9/11 - Catastrophe or Conspiracy?

Between 6am and 8am on the morning of 11 September 2001, a total of 19 jihadists, including plot leader Mohammed Atta, boarded four domestic flights at Washington's Dulles Airport, Boston's Logan Airport and New York's Newark Airport.

Among the terrorists were men trained at flight schools across middle America who would act as the pilots while the other hijackers would maintain control of the planes using knives and pepper spray. By 8.40am the three planes that would cost 3,000 lives were in the hands of the terrorists.

At 8.46am Atta's plane, Flight 11, smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.

At 9.03am, millions of TV viewers watched in horror as the South Tower was struck by a jetliner, Flight 175, leaving both towers burning in a jetfuel-fired inferno. Just three minutes later the FAA banned all takeoffs of any aircraft heading for New York.

At 9.30am the White House was warned that a third jet, Flight 77, was speeding in their direction. An evacuation was cancelled as air traffic controllers warned the plane had changed course in the direction of the Pentagon.

At 9.37 the craft flew into the Western side of the US military command centre, killing 125 Pentagon workers. All US airspace was immediately closed down, with every plane diverted to the nearest airport.

At 9.59am With fires raging inside the building, the South Tower of the World Trade Centre, the second to be struck in the attack, collapses. Four minutes later United 93 crash lands in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.

More than an hour and 40 minutes after it was struck by Flight 11, the North Tower of the World Trade Centre collapses just before 10.30am.
At 5.20pm Tower 7, which was not hit in the assault, collapses due to a long burning fire caused by the attacks. It is the final act of destruction in a day that claims more than 3,000 lives.

According to the 9/11 commission report, the atrocity was planned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on the direct instructions of Osama Bin Laden, and while it points the finger at a lack of cohesion among the intelligence communities, the report rejects any suggestion of an internal conspiracy.

The official version of 9/11 remains that it was an audacious plot executed by the 19 fanatics who died in the attacks, and commanded by the "Hamburg Cell" of four field commanders, who answered to Mohammed Atta.

Of all the shocking, disturbing and diabolical events in American history nothing has come close to creating the same conspiracy theorist response that 9/11 provoked. Everything from the size of the holes in the Pentagon to the way in which the buildings in New York collapsed has been analysed in painstaking detail.

To cover the total weight of theories would require an encyclopaedia rather than a blog. So let's try to sum up the main conspiracy ideas using the magic of bullet points:

• The US government was complicit in the attacks, and allowed Osama bin Laden's team of crazed terrorist to steer jetliners into the most iconic military and economic buildings in the country, despite having prior knowledge of the plan.
• The security services were criminally negligent in allowing strong information about the plot to slip through the cracks and never reach the top levels of the system.
• No foreign operatives whatsoever were involved in the assault. The gruesome plan was hatched, developed and carried out entirely by the US government in order to further their interests both at home and overseas.

An inordinate number of reports, aircraft designs, engineering techniques and scientific methods have been examined by the theorists. While every 9/11 "truther" has their own ideas, they broadly fall into two different groups.

Firstly there are the "no planers", most notably ex-MI5 spy and current "son of god" David Shayler. The former spook believes the Twin Towers and the Pentagon Headquarters were struck by missiles, rather than aircraft. He claims holograms of planes were projected around the missiles to disguise them.

Those claims have been widely rejected by the "9/11 truth" campaign. Their theories revolve around three main conspiracies centred on the United 93 flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, the "plane" that hit the Pentagon and the demolition of the Twin Towers.

Simplified these theories are that:
(a) United 93 was brought down by a surface/air missile rather than the heroic actions of its passengers
(b) The Pentagon was struck by a cruise missile fired from a circling military plane and not by a jetliner
(c) The Twin Towers were destroyed in a controlled demolition by thermite charges placed between the floors. This accounts for the collapse of both main buildings and Tower 7, which most "truthers" believe to be the smoking gun that proves their controlled explosion theory.

While many other theories, notably the anti-Semitic notion that the attacks were planned by Jews to discredit the Arab race, have been put forward, the above arguments are the ones that have captured the public imagination.

- Detailed scientific evidence and pictures of rubble from the Twin Towers are consistent with the use of Thermite or a similar explosive, according to some engineering experts from respected US universities.

- Both towers collapsed in "free fall". Conspiracy theorists maintain that a jet fuel blaze would not have produced enough heat, quickly enough, to cause the collapse we saw on TV. Superficially those collapses look exactly like controlled explosions carried out with detonators. Puffs of dust at the sides of the building could show explosive charges being activated.

- Tower 7 was never hit by a plane. It also contained offices for the CIA and other key departments including a command post for emergency management. Theorists claim it was destroyed in a controlled explosion and that the motive for blowing it up would be to hide the planning "hub" used by the government to plot the attack.

- The US has been highly guarded when it comes to releasing footage from security cameras outside the Pentagon from the morning of the attacks, leading some to believe that footage shows a cruise missile, not a passenger plane. Conspiracy theorists also say that a military flight in the area at the time could easily have fired on the building and that the movements attributed to the jetliner which hit the defence HQ could not have been achieved by an amateur pilot in a cumbersome 747 at high speed.

- Eyewitnesses claim to have seen what surface-to-air missiles launched in the direction of United 93 as it flew towards Washington. Theorists also claim that the wreckage of the flight is too widespread, more consistent with a mid-air explosions than a collision with the ground.

- Al-Qaeda had failed to blow up the World Trade Centre before and questions have been raised over whether they were capable of pulling off an attack on this scale.

- Leaked documents show that various units within the CIA had information clearly indicating that an attack against the US, using planes, was imminent. No action was taken based on that intelligence.

- There were delays in scrambling F-15s to intercept the hijacked jets, and when they eventually were sent up they headed away from New York. To many theorists this is clear evidence that the US government wanted the attacks to happen.

- Before 9/11 no skyscraper had ever been destroyed by fire alone.

- US interests overseas were furthered by the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the subsequent oil reserves and construction contracts they provided for the military-industrial complex. Without 9/11 those wars would never have started. This is seen as prime motive for a conspiracy.

- The buckled metal in the twisted wreckage of the Twin Towers could easily have been produced by rocket fuel fires according to all the experts who advised the official 9/11 commission. The fire didn't melt the metal, but did weaken it to the point where it could no longer support the building.

- US magazine Popular Mechanics has carried out a detailed investigation into how the fires and collapse of the two main towers brought down Tower 7, debunking the theory it was destroyed by controlled explosion.

- The evidence presented that no plane could have hit the Pentagon is misleading. Experts believe that the structure of the building and the speed and ferocity with which the aircraft struck the reinforced walls is consistent with impact from a plane.

- Phonecalls made from United 93 suggest passengers did attempt to retake the aircraft from the terrorists.

- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had previously planned an "aeroplane plot" with his nephew Ramzi Youseff in 1995. Though police in the Philippines smashed the plan to blow up 11 airliners, the idea stuck with KSM, and would go on to become the 9/11 blueprint.

- It just so happened that on the morning of September 11 the air defence forces around New York were undergoing a routine training exercise. This accounts for the poor response times and the fact that aircraft weren't scrambled faster as staff had to confirm the attack was "real world" and not simulation.

- No fragments of missiles have been discovered at the Pentagon.

- No explanation has been provided for how the Twin Towers were wired up to be demolished. With a massive team of security and maintenance staff, not to mention one of the busiest office complexes in the world, someone would have been spotted planting the charges.

- While it is true that no skyscraper had ever been destroyed by fire pre-9/11 none had ever been hit 75 floors up by an aircraft travelling at more than 500 mph, so the argument that the resulting fires and structural damage could not have caused their collapse is unconvincing.

- In the seven years since 9/11 no member of the conspiracy, which would have had to have stretched to thousands of complicit members, has ever come forward to confirm government or US military involvement.

- While intelligence did exist about a plot, that information was held by a number of different units within the CIA and FBI. The extent of the plans and their timetable only became clear with hindsight. There is no evidence they deliberately allowed the attacks to happen.

An event as horrific and pivotal as 9/11 was always going to attract massive attention from the conspiracy community, but the idea that a group within the government would be able to plan and execute such an elaborate conspiracy is undoubtedly impossible.
The concept that a new administration could influence thousands of civil servants, military personal and air traffic controllers at hundreds of different locations is too far fetched for my taste.
There is little doubt in my mind that the Twin Towers and Pentagon were both hit by planes and that the impact of those collisions resulted directly in the collapse of those buildings and of Tower 7.
However, the story of United 93 does seem a little convenient, and the idea that in such a tense atmosphere the army was forced into bringing the flight down deserves serious consideration....