on the hijacked flights were

uncommonly low that day, with one of the usual y busy commuter

planes (Flight 93) flown at just 19 per cent of its normal capacity.

Some have speculated that numbers were deliberately kept low

that day to make the hijacks easier, with potential passenger

resistance minimized.

What we know of how the hijackings actual y took place

has come almost entirely from accounts given by frightened

passengers or cabin crew who managed to call their loved ones

using their cell phones (mobiles). Yet how some of these cal s

took place at all has been the subject of much controversy. For

example, CNN anchorwoman Barbara Olson was on Flight 77

(which we are told hit the Pentagon), and great emphasis has been placed on information gleaned from two conversations between

her and her husband Ted (US solicitor general at the time),

whom she reportedly managed to reach before the fatal impact.

However, when the FBI sequestered the relevant phone network

records, they in fact showed that just a single cell cal , not two, was attempted – and that it failed to connect. When presented with

this conundrum, Ted Olson said the call must have been made

from a commercial ‘seatback’ phone. But American Airlines has

confirmed that Flight 77 did not have such a facility. So how did the Olson conversation take place?

In fact, despite the legends that have been built up around the

9/11 phone cal s, only a limited number of the recordings have ever been released to the public, and some of the transcripts that
have
been reported are more than a little peculiar (‘Mom, this is Mark Bingham,’ says a Flight 93 passenger, oddly giving his surname to his own mother at the start of a very stilted conversation). Given the abilities of modern technology to recreate synthesized voices, a large number of people believe that at least some of the famous cal s may have been faked, duping friends and relatives.

If this sounds too bizarre, it should be noted that when the

Canadian science writer A K Dewdney, puzzled by the 9/11 cal s,

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decided to hire a plane to test the capability of cell phones at

different altitudes, he found it impossible to get a signal at any height over 8,000 feet. Only in more recent times has technology

been introduced to allow cell cal s on some flights, but this was not the case in 2001. Messages from the hijacked planes may have

been possible as they flew low over New York, but this does not

explain how so many claimed connections were made from Flight

93, which was flying between 34,000 and 40,000 feet for most of its ill-fated journey (coming down in Pennsylvania without hitting

its target). Hol ywood films and TV movies have been based on

the accounts apparently derived from those cal s, yet Flight 93’s altitude brings their veracity into significant question. When

confronted with Dewdney’s findings, the authorities changed

their story, claiming that seatback handsets had been used

instead, saying that perhaps only two of the cal s had been made

from cell phones – but even these should not have worked, and

the availability of seatback facilities on Flight 93 has never been established.

Nevertheless, if the orthodox version of the hijackings is

accepted, there are still many unexplained aspects. There are

strict procedures in place to prevent easy entry to a cockpit, and crew are trained never to let assailants in, no matter what may

be occurring elsewhere in the plane – so how were the terrorists

allowed to pass through, so fast that no one had time to raise

the alarm to air traffic control? Planes are fitted with emergency Mayday buttons that can be operated at a touch, yet not one pilot in the four planes managed to operate theirs. Interestingly, Flight 77’s ‘black box’ data recorder shows that the cockpit doors were

never opened during its final voyage, creating yet another puzzle.3

The fact that Flight 77’s data recorder was the only one allegedly recovered from the 9/11 crashes has raised suspicions too, as

boxes are specifical y designed to withstand almost anything

and are nearly always found following disasters. Rescue workers

have claimed that the others
were
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continue to deny this. Likewise, reportedly only Flights 77 and 93

had their cockpit voice recorders recovered, as if to ensure rather conveniently that some kind of evidence was available to confirm

that the planes which have had the most doubt cast on their

presence or trajectory (see below)
were
actual y there.

It has been suggested that, whether hijackers were onboard or

not, the planes might have been forcibly taken over using remote

control systems, perhaps negating the need for the cockpits to

be accessed. This might make sense of some of the remarkably

accurate flying skil s seen on 9/11, when even staff from the flight schools that inadvertently trained some of the alleged terrorists have expressed the view that their pupils were barely able to

fly light aircraft (a point particularly pertinent to the Pentagon impact –
see
pp. 180–1). Defenders of the official story scoff at the idea of remote control, but given that the US now mounts

many of its air assaults using ‘drone’ technology operated from

far away, it is hard to see why this should not be considered.

Curiously, just a few months before 9/11, the short-lived
X-Files
spin-off TV series
The Lone Gunmen
featured an astoundingly prescient episode whereby a jet airliner is hijacked using remote control – and sent to plough into the World Trade Center. Thus

the idea of commandeering an aeroplane by such means, and the

fact that the WTC might be a target for jet liners being used as

missiles (something US National Security Advisor Condoleezza

Rice claimed ‘no one could have imagined’) was already firmly

lodged in the collective at the time, albeit expressed in fiction.

9/11 Foreknowledge

Even outside the world of fiction, it is now widely acknow ledged that strident warnings had in fact been given by intelligence services that such attacks were in the offing. Quiet awareness of this had plainly been disseminated among certain members of the business

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community, given that there was an astonishing 1,200 per cent

increase in trading activities in the week before 9/11, with particular focus on American Airlines and United Airlines – the companies

which would be most affected when their planes were violated just days later. Traders were essential y betting that their stocks would

‘go short’ when there seemed no open reason at the time for anyone to think this. Trading in other companies which would be affected seemed equal y prophetic. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s mayor,

Willie Brown, was sent mysterious warnings to ‘be cautious’ about flying to New York on 11 September; civil rights campaigner Dick

Gregory was told by a ‘friend’ not to be in New York that day and new World Trade Center owner Larry Silverstein took out a major

destruction insurance policy just weeks before the attacks.

Something in the ether was unmistakably making itself known,

but all of this was somehow ignored by the incumbent George

W Bush administration, leading many to wonder if 9/11 was

‘allowed’ to happen, as opposed to being directly organized by

an inside cabal. However, claims by ex-CIA and FBI operatives

of a consistent refusal to apprehend known extremists who were

suspected of planning such attacks speak as much of an overt

setting-up. A truck bomb that caused deaths and injuries at

the WTC in 1993 may have been an earlier attempt at the same

strategy – an event that ex-FBI whistleblower Emad Salem says

was supposedly set up by the FBI as a sting operation against a

jihadist terror group, but ended up inexplicably going ahead using real explosives instead of dummies. So, if the core arrangement

of 9/11 did originate from covert Western intelligence services,

or even if remote control was somehow applied to the doomed

planes, it does not necessarily follow that al-Qaeda patsies were not also actively involved somewhere down the line, Perhaps they