An Attempt to Uncover the Truth About September 11th, 2001

http://911research.wtc7.net/

We all know the official story of September 11th: four jetliners were hijacked by groups of four and five Arabic men armed with box cutters, who proceeded to fly three of the four jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Subsequently the World Trade Center Towers, weakened by the impacts and fires, collapsed into piles of rubble. The FBI had compiled a list of hijackers within three days, and it was so obvious that Osama bin Laden had masterminded the operation from caves in Afghanistan, that there was no need to seriously investigate the crime or produce evidence. The "retaliatory" attack on the Taliban would soon commence.

Is this story true? Its central assumptions have never been tested by an official government body whose members lack obvious conflicts of interest. There are numerous red flags in the official story, which requires a long series of highly improbable coincidences. Questioning that story is an act of responsible citizenship.

There are many red flags in the official story of September 11th that passed right by the vast majority of people. Not the least is that the official story was so quick to emerge. Within hours of the attack Osama bin Laden was presented as the prime suspect. His picture was repeatedly shown on TV alongside images of the devastation in Lower Manhattan, a technique known as Pavlovian conditioning. A list of most of the hijackers was presented within a day of the attack. Mohammed Atta was presented as the ringleader within hours. The curious building "collapses" in Manhattan were immediately claimed to be inevitable. The "case closed" technical paper about the building collapses was published on September 13th, two days after the attack.

Some of the other red flags include:

* The hijacked flights all flew long routes taking them far from their targets exposing them to certain interception given standard operating procedures.
* The towering infernos were said to burn with the heat of nuclear power plants, despite sooty black smoke and few visible flames.
* The building collapses were presented as inevitable, even though such behavior was unheard of in steel structures.
* Flight 93 was confidently portrayed as a crash due to a struggle, despite strong evidence it was shot down.
* An extensive paper trail of the hijackers was found within hours of the attack, even though the same people had supposedly eluded authorities for years.
* The same hijackers who pulled off aerobatic maneuvers with large jets were flight school flunkies who had never flown jets.
* The FBI claimed that the passport from one of Flight 11's hijackers was found blocks from the towers (when the only other parts of the jetliner that penetrated the tower were a few pieces of landing gear).
* Several hijackers turned up alive after the attack.
* 1000 bodies vanished at Ground Zero, despite DNA identification procedures that could identify individuals from small fragments of bodies.
* Flight 77 crashed into Wedge 1 of the Pentagon -- the one portion of the building that was sparsely occupied due to undergoing renovations, which included blast-hardening of the exterior walls.
* The supposedly fanatically devout Muslim hijackers were fond of strip bars.
* The video of Osama bin Laden that has him taking credit for the attack doesn't even look like him.

World Trade Center Destruction
On 9/11/01 three skyscrapers were totally destroyed, with structural collapse primarily due to fires given as the explanation. Fires and bombings have never before or since caused steel-frame buildings to collapse.

* Building 7
Building 7 imploded late on 9/11/01. It was not hit by an aircraft.
o Building 7 experienced total collapse, allegedly because of fires, when no steel-frame building before or since has ever collapsed, totally or even partially, due to fires. Building 7 was an over-engineered 47-story steel-frame skyscraper, standing over 350 feet from the nearest of the Twin Towers. Public evidence documents only small fires in it on September 11th.
o Building 7 collapsed in a nearly perfectly vertical fall, producing only minor damage in the Verizon and Post Office buildings only 60 feet on either side of it.
o Building 7 collapsed into a remarkably small rubble pile of mostly pulverized remains, when no steel building falling for any reason has ever pulverized itself.
o Building 7 contained a 15-million-dollar emergency command center, but instead of using it for its ostensible purpose, then-Mayor Giuliani evacuated his team to a makeshift command center as soon as the September 11th attack started. 10 11
o The emergency command center was destroyed along with the rest of the building, even though it was constructed as a bomb-hardened shelter.
o The remains of Building 7 were rapidly removed and the steel recycled, evidently without any on-site and only extremely limited off-site examination. The rapid disposal operation proceeded despite the fact that no one was believed buried in the rubble, and the tidy rubble pile was not blocking adjacent roads.
* Twin Towers
The Twin Towers exploded into dust and shattered steel, a behavior inconsistent with the known behavior of steel structures outside of explosive demolition.
o The South Tower was struck 17 minutes after the North Tower, and in a less damaging manner, and it had less severe fires, yet it collapsed 29 minutes before the North Tower.
o The South Tower's core structure was largely undamaged by the off-centered jet impact, unlike the North Tower, yet it collapsed sooner.
o The South Tower had much less severe fires than the North Tower, and yet collapsed sooner.
o Smoke from the fires in the South Tower became progressively darker up to the time it collapsed.
o Firefighters reached the crash zone of the South Tower and calmly described controllable fires.
o Both towers started to disintegrate at regions above and below the crash zones in the first seconds of their falls.
o Both towers fell straight down, through themselves, following the path of maximum resistance, a behavior never before observed in spontaneous collapses of any type of vertical structure.
o The collapses of both towers exhibited features never otherwise seen except in controlled demolitions: sudden onset accompanied by thunderous bangs, visible explosions ringing their perimeters, energetic ejections of dust at regular intervals, and copious production of dust.
o Both towers exploded outward and were shredded and pulverized -- a pattern of destruction much more destructive than normal controlled demolitions, yet this result was supposedly produced without the added energy of explosives.

Pentagon Attack
The Pentagon attack defies expectations that this prime terrorist target would have been defended, and that a terrorist would have hit the front side in a simple maneuver, rather than the back side in an extreme precision aerobatic maneuver.

* Wide-Open Target
The Pentagon -- the heart of the military establishment of the world's greatest super-power -- was hit after ample warning without being protected by any defensive action.
o The 9:37 strike was well over an hour after the first signs of a hijacking and 34 minutes after the South Tower strike confirmed that an attack was underway.
o The Pentagon is within 11 miles of Andrews Air Force Base, which apparently had two combat-ready fighter wings on 9/11/01.
o The attack plane was monitored on radar as it approached the capital.
* Unlikely Super-pilot
Alleged Flight 77 pilot Hani Hanjour was not up to the task.
o The spiral dive approach to the Pentagon was such an extreme maneuver that experienced air traffic controllers thought it was military jet. 12 The tree-top final approach skimmed objects in the yard and crashed the plane into the first floor of the building. Experienced pilots have wondered if any human pilot could have executed the maneuver.
o Hani Hanjour was considered incompetent by his flight school instructors, and was denied rental of a single-engine plane. 13
* Evidence Vacuum
Authorities systematically confiscated or destroyed the evidence.
o Video recordings from adjacent businesses were seized by the FBI shortly after the attack and have never been seen since.
o Only two video segments have been released by the Pentagon from all the security cameras that monitor its periphery. Neither clearly shows the attack aircraft.
o Investigators were not allowed access to the crash site until well into October.
* More Than Just a Crash
Was the crash engineered?
o A photographed scrap of aircraft debris that has markings similar to an American Airlines 757 corresponds to the forward portion of the starboard (right) side of the plane, yet the scrap was far to the left of the plane's path.
o Eyewitnesses reported the smell of cordite.
o Several eyewitnesses reported that the jetliner exploded before reaching the facade of the Pentagon.
o Portions of the facade where the wing ends and tail of a 757 would have collided show no gouging. Were these parts shredded by explosives before they reached the facade?

Death Toll
The death toll of the attack, though horrific, was much lower than it would have been if not for numerous aspects of target selection and timing.

* Flights
All four flights were unusually empty.
o Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93 were only at 51%, 31%, 20%, and 16% occupancy, respectively.
* World Trade Center
The towers were attacked before most people had arrived, and were hit high enough to allow most people to escape.
o When Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46 AM, the World Trade Center buildings were at less than half the occupancy of a typical mid-day.
o The first tower to be attacked was hit just 15 stories below the top, and trapped people mostly between the 95th and 110th floors.
o The second tower to be attacked was hit only 30 stories below the top, and the plane missed the core, allowing people to evacuate from above the impact zone. The 17 minutes that elapsed since the first hit allowed many people to escape the second tower while the elevators were still working.
* Pentagon
125 people were killed in a building with 20,000 people.
o The portion of the Pentagon that was attacked, the West Block, was in the process of being renovated, and so was at low occupancy.
o No high-level Pentagon officials were killed in the attack.

Coincidences in Service of Incompetence
Many decisions and events in the days and months preceding the attack helped to make the incompetence theory more plausible.

* War Games
Several war game exercises were being conducted on 9/11/01.
o Operation Northern Vigilance redeployed northeast sector air defense resources to northern Canada and Alaska. 14
o Operations Vigilant Warrior and Vigilant Guardian, which simulated hijackings and involved live radar "injects," may have confused military and civilian personnel monitoring aircraft. 15
o The National Reconnaissance Office, which monitors satellites and airborne objects, was evacuated while the attack unfolded because it was conducting a plane-into-tower crash drill. 16
o The Tripod II biowarfare exercise, scheduled for 9/12/01, resulted in the deployment of FEMA to Manhattan before the attack. 17
* Rules Changes
Procedural changes would limit the ability of pilots and military commanders to respond to hijackings.
o Military orders stripped commanders in the field of autonomy in responding to hijackings.
o The FAA banned firearm possession by commercial pilots two months before the attack.
* Out to Lunch
Top officials were not available until after the attack was over.
o President George W. Bush remained at the publicized location of Booker Elementary School until about a half-hour after the news of the attack went on TV worldwide, first reading My Pet Goat to second-graders, and then holding a press conference.
o Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff allegedly remained in a meeting with Senator Max Cleland until nearly the time the Pentagon was hit.
o Brigadier General Montague Winfield had Navy Captain Charles J. Leidig, Jr. -- a rookie -- assume his watch as Deputy Director for Operations for the National Military Command Center (NMCC) at 8:30 am on 9/11/01, and relieved him after the attack was over. 18

Government Response
Despite the worst failure in history of the military to protect American civilians, and the worst alleged engineering failures in history, there were no consequences for the responsible authorities, and no honest investigations.

* Air Defense Failures
No one was held to account for the numerous unprecedented failures in air defense.
o General Richard Myers, Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 11th, was confirmed as Chairman on September 13th in spite of being unable to provide any meaningful answers to questions regarding the air defense failures.
o General Richard Eberhart, commander of NORAD on September 11th, was promoted to head the newly created NORTHCOM. 19
o NORAD's press release contradicted early statements by high-ranking officials that no interceptors had been scrambled on 9/11/01.
o NORAD's vague timeline raises far more questions than it answers, yet officials have never been required to give a full account.
o The 9/11 Commission advanced a new timeline which contradicts NORAD's earlier timeline and the testimony of military officials to the commission itself.
* Building Collapse Inquiry
The total collapses of WTC 1, 2, and 7 were the three largest engineering failures in history (based on the official story). How were they investigated?
o FEMA was given the sole authority to investigate the collapses even though it is not an investigative agency.
o The investigative team assembled by FEMA consisted of unpaid volunteers.
o The investigators were not allowed access to Ground Zero.
o The investigators were not provided with the blueprints of the buildings.
o FEMA's report states the causes of the collapse "remain unknown at this time". (By the time the report was released the steel had been entirely disposed of.) The fact that Building 7 (supposedly) failed in a way that contradicts 100 years of engineering experience makes it the largest and least understood structural failure in history.
o The 9/11 Commission Report failed to even mention the existence of Building 7.
o The 9/11 Commission Report denied the existence of the Twin Towers' core structures.
o NIST's report on the collapse of the Twin Towers purports to provide a "probable collapse sequence" for each Tower but truncates its timelines before the collapses even begin.

Means, Motive, and Precedent

The preceding list is far from complete. It does not include consideration of facts pertaining to the means, motive, and precedent for the crime. The official account's blaming one organization, while ignoring others with much more to gain and possessing tools and access better suited to the commission of the crime is arguably a vast anomaly. This subject is addressed by 911Review.com:

* Means
* Motive
* Precedent

NOTE: For more complete sources, visit the pages linked to. References

1. Profiting From Disaster?, CBSNews.com, 9/19/01
2. Prices, Probabilities and Predictions, OR/MS Today,
3. Bush: We're at War, Newsweek, 9/24/01
4. Willie Brown got low-key early warning about air travel, SFGate.com, 9/12/01
5. , London Times, 9/27/01
6. Odigo says workers were warned of attack, HAARETZ.com,
7. Franklin unit rebuilds after 9/11 tragedy, San Francisco Business Times, 2/1/02
8. Manager: Men spewed anti-American sentiments, AP, 9/14/01
9. The Day the FAA Stopped the World, time.com, 9/14/01
10. Giuliani Improvises After Command Center Gets Hit, Washington Technology, 10/08/01
11. Terrorism and Anti-Terrorism, Gotham Gazette, 9/12/01
12. 'Get These Planes on the Ground', ABCNews.com, 11/24/01
13. A Trainee Noted for Incompetence, New York Times, 5/4/02, page 10
14. The scene at NORAD on Sept. 11: Playing Russian war games ... and then someone shouted to look at the monitor, Toronto Star, 12/9/01
15. Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, 2004
16. Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building, AP, 8/21/02
17. Tripod II and FEMA: Lack of NORAD Response on 9/11 Explained, FromTheWilderness.com, 2004
18. Statement of Capt Charles J. Leidig, Jr., 9-11commission.gov, 6/17/04
19. Eberhart To Head NORTHCOM, afa.org, 8/02 [cached]