Here They Come Again: Another Go Round for Wacky 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

There isn't much that the 9/11 conspiracy theorists say that can or should be believed. That even includes the windy claim that their celebration in New York of the sixth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks will be the biggest in history. The problem with that grandiose boast is that the same bunch claimed last year that their fifth anniversary event would be the biggest yet. In the fine print at the bottom of the wearechange.org website release, they add the "clarification" that many of the performance artists for their big 9/11 concert shebang are only tentatively scheduled to appear. Translated: The conspiracy theorists dumped any artist's name they could find on the bill, and they're keeping their fingers crossed that a few might actually show up.

None of this should surprise anyone who has the dimmest notion of what and how the 911 conspiracy theorists operate. We're all by now well familiar with the way they've spun the 9/11 plot. The attacks were part of a sinister plan by President Bush, the GOP, the CIA, FBI and Justice Department to wipe out civil liberties protections, impose a national security state, create a pretext for the quagmire in Iraq, regiment the American people, and strengthen the hand of the pro Israeli lobby in U.S. politics. Some of the more shrill theorists with an anti-Semitic bent flat out say that the terror attack was part of a decades old web of intrigue woven by international Jewish groups to dominate global politics.
Conspiracy theorists allege that explosives were planted at the WTC, Jewish and Israeli Tower workers and occupants were warned the day before supposedly by Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) to stay away, a missile slammed into the Pentagon, the government hid the wreckage of the United Airlines plane that terrorists crashed in Pennsylvania. Every one of these theories has been subject to repeated and meticulous tests, studies, and examinations. And every one of them has been proven absolutely groundless.

But thousands of Americans still believe them. That's easy to understand. The American woods swarm with groups that fervently believe that government, corporate, or international Zionist groups busily hatch secret plots, and concoct hidden plans to wreak havoc on their lives. The Manchurian Candidate syndrome popularized in books and countless movies and TV shows has firmly implanted the notion that shadowy, government groups routinely topple foreign governments, assassinate government leaders, and brainwash operatives to do dirty deeds.

9/11 conspiracy theories have so easily infected the popular imagination for two other not so zany reasons. Government agencies, such as the FBI, CIA, Army intelligence, with the connivance of presidents, have often played fast and loose with the law and even the rules of democracy. They have spied on, harassed, and jailed thousands of Americans from Communists to anti-war activists. The biggest, juiciest and most relentless target for government spymasters during the past decades has been African-American political groups from the moderate NAACP to the radical Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam. Just two weeks before this years 9/11 anniversary a fresh batch of publicly disclosed FBI documents show that the agency waged a kinder, gentler, but no less illegal, spy campaign against Coretta Scott King then the relentless, and lethal campaign the FBI waged against her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The other reason for the paranoid style about 9/11 is the fury that many Americans have toward President Bush. Many Americans are still convinced the GOP hijacked the White House by rigging the votes in Florida in 2000, and repeated the ploy in Ohio in 2004. That makes it easy to believe that the GOP and the administration will say and do anything to win and hold power. The Florida vote was a mix of registrar ineptitude, bureaucratic bungling, partisan political haggling, legal interpretation, and Democratic Party capitulation rather than a concerted conspiracy to seize the top office. The Ohio vote in 2004 was more of the same on a smaller scale. But Bush ultimately conned more voters in Ohio (including the black evangelicals) into believing that he would do a better job of defending family values and fighting the war on terrorism than Democrats. He and the GOP did not need to hatch a conspiracy to do that.

Bush, as other presidents that have got in hot water with the American people with their domestic and foreign policy fumbling, are hardly above beating the war drums and fanning national security jitters to boost their poll ratings, secure public allegiance, and increase their party's political standing. Bush has done that at times. But his in the tank poll ratings, and the resistance of Congress, and the Democrats, and millions of Americans to the war and the further erosion of civil liberties protections, prove that if there was indeed a 9/11 conspiracy to seize power it didn't work. But of course there wasn't one. Yet, on the six anniversary the conspiracy theorists will again busily spin their shopworn 9/11 conspiracy fantasies. And that's part of the fun of conspiracies; they don't require any proof, just true belief.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics New York) in English and Spanish will be out in October.

Comments

[ThomasDoubting]

George W. Bush won the election fair and square, not once, but twice. Saddam Husein had weapons of mass destruction. We have the best health care system in the world. Dick Cheney is only the vice-president, while Bush is the "Decider". A tax cut for "The filthy rich" will benefit the so-called middle class. In an obvious conspiracy, Osama Bin Laden and nineteen other Saudi Arabians, with boxcutters, took on the United States of America and won. We tried our best but they just plain outsmarted us. Almost everyone involved, on our side, made mistakes,lots of mistakes, The Defense Department, the so-called Intelligence agencies, CIA, Army, Navy, and Air Force Intellegence, The Attorney General's office, The FBI, and yes, even the Secret Service. After the attack, the 911 Commission, made some "honest" mistakes. We will find Bin Laden and bring him to justice. Getting rid of the "Death Tax" is a benefit for you. If we kill the people in Afganistan, whom we hired to assist us, in our struggle, against The Soviet Union, we as Americans will be safe, from future attacks. BTW, lets kill some Iraqis too, especially Saddam Hussein. Rudy Guiliani is an American Hero. We hear all this through the Corporate Media, so it must be true......... If you believe this shit, you are in denial, incredibly stupid, insane, brain-dead, or an active agent of our real enemies....Take your pick!

[martha1]

Most Americans would not be able to plough through the following book on the subject of 911, but whether the author was correct or not the book MAY have answered many questions concerning that event.

"The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001"
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed (Author), John Leonard (Author)

[JeffDeVore]

Mr. Hutchinson and Ms Spears are right! We should just believe everything our president tells us. We have been told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth for the last six years and there is nothing suspicious in the careful examination of the events of 9/11. All the theories have been completely debunked. I know 'cause Bill O'Reilly said so!
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to write Santa about my Christmas list.

[jhNY]

Writerss who have evidence in sufficient supply on any issue, classified or merely controversial, seldom lard their prose with derisive pronouncements in lieu of aforementioned facts. Because when writers do that, it's certain that the reader of such pronouncements is looking at the same thing the writer is dismissing: a statement of belief without evidence for any rational basis for that belief.

Unlikely though conspiracies against our government may be, especially to writers who imagine they're too savvy to be taken in by same, likelihood must be compared with the known audacity of the present regime, an audacity that, whenever recognized, has astounded old hands and newcomers alike with its sheer scope and energy.

That's how it is when you're watching the work of psychopaths: Rules? Not for them, but plenty for you. They'll make 'em up on the spot if they want. A sitting president has never lost re-election? Really all the justification a Rove needs to start a war which will be still be going strong on election day. Transfer of stupendous amounts of money to favored cronies and supporters? Great idea, only call it a war and convince decent people to salute, at least for a while. Nothing to it.

But to foment a terrorist act in NYC? Heavens forfend! After all there's all these mud people and tricky Jews up here that Republicans in the heartland have always rushed to defend. Surely they couldn't be sacrificed for a nutty geopolitical goal. That would be crazy!

Orchestrators of events in history have whipped up ordinary people into believing extraordinarily things. Probably most of the people in Germany thought the Poles had attacked their radio station in 1940. They also, most of them, thought an insane Jew had set fire to the Reichstag.

But that was so long ago. It would be impossible for anybody to pull stuff like that now, unless they had the audacity...

[FarSeeingArt]

Perhaps we should extend some credibility to the experts - not just make fun of them.

Former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member Calls for New Investigation of 9/11

http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=60927

U.S. Navy "Top Gun" pilot, Commander Ralph Kolstad, started questioning the official account of 9/11 within days of the event. "It just didn't make any sense to me," he said. And now 6 years after 9/11 he says, "When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story."

http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=60853

FBI says, it has "No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13664.htm

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

There is plenty more where this came from, a lot more - all from persons/agencies with CREDIBILITY.

[1will]

Bin Laden did confess to the crime on TV. That's pretty decent proof.

[dn]

Bin Laden would confess to anything that would bring him more fame from the misguided junior terrorists training in his camps. That's not proof it's common sense.

[Nommo]

Did not.

[zenx98]

Apparantly you were sleeping during senate hearings in which Condi Rice was unable to recall a briefing in which the subject matter discussed was BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK U.S. USING PLANES AS WEAPONS.

The administration fell asleep while on watch. Whether the cause was political calculation or incompetence the net result of the incendiary cowardice of Sept 11 was to deliver a godesend of carte blanche political capital for the implementation of a global agenda with a well documented history. Given the co-occurance of the two is really any wonder that suspicion would rise from that smoking hole? Given the extraordinary fiscal, political and military mismanagement of that capital is it really any wonder that suspicion would fester?

[BBackSoon]

I must agree that too much of this is just too fantastic to believe. But I also think there might be some seeds of truth. Such as, how did an airplane with wings make a round hole in the Pentagon and not leave the wings on the ground outside? I am not a structural engineer but I know that matter does not disappear. There were two things that could have happened to the wings. They could have gone thru the walls and left a like shape hole. Or the wings separated from the fuselage on impact leaving a round hole and wings on the outside of the building.

I think we also have to remember that Cheney was in a Secure Location while Bush was making the rounds. Since when did we protect the VP more than the Pres?

We have an idiot figurehead and a sinister backroom guy. I fear that when the truth is known, years from now, it will be much scarier and more disturbing that these theories.

Also, when the next 'Terror Attack' happens here and we see martial law declared, elections postponed and the true beginning of the Bush Reign will you tell us how it was not a conspiracy?

[BobLablah]

You are correct. The dozens of witnesses who saw the plane crash are all in on the conspiracy. In fact, everyone except readers of the HuffPo are in on it. We laugh at you all at the meetings.

[JustAnotherJoe]

The truth is boring, but a whole lot more infuriating. The political leadership and the bureaucratic institutions that we"ve established to maintain order and keep us safe failed miserably. I think most would rather blame an elaborate conspiracy than ace up to the fact that these powerful institutions were utterly incompetent and the leadership negligent (Bush"s you covered your arse now statement, Rice not acting on the Bin Laden determined to strike in the US memo). Our mighty military industrial complex was supposed to make us invulnerable to attack. Truth is the government failed in its basic function to provide for the common defense, and the military industrial complex's function is to make people rich. Conspiracy theories actually keep us from seeing the true task is to reform, if not eliminate the elements (CIA? Bush Admin?) that didn"t function. The last thing those making money off of the military build up want is people asking questions like how will continuing to spend billions on weapons like the F-22 and the ABMS stop the next men with boxcutters?

[snaggster]

That's right. The government is too busy taking care of their fatcat campaign donors. It's time consuming to think of ways to extract more money from the government treasury for their cronies. Doesn't leave a lot of time to imagine what the jihadis might try next. Osama & Co made no secret of the fact that the World Trade Center was the #1 target.

[leftcoastindy]

Bush/Cheney has never cared about protecting us, so this fits his MO. A few thousand people dead (sorry about that) and they have their Pearl Harbor... Perfect!

[drblack]

Osama and saddam Husein were both funded and armed by the American taxpayer via the US government.
It was Don Rumsfeld,Dick Cheney who gave Saddam the chemicals to make the gas that was used on the Kurds. Chemical Ali couldn't have been without Reagan giving him the chemicals.
Saddam was awarded the key to the city in Chicago for giving money to a catholic school...so he was actually an honorary American citizen.
By reading some of the neo-con think tanks stuff one thing they say they needed was a "Pearl harbor" moment so they could do what they have since done.
I wouldn't put it past Bush and Co to simply allow 9-11 to happen. Their are many strange events and unanaswered questions about it and only a sheep like being would not have some serious doubts about the official story. Story being the key word here.

[GhostofBillHicks]

I don't know how or who,All I know is that what we saw happen on 9-11-01,DOES NOT ADD UP.
Until there is an IDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION(you know like THE LAW requires),also remember Bush HAD TO BE FORCED to put the 9/11 Commision together,people who DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO HIDE ARE NOT SO SECRETIVE.
Personally,I don't know whos behind the 9/11 attacks,all I know is that the Trade Centers didn't come down just because of the planes and the ensuing fires,plus the plane that crashed into the field in PA,where was the debris,two giant,mostly titanium jet engines DID NOT just disintegrate,same for the Pentagon.
PLUS,DON'T FORGET THIS GOVERNMENT TOLD US THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS A "MAGIC BULLET"(Arlen Specter,the Kennedy thing,remember)they beleive in magic,weeee! its magic.
Yeah,their totally credible,especially THIS administration,ANYTHING is possible.And people who think people like me,who question things that defy logic and reason.Keep calling us "crazy,conspiracy nuts" keep doing your job,THATS WHAT THEY WANT,YOUR A GOOD LITTLE SHEEP...

[Henry]

I know that Osama used to work for CIA, or some off budget U.S. Moojahadeen fund vis-a-vis the reds. I think Osama still works for us. Think about it, it would explain a lot of the unexplainable.

[TheIndependenceParty]

The conspiracy theories abound in a vacuum. The governmnent admits it was a conspiracy, ... Their account simply differs in the naming of participants. That Bush grudgingly agreed to the naming of a commission, after first refusing, simply threw fuel on the fire.
~
I find it incredible that on the very day that nearly 3000 Americans were murdered, the government presented photos to the media of those who they contend to this day committed the crime. They also seized and have yet to release the surveillance tapes from the Pentagon, and surrounding businesses. It seems preposterous that they could know so much, and yet release so little information about the largest mass murder in American history.
~
The laws of thermodynamics were not suspended that day. Fires burned that day just as they did before and have since. Gravity was, and still is, quantifiable as always. The NTSB routinely reassembles every fragment of airliners when they crash. Within weeks, Bush and Giuliani had shipped nearly every fragment of the WTC off as scrap to China without so much as a single metallurgical analysis, to my knowledge. To this day no murder charges nor investigation have been conducted by the City of New York. Why not?
~
The way to extinguish crackpot theories is to release and investigate all available evidence. This has never been done. Also, to categorize all 9-1-1 skeptics as unsubstantiated, is to wear blinders to irrefutable facts of science, engineering, and fire investigation. At the core of the scholars who question 9-1-1, are dedicated and highly professional individuals who should not, and ultimately will not, be dismissed out of hand as crackpots and foil hats.

[hoopoe]

so, you are saying that our government has never and would never either ALLOW or CREATE and incident that would lead the country into war(s) they had already determined to enter? ever hear of the gulf of tonkin incident? that was a fake. ever hear of pearl harbor? they knew that was coming and did nothing to stop it. there are countless others... i'm not saying every conspiracy theory is valid, but to suggest that any variation on the official story is implausible is not only naive, it's absurd.

[usna73]

Anyone who ever knew Chic Burlingame who captained the hijacked Penatgon crash plane, understands that conspiracy is a complete and utter fantasy. Please look into his history from Naval Academy to Naval Aviator and beyond. Do your homework.

To tarnish his name is beyond unpatriotic. It is sacreligious.

[snaggster]

Whatever. Not everyone gets to be in on the conspiracy. I personally don't believe that the government planned it, but if it did, it wouldn't have to have told Chic.

[Nommo]

Is he god?

[Chebornek]

Our America has been duped yet again by our own government. The domestic media are not our allies. Neither of the two major political parties can, will, nor want to rescue US.

You want a real theory? Within the next ten years, there will be a major coup led by the American people against this government. Our armed forces will participate, and like the Soviets before us, our armed forces will not swing down upon the people, but will work in concert against those who are actively seeking to usurp our Constitution.

Bank on it.