How to Silence a 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist (9/8/06)
by Dean Hartwell
On Thursday, September 7th, the Bush
Administration revealed a video which purportedly shows
Osama bin Laden talking to members of al-Qaeda about
plans for the 9/11 attacks. It also allegedly displays
the Last Will and Testament of two of the so-called
"hijackers."
Here we go again. We are once again asked to trust our
leaders that this video, like so many of the ones they
have paraded before us, is real and that the
translations alleged are accurate. This administration
has lied to us before, in telling us of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, for instance. So why believe it
now?
Also, these videos keep turning up at times especially
opportunistic for Bush. In the last presidential
election, another alleged video of bin Laden turned up a
few days before Election Day and helped Bush's standing
in the polls. Another came out right when support for
the Iraq war started to recede.
These videos form some of the many legitimate questions
about the 9/11 tragedy. Who makes these tapes and do
they really show bin Laden? Did bin Laden really confess
to the crime?
Here are the questions left over from 2005:
Why was there no military response to the attacks on
the
Trade Center and the
Pentagon?
The United States has contingencies for airplane
hijackings. They can scramble planes from nearby Air
Force Bases to intercept planes that have gone off
course. This action needs no presidential approval and
can be done in a short period of time. Yet despite all
of the publicity these flights received at the time they
occured, no one got out there as a first line of defense
against the hijackers.
How did the fire caused by the collision of the
planes and the twin towers burn the steel building down?
Experts disagree as to how the towers came down. Some
say the fire from the crash gradually wore out the steel
bindings and the towers fell down floor by floor. But
others point out that this "pancake effect" would have
slowed down the descent of the towers, which fell at
near free-fall rate. And some have pointed out that the
fire from the crash could not have been hot enough to
burn the steel. No steel building has ever fallen down
primarily because of fire, even after more than 24 hours
of fire and with weaker structures. These facts suggest
the strong possibility of controlled explosives.
Why did World Trade Center-7, which was not hit and
which had small fires, fall down?
This is perhaps the biggest mystery of 9/11. WTC-7
stands some distance away from WTC-1 and probably caught
a little of the debris from it. The fires could not have
been very large as firefighters were summoned away from
the building. Interestingly, WTC-7 came straight down,
just like the other two buildings. And, the controller
of the WTC complex, Larry Silverstein, admitted to
"pulling" the building. In the demolition industry, this
phrase means to demolish the building.
How did the inexperienced hijacker pilots execute the
turns necessary to crash into the
World Trade Center towers and
the Pentagon?
The pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon, for
example, executed an incredible 330-degree turn at full
speed and then flew just above the ground before
striking the building. Did they teach this stunt in
flight school? I doubt it.
I have some new questions to ask as well. They have come
up in my research this past year. Here they are:
Whose idea was it to run hijacking simulations at the
same time as the actual hijackings and why were there no
plans to handle the real hijackings?
The simulations left us with very few planes available
to handle the hijackings, which may explain the first
question. If the timing wasn’t deliberate, it is hard to
understand why we could not prepare for contingencies.
Why did VP Cheney decline a golden opportunity to
shoot the plane that approached the Pentagon?
According to the testimony of former Transportation
Secretary Norm Mineta before the 9/11 Commission, a
young officer kept on asking the Vice-President, in the
bunker and in charge in President Bush's absence,
whether the "orders" still stood. Cheney kept on asking
the officer whether he had any reason to believe they
had. Some time later, Mineta learned that the
conversation referred to whether we should shoot down
the plane approaching the Pentagon. Given the fact that
we never shot, it appears that the order was to NOT
shoot. Cheney has never apparently answered any
questions on this subject.
To get the real story about the Pentagon crash, we
really need to see the videotape made by a gas station
camera across the street from the building. Oh yeah. It
was confiscated by the FBI.
Why does the end of the cockpit voice recorder for
United 93 flight run out three minutes before leading
seismologists believe the crash occurred?
Did these transcripts contain messages people high up
decided that we were not supposed to hear? Or were there
technical glitches? If the government is really hiding
something about those three minutes, we will probably
never hear it because the story of heroic passengers
trying to take control of the plane has satisfied the
vast majority of the public.
When did President Bush find out about the first
attack on the
World Trade Center?
Thanks to reader Michael Wells, I have revised my
explanation of this question.
President Bush has said that he saw the first plane hit
World Trade Center-1. Apparently, he saw the plane crash
before he entered the classroom of a school in Florida.
We know this because Andy Card, the then-Chief of Staff,
whispered in the President's ear about the second plane
while the President was in the classroom. The key
question is how Bush saw the first plane hit, since no
one is known to have shown the first strike live and
replays of a video that caught it did not get played
until sometime later.
Why was an unusual amount of money placed on put
options for American Airlines, United Airlines, Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter and other companies that lost vast
amounts of money and stocks on September 11th?
A put option is very much like a bet that a specific
company will lose stock on a specific day. The person or
persons who made the put options had to know what would
happen on September 11th since the deals were much
higher for each company than normal (for some companies
as much as 25 times the usual amount). No one came in to
collect the money earned. Could the calls have been a
warning by someone afraid to go public?
I need your help. If you can give me satisfactory
answers to all of these questions, I will gladly stop
saying that it was an inside job and pursue other
issues.