Indymedia Cambridge, UK | 911 Tall Buildings Tall Tales

There is an official interpretation of the events of 11 Sept 2001. This interpretation leaves an awful lot to be desired. Independent investigators have been trying to fit the jigsaw pieces together. This is an introduction to 911 from the conspiracy theorists point of view.

911 - Tall Buildings and Tall Tales

Captain Timo 26 May 2004

Conspiracy theories are not usually well received except when they relate to the distant past where they are regarded as part and parcel of history or when they form part of an official explanation of recent events. Thus stories of medieval Popes dying at the hands of the surreptitious poisoner are acceptable. Nobody today would deny that Julius Caesar died as a result of a plot, i.e. a conspiracy. But for modern times conspiracy as an explanation does not go down well in most quarters unless that explanation has official sanction. The story of Osama bin Laden and the nineteen hijackers and the nebulous and Will-o'the-wisp organisation called Al Qaeda is such an officially sanctioned and approved conspiracy story.

We are led to believe bin Laden hidden away in the wilds of Afghanistan, with nothing but a satellite phone to communicate with was able to lead and co-ordinate a daring conspiracy involving multiple hijackings which somehow overcame the air defence systems of the greatest military power in the world and then using these aircraft destroyed two of the worlds tallest buildings by turning the planes into missiles where some of his fanatical followers served as guidance system. Stranger still the black boxes from the planes were never found. Yet the passport of one who was said to be the leader of this deadly expedition, Mohammed Atta, survived the inferno, we are told. These deadly hijackers had the power to render themselves invisible, apparently. That must be why they did not appear on airport security cameras as they went about their activities. It could have something to do too with why no Arabic names appeared on the passenger lists for the fatal flights.

These hijackers were even more special. Quite a number of them turned up alive in the Middle East after they had been described in the media as part of the suicidal attack team. That certainly takes some doing. Some had been described as having undergone training at a flying school in Florida. Before they had been pressed into silence their instructors had described their level of accomplishment as very poor. Yet they miraculously morphed into flyers with the skills of trained fighter pilots in time for the big event. A number of the alleged hijackers have been described by acquaintances in the US as "playboy types" who believed themselves working as low level FBI agents. Anyone familiar with the culture of Muslim Arabs will know militant Islamists, and especially those who might be prepared to commit suicide as part of a military operation, keep rigidly to the ascetic behavioural code of their religion. "Playboy types" they could not be.

Within 24 hours of the events the security authorities were able to solve the great mystery behind what had happened. Whereas just before they had been "clueless", as it were, now the problem was solved. Osama bin Laden and his flying circus were the culprits who appeared like a rabbit out of a hat to be dangled before the media just in time to reap the shock, outrage and anger of America.

During police investigations in the real world once a case has been cracked and a perpetrator uncovered the progress in the case does not then come to a sudden stop but rather more and more layers of facts and interrelationships are uncovered as lines of evidence are followed up. The way the bin Laden story emerged suddenly fully formed to be paraded before the worlds media has all the appearances of a pre-prepared covert operations cover story. Its sudden appearance recalls the emergence of the doctored Oswald biography which began to be circulated world wide even before Oswald had been charged with the murder of President Kennedy.

Bizarre also is the question of motive. To have some idea who or what lies behind a mysterious act we must ask ourselves 'who benefits?'. It is hard to make the case Arabs or Muslims benefit from a sequence of events which has brought them invasion, death, destruction and their lands contaminated with the deadly radioactive substance; depleted uranium. Also Israel has been facilitated. It can now construct its wall to hem in and virtually imprison the Palestinians as part of the war on terror. A case can be made that an anti-Zionist anti-US group might want to provoke a US invasion of the Middle East in order to tie down American forces there in a protracted guerrilla war. The aim would be that America would only be able to disengage after making major concessions regarding Palestine and its military and political presence in the region. The evidence for such a plan or such a group is thin. In any case were US forces tied down in a war in a part of the Middle East with no victory in sight they could 'declare victory' and withdraw. Israel and the Arab client states of the US can survive such a happening.

Before Sept 2001 the Palestinian Intifada enjoyed much sympathy across the world. At a conference in South Africa chaired by Mary Robinson, UN Commissioner for Human Rights, a week before Israel was being condemned as a racist state. The Palestinian cause was gaining converts even within America. Why would Arab activists want to throw away such a political advantage? The reality is that American militarism and Israeli Likudnik extremism have been the real beneficiaries of what happened. So, when we consider the political and military scenarios, Arab involvement in the great crime looks unlikely. It is hard to imagine a plausible motivation.
Carrying out such an attack required calculation. But those possessing such gifts of calculation would realise such an action played into the hands of their enemies.

But did not bin Laden admit to ordering and carrying out the attacks? Actually he sought out a newspaper in Pakistan and in late September 2001 gave an interview where he denied any involvement. There was, of course, the video of poor quality which is said to have been found in Afghanistan which was held up triumphantly before the public as confirmation of his guilt. Both in terms of context and content this 'evidence' reeks of absurdity. First there is the context. If bin Laden had decided to say he had no involvement then allowing a video to be filmed where he says the opposite makes no sense. He undoes the effect of the Pakistani interview. He could either have had a policy of denying or admitting involvement. He could not have had both. Secondly the content of that video raises more questions than answers. The different scenes do not cohere together in a coherent context. It looks like it has been cobbled together from pieces of archive footage spliced onto the supposedly damning pivotal scenes. The parts where bin Laden allegedly admits responsibility have the picture quality one expects from the computer graphics lab rather than real live footage. The English translation on the film does not match the poor quality Arabic dialogue.

If bin Laden was not responsible then who was? Let us look at other aspects of the case. The air defence network apparently was stood down for the day. There was foreknowledge in Washington. Various dignitaries refused to fly on the date in question. Well connected individuals bought put options on the stock of United Airlines and American Airlines through a brokerage run by a former head of CIA. They profited hugely when airline stocks took the inevitable plunge.

The above matters deserve to be investigated thoroughly by law enforcement officials and by the mainstream media. Nothing has happened.

Most extraordinary of all is how both WTC towers collapsed uniformly as if subject to controlled demolition. To the TV viewer passively absorbing the scene it seemed natural to assume the collapses were caused by the fires and structural damage sustained. This is how film fools us. We uncritically piece the scenes consecutively set before us into a narrative in our minds without asking if the narrative makes sense in the real physical world.

The World Trade Centre was built in the early 1970s and was then the tallest building in the world. It was a world renowned symbol of wealth and prestige. Naturally such a structure was built to survive the impact of a jet liner. The 707 of those days actually had similar fuel capacity to today’s 757 or 767. So why did the impacts cause the buildings to collapse? The simple answer is that there is no reason to believe they did. The buildings were left in tact following the impacts. Burning jet fuel can not reach the temperature necessary to melt the reinforced steel skeleton of tall buildings. There is no record in history of the skeletal structure of a skyscraper collapsing as a result of a fire.

What we do know is that people in the vicinity reported hearing explosions just before the collapses occurred. A video film taken from a camera mounted on a tripod trained on the WTC shows a shake as if an explosion was occurring some seconds before the collapse of one of the tall WTC buildings began.

Weeks after the collapse, the debris of the WTC as it was being removed, was seen to contain segments of smouldering rubble. This is not consistent with the official story. It is, however, perfectly consistent with the use of an explosive substance called thermite to provoke a structural collapse.

All this points to a conspiracy involving one or more intelligence agencies backed up by facilitators from inside administrative government. Behind the guise of the official story lies a “false flag” operation of breath-taking scale. By a “false flag” operation is meant an operation designed to appear the work of another party or nation so as they might be politically undermined. Too far fetched? For most folks it certainly is.

However such a reaction is not an outcome of logical reasoning. Those who dismiss the 911 sceptic react with dismissive silence or superficial argument gleaned from TV. There are a number of psychological barriers that hold people off stepping up to the plate and confronting the abundance of evidence that the official version is a mere cover story completely and utterly at variance with reality.

One is the natural human tendency to behave as part of a hierarchical group. Thus we conform to the norms of a group and accept the authority at the pinnacle of the hierarchy. Without this tendency organised society would not be possible. It is only when the authority makes us feel very uncomfortable or has been superseded by another one that we will question its validity or credibility. So the natural state of human affairs is for individuals to possess a bond of trust and loyalty with higher authority. This predisposes people to trust officialdom. This does not mean they believe all they are told or are utterly deferential. But it does mean that they are ready to give authority the benefit of the doubt more than reason requires.

Another barrier is connected with the widespread superficiality in the public awareness of history. Few realise that almost all of America’s wars of the last century or so began with a brazen act of public deception. President Roosevelt had his “this day will live in infamy” speech written before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. The US government engineered a situation where the Japanese would attack and kill thousands of unsuspecting Americans. The Vietnam war began in earnest for the US as a result of the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1965 where a US Navy warship was supposedly attacked by a non-existent North Vietnamese patrol boat. Such is the material used to set America’s wars in motion. However since the agony of Vietnam there has been a reluctance to get directly involved in foreign conflicts. Only a traumatic painful shock could rouse the nation from this habit of military reticence. Another Tonkin Gulf incident would never do the trick this time. Then, low and behold, out of the blue, just when all seemed lost, on Sept 11, 2001 it happened!

Another barrier relates to a lack of understanding of how power functions and is constituted in contemporary industrialised societies particularly the US. Elected administrations are just one element in the mosaic of elite power. Corporate and private moneyed interests, public officials civilian and military, secret societies, and that ever watchful piranha on the side of the privileged and powerful; the intelligence community, make up the rest of the picture. Elected-representatives are not the only people with the power to make things happen. Frequently they are merely the puppets of other actors behind the scenes or are merely reacting opportunistically to events they barely understand themselves.

People also find 911-scepticism hard to accept because it presents them with a deeply corrupt world which makes them feel uncomfortable and fearful and which they would rather not have to accept as real.

Another part of the official story has passengers making short frantic cell phone calls telling their families what was happening on the “hijacked” planes. One problem with this is that cell phones do not work from planes flying at altitude. Another is that the calls were not recorded on the computers of the cell phone companies.

There is no hard evidence that the organisation known as Al Qaeda, as at present widely understood, actually exists. It is, like Frankenstein, like Oswald the Communist sympathiser of the Warren Commission Report, like Goldilocks and the three Bears, like the people who knew for sure Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, part of the cast of a story merely and nothing more.

The best explanation for what happened is that planes were flown into the WTC buildings by remote control. It looks like the Pentagon was hit by a guided missile. The damage and debris there, after the attack, were not consistent with a plane crash. The demolition of the WTC complex was achieved by controlled explosion.

The tragic events make no sense except as an attempt to achieve radical political change. Since then the US has changed completely its stance regarding foreign military engagement. Since then the US has become less free politically thanks to the Patriot act and thanks to a change in attitude towards those with unconventional political views. In the west generally there is a new brutalised mentality which will countenance torture and brutality even on a wide scale. Israel has been able to build its massive wall around Palestinian population centres cutting them off from their hinterlands containing their agricultural and water resources. These walled in areas have effectively been turned into the largest open air prison on the planet while objections within the world community are muted. This is in line with the logic of the War on Terror whereby
Arabs and Muslims generally are deemed so suspect they are fit for special brutalisation.

There is a form of 9/11 scepticism which is becoming fashionable and popular which says the attacks happened much as the corporate media say they did except that the Bush administration knew they were to happen and allowed them to take place so as to reap the political rewards. One might characterise this as the position of officially sanctioned dissidence. You can voice this sort of stuff on mainstream media and even get it broadcast/printed. You get the added bonus of appearing smart and knowing amongst your circle. It is a fashion accessory which will get you noticed without costing you money. So why not go for it?

The problem here is that this is a distraction which leads attention away from the most obvious inconsistencies and absurdities related to the events. This works rather as a distraction worked by a stage magician takes the attention of the audience away from where the real slight of hand is taking place. It distracts attention away from 95 per cent of the most important evidence. Furthermore it focuses attention on areas (e.g. why were air defences stood down?) where key sources of evidence are subject to governmental control. The sceptic is being led into a pre-prepared evidential cul-de-sac.

On the internet there are quite a number of fine 9/11 sceptic websites. There are also sites which pretend to be real 9/11 sceptic sites but have the purpose of disseminating disinformation i.e. setting false trails to confuse and mislead.

Below is a very incomplete list of some of the best genuine 9/11 sceptic sites on the web: