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According to the final report of the 9-11 Commission, on 11 September 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four planes in the Eastern United States. They crashed two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense at the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to regain control of the plane. Doubting the official explanation, a number of conspiracy theories have emerged concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The "official story" as a "conspiracy theory"

Numerous members of the 9/11 Truth Movement have pointed out that the official account of the events of 9/11 is in fact a conspiracy theory. Professor of philosophy of religion and theology David Ray Griffin argues that the question isn’t whether or not one believes a 9/11 conspiracy theory, but which conspiracy theory is best supported by the evidence.

In literal terms, the official account is a conspiracy theory, according to which Muslim extremists, led by Osama bin Laden, who was operating out of caves in Afghanistan, successfully conspired to attack the United States. The official account, as asserted by the 9/11 Commission Report, also holds that the conspirators caught the U.S. military and intelligence agencies entirely off guard and came as a complete surprise to the U.S. government. However, this account is generally not discussed as a conspiracy theory, as it is currently accepted by the overwhelming majority of the world’s politicians, academics, and mass media.

A variation of the official account is the theory that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was involved in the conspiracy to carry out the 9/11 attacks. These claims were most common during the buildup to the Iraq War as they were made, or alluded to, by various members of President George W. Bush's cabinet. This theory has been rejected by a majority of academics, but is still a widely held view in the United States due to the White House's use of the theory to help justify the Iraq War. Some proponents of this theory refer to another theory, surrounding the Oklahoma City Bombing, according to which Iraqi intelligence agents were involved, as was reported by investigative journalist Jana Davis.

Overview

The official account and its more disputed Iraq corollary notwithstanding, the following theories have gained the most popularity and are based on one of the following ideas:

• That individuals within the U.S. government are covering-up key details of the attacks and stonewalling an honest and exhaustive investigation into the events of September 11.
• That individuals within the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the attacks and consciously failed to prevent them. This group of theories are referred to as LIHOP ("Let It Happen On Purpose").
• That individuals within the U.S. government orchestrated the attacks themselves. This group of theories are referred to as MIHOP ("Make It Happen On Purpose").
• Some conspiracy theories propose that the governments of Israel or Iraq were behind the attacks

Popular claims that 9/11 conspiracy theorists cite in support of these ideas are as follows.

Governmental Foreknowledge

• After the attacks, David Schippers, the chief prosecutor for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, declared that he had received warnings from FBI agents six weeks earlier which included the dates and targets of the attacks. Schippers claims the FBI agents came to him because FBI headquarters had blocked their investigations and threatened them with prosecution if they went public with their information. Schippers reports that he tried to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft about this matter but Ashcroft repeatedly refused to return his calls.
• In the article "Did We Know What Was Coming?" by William Norman Grigg, published in The New American, (published by the John Birch Society) Grigg states that according to three FBI agents he interviewed, "the information provided to Schippers was widely known within the FBI before September 11."
• Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines on July 26, 2001 because of a "threat assessment" by the FBI. (Sen. Bob Graham, Intelligence Matters, Random House Publishing Group, 2004)
• Two of the 9/11 hijackers were living with an FBI asset for almost 4 months prior to September, 2001. The FBI did not give this information to the joint congressional committee investigating 9/11, then, it refused to serve a subpoena on the asset to appear before the joint committee. In a letter to the committee chairmen, a senior member of the FBI's congressional affairs staff explained that the Bush administration had not allowed the FBI to serve the subpoena on the asset. (Sen. Bob Graham, Intelligence Matters, Random House Publishing Group, 2004)
• An unusually high volume of put options were purchased in the three days before 9/11 for only two airlines, American and United. Put options were also purchased for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which occupied 22 stories of the World Trade Center. Although no evidence has yet been provided that there was anything sinister in these transactions, US intelligence agencies are known to monitor markets for signs of imminent, untoward events.
• Rep Curt Weldon has asserted that over a year before the 9/11 attacks, a classified US intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" identified Mohammed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers as likely members of an Al Qaeda cell operating in the US. The team recommended that the information be shared with the FBI but the military's Special Operations Command rejected the recommendation. (New York Times, Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00, 8/9/2005)
  • Pentagon officials said they have found three more individuals who recall an intelligence chart identifying Mohamed Atta as a terrorist one year prior to the attacks. (MSNBC, More remember Atta ID’d as terrorist pre-9/11, 9/1/2005)

The World Trade Center

See also: Collapse of the World Trade Center

• The government has not produced voice (CVR) or flight data recorders (FDR) in the New York attack, so-called black boxes, a fact unprecedented in the aviation history of major domestic crashes. It is unknown if any FDR were recovered from the wreckage.
• The WTC 1, 2, and 7 buildings are the only steel frame buildings in history to collapse due to fire.
• Seconds before both towers collapsed, people in and around the towers reported small earth tremors, this is also shown where cameras mounted on tripods positioned directly towards the towers also shook shortly before the towers collapsed.
• Smoke was reported coming from the street level and basement around the North Tower seconds before it collapsed.
• The WTC 7 building was not struck by any airliner nor were the fires inside caused or sustained by jet fuel. The official explanation for the collapse of the twin towers relies primarily on these two details. Building 7 is said to have collapsed due to having been pelted by debris from the twin towers. This building showed no signs of instability until the moment it suddenly collapsed into its own footprint approximately 6 hours after the attacks. The owner of WTC7 said on a PBS documentary that "the decision was made to pull it" for public safety reasons. "Pull" is demolition industry lingo for demolish.
• The rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered for months after their collapse. Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, N.Y, reported seeing pools of "literally molten steel" at the WTC. This was also confirmed by Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI). The melting point of un-fireproofed steel is around 3000 °F while the highest speculation regarding temperatures inside the twin towers is 2000 °F. (American Free Press, New Seismic Data Refutes Official Explanation, April 12, 2004)
• The Twin Towers collapsed straight down, at close to free-fall speed. This is a characteristic of, but not necessarily indicative of, a controlled demolition.
• Most of the columns came down in sections about 30 ft. long. Soon after the attacks, most of the steel columns were loaded onto trucks and shipped to Asia. This may have no relevance, as some of the largest users of scrap metal reside in the Pacific Rim. Some, however, point out that the area was considered a crime scene and that the WTC materials should have been preserved for an extensive forensic criminal investigation. The quick removal of debris is often cited as evidence of a governmental cover up. See images of the debris sorting for more information.

Viewpoints surrounding the collapses

• In a letter to Frank Gayle of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories, wrote "This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I’m sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans. Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around 250 °C suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure." Underwriters Laboratories is the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the World Trade Center towers.
• Van Romero, Vice President for Research and Economic Development at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and a major authority on the effects of explosions on buildings, has said "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." Romero has since retracted this statement, saying "Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail." ("Explosives Planted in Towers, New Mexico Tech Expert Says", Albuquerque Journal, September, 2001)
• A June 13, 2005 article in the Washington Times, reported that former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term, Morgan Reynolds, said the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.
• Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, expressed his doubt about the official 9/11 story in the following statement: "I know many qualified engineers and scientists have said the WTC collapsed from explosives. In fact, if you look at the manner in which it fell, you have to give their conclusions credibility."
• In The New Pearl Harbor, author David Ray Griffin argues that the fact that WTC 2 collapsed first, when it is apparent most of the jet fuel was ignited on impact, and burnt outside the tower (after the first impact on WTC 1 earlier, where more fuel appears to have burnt within the building for a longer period of time) makes the collapse extremely questionable. Additionally, he argues that the impact of the second aircraft was not as precise as the first, so less fuel would have been burning in the central support area as well, further eroding the government's notion that the central support system failed due to melting.
• Minoru Yamasaki, architect and designer of the WTC, had been reported saying "We designed the towers to take multiple 707 jet strikes." Some have falsely stated that this statement was made after (and in reference to) the collapse of the towers. This is clearly not true though, because Minoru Yamasaki died on February 6, 1986, but his statements about the buildings' structural integrity could still be considered sound evidence. At the time the initial designing of the Twin Towers took place, the Boeing 707 was the predominant large commercial aircraft, being slowly displaced by the Boeing 727, a smaller but more efficient aircraft. Jumbo Jets did not exist when Yamasaki developed the plans for the towers. However, numerous experts have expressed doubt that the two aircraft alone could cause both towers to collapse in almost precisely the same fashion.

The Pentagon

• Flight 77 was able to fly toward the Pentagon for 40 minutes and was not intercepted despite sophisticated radar technology, anti-missile batteries surrounding the Pentagon, and the building's close proximity to Andrews Air Force Base.
• At the time of the attacks, the west wing (which was the area of the crash site) of the Pentagon was under construction, and therefore nearly empty.
• The hole in the outer wall of the Pentagon is said to be too small to have been created by a Boeing 757.
• Many consider photographic evidence of plane wreckage lying on the grounds of the Pentagon to be ambiguous and unconvincing due to the lack of burnt metal and human remains.
• Pentagon surveillance cameras captured 5 frames from before, during, and after the impact, but none show exactly what hit the building. This has lead some people to speculate that some kind of missile or bomb may have hit the Pentagon instead of an airplane.
• The FBI confiscated videos, which might have captured the attack, from a nearby gas station immediately after the attacks. These videos are classified and have not yet been released. ("Three Months On, Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon", Bill McKelway, Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 11, 2001)
• Military personnel were photographed removing from the crash site a large light-weight object shrouded by a blue tarp. Some conjecture that this was to hide its contents from the public.
• CNN Initial coverage of the Pentagon strike. http://thewebfairy.com/911/pentagon/index.html

War Games on the Morning of 9/11

Several researchers have cited the multiple war games and disaster preparation drills that took place on the morning of 9/11 as a likely cover for the actual attacks that day, including Rep. Cynthia McKinney, economist Michel Chossudovsky and Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness. On the morning of 9/11, the following war games and training exercises were being run by USAF, NORAD, CIA, NRO, FAA and FEMA., :

• Operation Northern Vigilance, a yearly Air Force drill simulating a Russian attack, in which defense aircraft normally patrolling the Northeast are re-deployed to Canada and Alaska;
• Operations Vigilant Warrior and Vigilant Guardian, a pair of exercises (as attacker and defender) that simulated airplane hijackings and projected false aircraft images on radar screens;
• Operation Northern Guardian;
• National Reconnaissance Office emergency response drill of an aircraft crashing into its own headquarters.
• In addition, Tripod II, a FEMA drill for the event of a biowarfare attack in New York City, was to take place on September 12th. FEMA set up a command post for this exercise at Pier 29 on September 10th.

With five or more hijacking scenarios playing out during these war games, NORAD and FAA radars would have shown multiple "hijacked" aircraft, thus confusing and delaying the response to any real threat. McKinney has twice questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about these 9/11 war games during his testimony before Congress .

The President's Behavior

The President's location at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida on the morning of the attacks was highly publicized in the local press. However, after the second plane struck the World Trade Center, the Secret Service permitted the President to remain in a classroom for 10 minutes and then to give a speech to the nation from the same school. The fact that the president's schedule for that day was public knowledge would in itself be more than adequate reason to rush the president from the school to protect not only the commander-in-chief and his staff, but to further secure the safety of the students and teachers at the school itself. The Secret Service had no way of knowing if any of the hundreds of commercial aircraft in the immediate vicinity of the school were potential "missiles" aimed at Booker Elementary - yet they allowed the president to remain at the school for quite a period of time before rushing him to Air Force One.

This theory uses these facts to support the idea that the Bush administration knew of the attacks and somehow was convinced there was no imminent threat to the President of the United States. One could think that as standard operating procedure as outlined in Secret Service press releases, the Secret Service in protecting such an important person would act immediately to remove the President to a secure location. Guests and the White House press corps reported that they were hurried onto Air Force One and that the plane made an aggressive, highly unusual, takeoff - some stating that the plane was climbing at an angle in excess of 55 degrees ("near vertical"). Others note that, unlike guests at the White House, Bush was hundreds of miles away from any likely national target and that he was hundreds of miles away from the two actual targets in Washington, DC and New York City. However critics of the president's behavior that day argue that this still does not explain a lack of concern for the president's immediate security since his appearance at the school was public information made available days, if not weeks before September 11th, 2001.

Some have deduced the Secret Service knew that the president was not in danger of imminent attack that particular day because normal procedures were apparently not followed. Some defenders of the president have argued that he avoided a rapid departure so as "not to scare the school children," but critics respond that a much more expedient departure could be made without causing alarm.

Inconsistent Explanations

The explanation for the military's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks has changed over time:

• Initially, the military reported that, on 9/11, no fighters were sent up to intercept the hijacked planes until after the Pentagon was hit.
• Later the same week, the military put out a second story, saying that it had sent up fighters but because the FAA had been late in notifying it about the hijackings, the fighters arrived too late.
• The 9/11 Commission reported a third version that the FAA gave the military insufficient warning of the first hijacked airline and no warning of the other hijackings until after they had crashed.
• Many government officials have said that, prior to the 9/11 attacks, no one could have imagined that planes could be hijacked and used as weapons. In reality, intelligence officials had found information outlining a terrorist desire to use planes as weapons on at least 12 occasions prior to September 11, 2001. (9/11 Congressional Inquiry, 7/24/03)
• The Military now states that it had only two fighters on standby to scramble to protect the entire North Eastern Quadrant of the United States with two additional pilots on standby on the morning of September 11th, 2001. Yet stories abound of private and commercial aircraft being intercepted by multiple fighters for the slightest suspicious action including accidental intrusion into restricted airspace, unusual maneuvers in regulated airspace, loss of transponder signal and variations from filed flight plans, to name a few.

The 9/11 Commission

• Vice President Dick Cheney initially opposed an investigation into the 9/11 attacks, saying that it would take resources and personnel away from the war on terrorism.
• The official investigation began 411 days after the attacks, whereas the investigations into the attack on Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK began after only 9 and 7 days, respectively.
• The commission was given a startup appropriation of only $3 million and made a subsequent funding request for $11 million in order to meet its target date for completion. As a point of comparison, $50 million was set aside to investigate the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia.

Other Points of Interest

• Rep. Cynthia McKinney led a Capitol Hill hearing on July 23, 2005 on whether the Bush administration was involved in the terrorist attacks. Panelist and former CIA official Melvin Goodman was quoted as saying "Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian and I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom." Many 9/11 researchers testified at the hearing, including Michael Ruppert, Peter Dale Scott, Wayne Madsen and several others .
• A September, 2000 report by the Project for the New American Century (cofounded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle), entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources For the New Century, states the following:
  • "To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs."
  • "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
• Half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall said that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according a the poll conducted by Zogby International from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004.
• The FOX TV series The Lone Gunmen (X-Files spin off) aired their opening episode "Pilot" six months before 9/11 which depicted a secret U.S. government agency behind a plot to crash a Boeing 727 into the WTC via remote control and blame it on foreign terrorists in the hopes of generating a bigger military budget.
• Although it had distanced itself from their former brother and company employee, The Saudi Binladin Group's corporate website , coincidentally also had expired on September 11, 2001, the same day as the attacks in the United States.

Motives

All theories as to why members of the U.S. government would have allowed the attacks to occur, perpetrated the attacks, and/or obstructed information seem to entail one or more of the following motives:

• To justify increased defense spending and provide financial payback to many companies that supported the Republicans in the 2000 election (e.g. Halliburton).
• To gain the support of US citizens to invade the Middle East in order to control petroleum reserves in response to a peaking of global oil production. (See peak oil)
• To justify passing legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, which would grant extra-constitutional powers to the federal government - in violation of the president's own oath of office.
• To create an opportunity for a particular group of Republicans, or so called neoconservatives, to seize and maintain power through increased popularity, perpetual war, and the stifling of dissenting opinions.
• To conceal a deeper Saudi complicity extending into the Saudi royal family and other components of the Saudi government.
• To cover-up the failures of US intelligence agencies.

One document often cited as pointing to the possible pre-planning of the attack by US conspirators is the document "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC) authored by Dick Cheney, among others, in the 90's. Now an organization with their own website (www.newamericancentury.org)- the original document written in the late 90s, and published in 2000 with the assistance of Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, among others in the current administration notes the need for "a new Pearl Harbor" to unite the US citizenry in allowing the government to attain its desired goals. 9/11 has frequently been compared to the Pearl Harbor attacks by the American mass media, and it was also reported by the Washington Post that on the night of 9/11 president Bush wrote in his diary that "the Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century took place today." This has led people like David Ray Griffin to argue that 9/11 fulfilled PNAC's idea of a "new Pearl Harbor."

Fourth Plane theory

There has been speculation that United Airlines Flight 93 was in fact shot down by planes of the USAF (rather than being deliberately crashed by the hijackers). This issue was addressed by David Ray Griffin in The New Pearl Harbor, citing research by Paul Thompson. Thompson cites a number of mainstream media reports that fighter jets were actually much closer to Flight 93 at the time of the crash than stated in the official record , that local witnesses saw military aircraft flying over the crash zone immediately after the crash , and that pieces of Flight 93 were found far from the crash site, indicating that it started breaking up before it hit the ground . Furthermore, Donald Rumsfeld "misspoke," mentioning "the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon" while making a prepared statement to soldiers in Iraq. Some have argued that it may have been shot down, and its passengers sacrificed to prevent it reaching its target, though Thompson and Griffin believe it was likely shot down because its intended mission had been sabotaged. In Alex Jones's film Martial Law: Rise of the Police State, he states a belief that some airforce generals rebelled against Cheney and shot down this plane in order to stop it from hitting the U.S. Capitol. Jones cites undisclosed sources, so most people in the 9/11 Truth Movement regard this as speculative, though possibly true.

Silverstein's "pull it" comment

Some argue that WTC building seven was brought down by controlled demolition cite a PBS documentary where former WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein recalled telling firefighters to "pull" the building. While they insist that Silverstein could only have been referring to demolition, their critics argue that the term "pull" can also be interpreted as "evacuate." Silverstein has never elaborated on the exact meaning of this comment, but has said he was not referring to a controlled demolition. Critics of the official account also counter that the fact that the building had already been evacuated at the time of Silvertein's order casts doubt on the alternative explanation for his use of the term.

Claims related to Jews and Israel

That 4,000 Israeli/Jewish employees did not attend work at the WTC on 9/11

This claim, made by Al-Manar, has been repeated by a wide variety of other sources, such as Amiri Baraka. The original Al-Manar claim was:

"With the announcement of the attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, the international media, particularly the Israeli one, hurried to take advantage of the incident and started mourning 4,000 Israelis who work at the two towers. Then suddenly, no one ever mentioned anything about those Israelis and later it became clear that they remarkably did not show up in their jobs the day the incident took place. No one talked about any Israeli being killed or wounded in the attacks."

In some versions of the story circulated on the Internet, the title was changed to "4,000 Jewish Employees in WTC Absent the Day of the Attack" from its original "4000 Israeli Employees in WTC Absent the Day of the Attack", spawning a further rumour that not only Israeli but all Jewish employees stayed away.

There were in fact a total of 5 Israeli deaths in the attack (Alona Avraham, Leon Lebor, Shay Levinhar, Daniel Lewin, Haggai Sheffi), of which 3 were in the World Trade Center and 2 were on the planes. (4 are listed as American on most lists, presumably having dual citizenship.) The total number of Israeli-born residents of New York was 21,288 in 2000 (), out of a population of 8,008,278, or 0.27% of the population; multiplying this by the total World Trade Center death toll (2,602) would give 7 expected victims. Early estimates of Israeli deaths, as of the total death toll and the death toll for other countries' citizens (e.g. India), proved substantially exaggerated (George W. Bush cited the figure of 130 in his speech of September 20).

The number of Jewish victims, as one might expect in New York, was considerably higher, estimated at 400-500.

The figure "4,000" was probably taken by Al-Manar from a Jerusalem Post article of September 12 (p. 3), which said "The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has so far received the names of 4,000 Israelis believed to have been in the areas of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon at the time of the attack." This number, obviously, was not (as Al-Manar claimed) restricted to employees; in fact, Tsviya Shimon, minister of administrative affairs for the Israeli consulate and mission in New York, said on September 14 "that there might have been up to 100 Israeli citizens working in the World Trade Center".

That Israelis or Jews were warned to stay away by Israeli intelligence

Al-Manar wrote that "Arab diplomatic sources revealed to the Jordanian al-Watan newspaper that those Israelis remained absent that day based on hints from the Israeli General Security apparatus, the Shabak".

It is unclear whether al-Watan (a minor Jordanian newspaper with no website) made these claims, and who (if anyone) the alleged "Arab diplomatic sources" were. No independent confirmation has been produced for this claim, which is generally regarded as highly implausible.

That Sharon was warned by Shabak to stay away from New York

Al-Manar claimed that

Suspicions had increased further after Israeli newspaper Yadiot Ahranot revealed that the Shabak prevented Israeli premier Ariel Sharon from traveling to New York and particularly to the city's eastern coast to participate in a festival organized by the Zionist organizations in support of the "Israel". Aharon Bernie, the commentator at the newspaper, brought up the issue and came up with a negative conclusion, saying "no answer". He then asked about the clue behind the Shabak's position in preventing Sharon's participation, and again without giving an answer.

A pro-Israel rally, led by the United Jewish Communities and expected to include 50,000 people, had been planned for September 23, 2001, and Ariel Sharon had been going to speak there. It was canceled on September 12. However, according to The Forward, Sharon was still scheduled to speak there at that point.

There is an Israeli reporter named Aharon Barnea, of Israel's Channel 2 News, whose wife Amalia works for Yediot Aharonot; it has been speculated that "Aharon Bernie" arose as a misspelling of this name.

That a group of Israelis filmed 9/11 whilst celebrating

This claim formed part of the Al-Manar report mentioned above, which claimed that:

For its part, the Israeli Ha'aretz' newspaper revealed that the FBI arrested five Israelis four hours after the attack on the Twin Towers while filming the smoking skyline from the roof of their company's building. The FBI had arrested the five for "puzzling behavior". They are said to have been caught videotaping the disaster in what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery.

This claim was substantially correct: Yossi Melman had reported to that effect in Haaretz on September 17 2001, using the words "puzzling behavior" and "what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery." Several mainstream Western media groups researched this. On June 21, 2002, ABC published a report that five Israelis seen filming the events of September 11 in New York and looking "happy", were subsequently arrested, claiming (on The Forward's authority) that the "FBI concluded that two of the men were Israeli intelligence operatives" but had no advance knowledge of 9/11.

The Forward had reported the five as a possible Mossad surveillance operation conducted not against the US but against "radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism." Mossad was known to have been infiltrating Al Qaeda at the time. The five Israelis, Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari, were kept in custody in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park for approximately two months, eventually being deported back to Israel on November 20-21, 2001. Ellner and others in the prison have complained of abuse by prison guards.

The claim was revived by the Scotland-based Sunday Herald's article (Nov 2, 2003).

Claims that Israel had some amount of advance knowledge but failed to share it

An ambiguous claim that the Mossad had been shadowing the perpetrators and had advance warning of these attacks, but failed to share it was made at .

Supporters of this claim sometimes cite a Washington Post article of September 28, 2001, according to which "Officials at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that two employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks." CNN also reported this, but added that "Alex Diamandis, vice president for sales and marketing with Odigo Inc., said there was nothing specifically about the attacks in the message, but he said it was suspicious in nature, especially because of its timing." The Israeli newspaper Haaretz also published reports regarding these warnings .

The first major Western source to explicitly make this claim was Fox News, in a story in December 2001 - a four-part series by Carl Cameron, condemned by Israeli officials (Jerusalem Post), which "alleges that Israeli intelligence officials failed to share what they knew about September 11 with their American counterparts prior to the attacks". Soon afterwards Fox pulled it from its website without explanation.

Israeli officials claim that within the week prior to 9/11, they had warned both the FBI and CIA in August of an imminent large-scale attack.. There were also reports that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad urgently tried to warn the US government that an attack was pending and provided details, but apparently no heed was paid to these warnings , that it asked the French and Egyptian intelligence services to pass similar warnings, and that a company which moved had in fact been planning to relocate for some months, and had announced its relocation plans in April 2001 (hreda press release archives).

Less Common Theories

• The Church of Scientology claims that the 9/11 hijackers were brainwashed by psychiatrists, who were the real masterminds behind the attacks , despite the fact that none of the hijackers ever visited psychiatrists.

See also

• Background history of the September 11, 2001 attacks
• September 11, 2001 attacks
• 9/11 Truth Movement
• Bush family conspiracy theory
• Coincidence theory

External Links

Final report of the "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" (9-11 Commission), chaired by Thomas H. Kean

• Kean Report

Cynthia McKinney's July 2005 Congressional Briefing on 9/11

• McKinney Briefing

Discussion and Evidence of various conspiracy issues

• From the Wilderness, founded by Michael Ruppert
• Centre for Research on Globalization, edited by Michel Chossudovsky
• Bogus 9/11 websites that muddy the waters
• 911Physics.co.nr A take on the physics of the 9/11 attack
• Political Research Associates critique of The New Pearl Harbor

• David Ray Griffin's rebuttal

• David Ray Griffin and Chip Berlet debate 9/11 issues on Democracy Now!
• 911Truth.org A 9/11 conspiracy website.
• 9/11 Citizens' Commission, International 9/11 Truth Inquiry
• Israeli penetration of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 and warnings to USA
• The origin of the 9/11 mysterious 'melt down'? Henk Ruyssenaars
• Question 9/11, a collection of free video downloads about 9/11
• 911Research.wtc7.net 9-11 Research: An Attempt to Uncover the Truth About September 11th, 2001
• 'The censured FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds speaks out'
• The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions

Skeptical of or debunking larger conspiracy claim

• Popular Mechanics examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
• Snopes.com answer to the rumors about the Pentagon attack
• Skeptical review of David Ray Griffin book, The New Pearl Harbor, (and Griffin's response)
• Argues a 757 plane did crash into the Pentagon
• Video partially rebutting "In Plane Site" and Pentagon flash animation
• 9/11 has generated the mother of all conspiracy theories
• EXPERT DEBUNKS 9-11 CONSPIRACY THEORIES
• September 11 Conspiracy Theories
• "Hunt the Boeing" Answers by Paul Boutin and Patrick Di Justo
• Rebuts various elements of the September 11 conspiracy theories
• Highlights what most conspiracy theories ignore: 9/11 motives not what Bush claims

Motives for 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

• September 11, 2001 attacks
• Conspiracy theories