9/11 Conspiracy Theories that would make you THINK twice!

9/11 conspiracy theories are found all over the internet. But rarely are they presented in an organized and objective manner.

According to most 9/11 conspiracies, groups other than or in addition to al-Qaeda were involved in planning and carrying out the attacks against the United States on September 11. One of them is the notion that senior government figures were aware of the attacks beforehand.

The government has vehemently denied these theories. The proponents contend that the widely accepted account contains contradictions or that there is evidence that was neglected, hidden, or ignored. But could there be any truth to these theories? Let’s take a deeper look.

The most well-known conspiracy theory contends that controlled demolitions rather than structural failure brought on by collision and fire caused the Twin Towers to collapse.

Another widely held theory is that the Pentagon was attacked by a missile fired by Americans working against the government, that the hijacked aircraft were controlled remotely, or that a commercial airliner was given permission to take off after the American military effectively stood down.

Conspiracy theorists have suggested that these actions may have been undertaken to advance geostrategic goals, such as constructing a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan, by justifying the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Other conspiracies contend that the authorities were aware of the attacks beforehand and purposefully ignored or helped the perpetrators. Organizations like Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth have advocated for proper re-investigation in light of multiple scientific findings that a controlled demolition of the buildings took place on the 11^th of September, 2001.

What happened on 9/11 in the United States of America?

Al-Qaeda suicide bombers hijacked, crashed, and destroyed United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s twin towers, and United Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. Furthermore, Flight 93 crashed into a field, after a brave passenger uprising.

The Twin Towers collapsed, while other World Trade Center buildings were destroyed or damaged because of the fires from the main WTC buildings. The airliner’s impact and the ensuing fire seriously damaged the Pentagon.

After the passengers and flight crew tried to regain control of the aircraft, the hijackers also brought down a fourth plane, this time into a field not far from Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Due to a breakdown in communication between various law enforcement and intelligence officers, pre-attack warnings about the planned strikes by al-Qaeda against the United States were disregarded.

The 9/11 report blamed bureaucratic inertia and restrictions created in the 1970s to stop abuses that led to crises during that decade, most notably the Watergate crisis, for the lack of interagency communication. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations were criticized in the study for their “lack of imagination.”

9/11 Conspiracy Theories: Is Something REALLY Wrong with the Official Reports?

Since the attacks, numerous conspiracy theories have advanced in books, movies, and websites. Many organizations and people promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories consider themselves members of the 9/11 Truth movement.

Six hours after the attack, an online chat forum commented that the towers’ collapse appeared to be the result of deliberate demolition. The author claimed that if, after a few days, not a single official had brought up the controlled demolition component, “I think we have a REALLY significant problem.”

Early hypotheses mainly addressed several apparent discrepancies in the publicly accessible material, and supporters later created more detailed speculations about a purported scheme.

One untrue claim that was extensively disseminated via email and the Internet is that since no Jews were murdered during the attack, the Mossad must have been responsible for them rather than Islamic terrorists.

In Europe, elaborate initial theories surfaced. A French National Centre for Scientific Research researcher released a thesis on the “inside job” notion in Le Monde one week after the attacks. Within weeks, new theories emerged from distant parts of the world.

 L’Effroyable Imposture, written by Thierry Meyssan six months after the attacks, peaked at number one on the French bestseller list. Although it gained little notice when it was first published in English under the title 9/11: The Big Lie, it is still one of the critical sources for people who want to avoid the spoon-fed narrative.

The CIA and September 11 by former German state minister Andreas von Bülow and Operation 9/11 by German journalist Gerhard Wisnewski were both published in 2003. Mathias Bröckers, who at the time served as an editor for the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung, is the publisher of both volumes.

Although these hypotheses were widely accepted in Europe, the American media viewed them with confusion or amusement, and the American government discounted them because of anti-American sentiment.

President George W. Bush criticized the formation of “outrageous conspiracy theories … that attempt to shift the responsibility away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty” in a speech to the UN on November 10, 2001.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories initially originated in the political left but have since spread to what New York magazine calls “terra incognita where left and right meet, merging sixties countercultural distrust with the don’t-tread-on-me variety.”

Around the United States, 9/11 conspiracy theories started to gain popularity in 2004.

One interpretation is that, rather than new or more convincing evidence being found, or an improvement in the technical quality of the theories’ presentation, the increase in popularity was more likely caused by growing opposition to the Iraq War and the newly re-elected President George W. Bush.

According to Knight Ridder News, the proliferation of conspiracy theories may have been stoked by information that there was no WMD in Iraq, the delayed delivery of the President’s Daily Brief from August 6, 2001, and allegations that NORAD had lied to the 9/11 Commission.

The mainstream media covered conspiracy theories more frequently between 2004 and 2006, which marked the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted an official investigation of the World Trade Center collapse on behalf of the American government.

In response to the theories’ increasing notoriety, the State Department updated a webpage to refute the hypotheses in 2006.

According to a national security policy paper from 2006, terrorism develops from “conspiracy and disinformation subcultures” and “terrorists recruit more successfully from populations whose knowledge of the world is tainted by lies and perverted by conspiracies.

“The exaggerations maintain complaints and omit information that would contradict widespread prejudices and self-serving propaganda.”

Al-Qaeda has consistently claimed responsibility for the bombings. Its chief deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has accused Shia Iran and Hezbollah of demeaning Sunni victories in “hurting” the United States by spreading false information claiming Israel was behind the strikes.

Some of the conspiracy theories surrounding the September 11 attacks don’t use the representational tactics familiar to many of them, which build a clear binary between good and evil or guilty and innocent.

Still, instead, they call up gradations of incompetence and culpability. The widely accepted explanation of the September 11 attacks is criticized by Matthias Bröckers, a pioneer of such theories, as being a conspiracy theory that aims to “simplify complexity, unravel what is puzzling, and explain the unexplainable.”

The proliferation of 9/11 conspiracy theories was the subject of a rush of articles in mainstream media just before the fifth anniversary of the attacks, with a Time story claiming that “This is not a strange occurrence. It is a well-accepted political fact.”

A number of surveys have asked participants about their opinions on the September 11 attacks. The Daily Telegraph’s list of the “biggest conspiracy theories” for 2008 was headed by 9/11 conspiracy claims.

A private group known as the “International Center for 9/11 Studies” filed a successful lawsuit in 2010 to force the release of footage NIST had compiled of the attacks and their aftermath.

The tapes that were released just before the ninth anniversary of the attacks, according to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, give “fresh ammunition for conspiracy theorists.”

Furthermore, Osama bin Laden’s “death did not answer their remaining questions regarding the attacks,” according to Steven E. Jones and Mike Berger.

Since Bush left office, the percentage of people who believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theories has decreased overall. Still, it has remained relatively stable among those with the most “extreme” beliefs, claims author Jeremy Stahl.

The 9/11 Conspiracy Theories: What are They?

Conspiracy theories come in three basic categories that can be broadly divided:

LIHOP (“Let it happen on purpose”) indicates that essential figures in the administration knew about the attacks but chose to ignore them or purposely degraded American defenses to prevent the hijacked planes from being intercepted. Regarding Pearl Harbor, comparable accusations were made.

MIHOP, or “Make/Made it happen on purpose,” is the theory that essential figures in the government planned the attacks and worked with or falsely implicated al-Qaeda in its execution. Many people have different ideas regarding how this might have been accomplished.

Others who disagree with the official version of what happened on September 11 instead attempt to disprove the U.S. government’s version of events rather than offering specific explanations. They predicted this would result in widespread calls for a further official inquiry into what happened on September 11, 2001.

According to Jonathan Kay, who is also the author of Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracy Underground and managing editor for comment at the Canadian daily National Post, “They believe it is their responsibility to disprove the official explanation for 9/11.

“Once everyone is convinced, the public will demand a fresh investigation using government resources, which will reveal the truth about what truly transpired.”

Theories and Foreknowledge

According to conspiracy theories, U.S. authorities’ actions or inaction with prior knowledge were planned to ensure the success of the attacks. For instance, Michael Meacher, a former member of Tony Blair’s government and the British environment minister, claimed that the United States willfully failed to stop the attacks.

Insider trading

Some conspiracy theorists assert that an “extraordinary” number of put options were purchased on United Airlines and American Airlines stock in the days leading up to 9/11, and they claim that insiders may have anticipated the events of 9/11 and made their wagers accordingly.

According to research investigating the potential for insider trading on 9/11,

“In the days preceding the attacks, a measure of aberrant long put volume was also looked at and found to be at abnormally high levels. Accordingly, the article concludes that there is proof of extraordinary option market behavior in the days preceding September 11 that is consistent with traders acting on foreknowledge of the attacks.”

— The Journal of Business, Allen M. Poteshman.

This study aimed to answer the “heavy conjecture regarding whether the activity on the options market suggested that the terrorists or their associates had engaged in trading in the days preceding September 11 based on prior knowledge of the coming attacks.”

Analysis reveals a spike in the put-to-call ratio for United Carriers and American Airlines, the two airlines whose planes were hijacked on September 11, in the days before the attack. The Chicago Board Options Exchange noted purchases of 396 call options and 4,744 “put” option contracts in UAL between September 6 and 7.

In additional trading on September 10, American Airlines, the other airline engaged in the hijackings, witnessed the purchase of 4,516 put options, while only 748 call options were bought on American that day.

In the days preceding the assaults, no other airline businesses displayed an extraordinary put-to-call ratio. The 9/11 Commission concluded that all of these unusual trading patterns were “accidental.”

More “Accidental” Discoveries Uncovered

Insurance firms also saw unusual trading activity.

During the three trading days leading up to the World Trade Center attack, Citigroup Inc., which predicted that its Travelers Insurance arm could cover $500 million in claims resulting from the incident, saw approximately 45 times the usual demand for options that would benefit if the stock fell below $40.

In late trading, Citigroup shares decreased $1.25 to $38.09. The World Trade Center’s 22-story Morgan Stanley saw the higher-than-normal pre-attack activity of options that benefitted when stock prices collapsed.

Similar increases occurred at other businesses that were directly impacted by the catastrophe.

On September 10, a defense firm named Raytheon had unusually significant call option trading activity. On the day before the attacks, 232 options contracts for a Raytheon option that pays out if shares are worth more than $25 each was exchanged, nearly six times as many trades as there had been up to that point.

The original options were purchased from at least two brokerage firms, including TD Waterhouse and NFS, a division of Fidelity Investments. According to estimates, the trader or traders would have made a five-million-dollar profit.

After obtaining information from at least one Wall Street firm, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an insider trading inquiry in which Osama bin Laden was a suspect.

9/11 Commission Report on “Strange Trades”

The 9/11 Commission Report stated that there was “no evidence that anyone with prior knowledge of the attacks profited through financial transactions” after thorough examinations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI, and other agencies. The report added the following:

High-profile accusations of insider trading before 9/11 typically center on information about unusual trading behavior in firms whose stocks fell sharply after the attacks. There was some strange trading, but each of these trades had a simple reason.

For instance, on September 6 and September 10, the parent firms of United Airlines and American Airlines experienced a sharp increase in the amount of put options—investments that pay out only when a stock price declines—highly suspect behavior on its face.

However, additional research has shown that there was no connection between trading and 9/11.

On September 6, a single institutional investor headquartered in the United States who has no known connections to Al Qaeda bought 95% of the UAL options as part of a trading plan that also involved purchasing 115,000 shares of American on September 10.

Similar to this, a significant portion of the allegedly suspicious activity in America on September 10 was linked to a single U.S.-based options trading newsletter that faxed its subscribers with trade recommendations on Sunday, September 9. These instances represent the type of evidence that the investigation looked at.

The SEC and the FBI invested a significant amount of resources into looking into this matter, including getting the cooperation of numerous foreign governments, with the help of other agencies and the securities sector.

Theory Of Air Defense Stand-Down

Conspiracy theorists sometimes assert that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) purposefully delayed scrambling warplanes or issued a stand-down order to allow the stolen aircraft to reach their targets unhindered.

This argument contends that NORAD had the ability to locate and stop planes on 9/11 and that its failure to do so points to a government plot to permit the attacks. There is only one explanation for this, according to conspiracy theorist Mark R. Elsis, author of “Our Air Force was told to Stand Down on 9/11.”

On September 11, each of the four aircraft’s onboard transponders was turned off or disabled by the hijackers as one of their initial moves. The hijacked aircraft would have been simply blips among 4,500 other blips on NORAD’s radar screens, making them incredibly challenging to follow without these transponder signals to identify the aircraft’s tail number, altitude, and speed.

Only 14 fighter jets were on alert on September 11 in the 48 contiguous states. The civilian air traffic controllers had no automated means of alerting NORAD. Since 1979, no passenger aircraft has been hijacked in the United States.

Maj. Douglas Martin, a public affairs representative for NORAD, said that “they had to pick up the phone and literally dial us.” In the ten years preceding 9/11, NORAD only successfully intercepted one civilian aircraft, a chartered Learjet 35 carrying golfer Payne Stewart and five other passengers. This operation took one hour and 19 minutes.

The regulations in a place prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts at the time and on 9/11. Before September 11, only offshore Air Defense Identification Zones were used for all other NORAD interceptions (ADIZ).

“There was no domestic ADIZ before 9/11,” claims FAA spokesman Bill Schumann. The FAA and NORAD expanded their collaboration following 9/11. While NORAD extended its fighter coverage and added radar to monitor skies throughout the continent, they opened up hotlines between command centers.

The first hijacked airplane, American Airlines Flight 11, had a warning from NORAD that lasted for around eight minutes. At about the same time that Flight 175 collided with the South Tower of the World Trade Center, the FAA informed NORAD of the hijacking.

Three minutes before Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, the FAA alerted NORAD that the aircraft was missing rather than hijacked. Three minutes after United Flight 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania, NORAD learned of the hijacking.

Communications Leak

Using information from Amdocs Limited, an Israeli private communications company, and Comverse Infosys, another Israeli-run company that provides electronic eavesdropping technology for the U.S. government, Carl Cameron made claims that were criticized by CAMERA and JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency).

Cameron claimed that “certain suspects in the September 11th attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone.”

Israeli spies and 9/11

A recurrent idea suggested Israeli and/or Jewish involvement in the assaults and suggested that Israeli agents may have had prior knowledge of the operations. The FBI detained five Israelis for “puzzling behavior” four hours after the attack when they recorded the burning skyline from the top of a white van parked in front of an apartment complex.

The Israelis were filming the proceedings, and a spectator claimed they behaved suspiciously: “They appeared to be content, you know… To me, they didn’t appear startled. It struck me as being quite odd.”

A company called Urban Moving, which the FBI believed was acting as cover for an Israeli intelligence operation, was discovered to be the van’s owner. The FBI’s Foreign Counterintelligence Section was then given the case.

Many individuals in the American intelligence establishment “believed that some of the jailed men were working for Israeli intelligence,” according to a former CIA operations director. According to a spokeswoman for the Israeli Embassy in the country, the individuals had not participated in any intelligence operations in the United States.

In the end, the FBI concluded that the five Israelis were most likely unaware of the attacks.

World Trade Center: The Grand Demolition of the Structures

The World Trade Center collapsed due to plane accidents and subsequent fires. Proponents of the controlled demolition claim that explosives placed in the North Tower, South Tower, and 7 World Trade Center before their collapse were to blame for their collapse.

Supporters of the demolition theory, including physicist Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin, and contend that the aircraft impacts and ensuing fires could not have sufficiently weakened the buildings to cause a catastrophic collapse and that the buildings would not have completely collapsed, nor at the speeds that they did, without additional factors weakening the structures.

Thermite and nano-thermite composites were discovered in the dust and debris after the collapse of the three buildings, according to the authors of the article “Active Thermotic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” by Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Chemistry, Jeffrey Farrer of Brigham Young University, Steven E. Jones, and others. The publication’s chief editor later resigned.

Jones indicated efforts to look into the buildings’ maintenance work in the weeks before the incident. Still, she has yet to explain how the number of explosives required to bring down the structures could have been placed in the two buildings without attracting attention.

According to federal researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, massive amounts of thermite must be applied to the structural columns to cause damage. However, Jones refuted this claim, claiming that he and other researchers were looking into “super-thermite.”

The validity of Jones’ theories is questioned, according to Brent Blanchard, author of “A History of Explosive Demolition in America,” who corresponded with Jones. For instance, no telltale signs of thermite were found by demolition workers during the eight-month-long debris removal process that followed the towers’ collapse.

Blanchard also stated that a verifiable chain of possession needed to be established for the tested beams, which did not happen with the beams Jones tested, raising concerns about the possibility that the metal pieces tested was cut away from the debris pile with acetylene torches, shears, or other potentially contaminated equipment while on site, or was exposed to trace amounts of thermite or other compounds while being handled, while in storage, or during the transfer.

Using images of red debris being removed by construction equipment, Jones claimed that molten steel discovered in the rubble was evidence of explosives because a regular airplane fire would not produce this.

However, Blanchard countered that if there had been any molten steel in the rubble, any excavation equipment encountering it would have been immediately damaged. The United States Geological Survey and RJ Lee undertook additional sampling of the pulverized dust, but neither organization found any indication of thermite or explosives.

According to a theory, the “thermite substance” allegedly discovered was primer paint. Because iron oxide and aluminum are widespread in many products used by the towers, Dave Thomas of Skeptical Inquirer magazine noted that the residue in the issue was supposed to be thermotic because of its composition.

According to Thomas, the thermite reaction is too slow to be practically used in building destruction and to cut through a vertical steel beam; specific high-temperature containment must be added to keep the molten iron from falling.

Thomas noted that even though the beam was horizontal and in the best position when Jesse Ventura paid New Mexico Tech to demonstrate nano-thermite slicing through a big steel beam, the nano-thermite created profuse flame and smoke but no damage to the beam.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) concluded that the recognized version more than adequately explained why the buildings collapsed. Because they believe it would lend those hypotheses unwarranted credibility, NIST and many scientists are unwilling to engage in discussion with conspiracy theorists.

Experts in structural mechanics and structural engineering agree that the World Trade Center buildings might have collapsed due to fire and gravity without using explosives. As a result, NIST claimed that it had not tested the debris for the presence of any explosive chemicals.

Major media outlets reported shortly after the day of the attacks that the towers had collapsed as a result of heat melting the steel. Skeptics were led to believe that the towers would not have fallen without outside intervention because of the false assertion that the combustion temperature of jet fuel could not melt steel.

Because kerosene’s (jet fuel) combustion temperature is really more than 500 °C higher than structural steel’s melting point (2093 °C vs. less than 1539 °C), the assertion is untrue.

NIST further asserted that the steel did not melt but rather softened and weakened due to heat and that this weakening, along with the damage brought on by the planes’ impacts, resulted in structural collapse.

According to NIST, a simulation model based on the straightforward supposition that flammable vapors ignite instantly when they come into contact with incoming air revealed that “The time that [gas] temperatures were close to 1,000 °C persisted at any one site was between 15 and 20 minutes. The calculated temperatures were 500 °C or below the rest of the period.”

Attack on the Pentagon

Thierry Meyssan, a political activist, and Dylan Avery, a filmmaker, assert that American Airlines Flight 77 did not strike the Pentagon. Instead, they contend that a missile fired from within the American government struck the Pentagon.

According to some, the Pentagon wall holes were much too small to have been caused by a Boeing 757 “How could a 155 feet long and 125 feet wide plane fit into a 60-foot-wide hole?”

 L’Effroyable Imposture by Meyssan, which was translated into English as 9/11: The Big Lie, is now available in more than a dozen languages. The book received harsh criticism when it was first published by the mainstream French and American media and later by the 9/11 Truth movement.

The book was described as “a tangle of outrageous and irresponsible charges, utterly without foundation” by the French newspaper Liberation.

Mete Sozen, a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University, responds to the conspiracy theorists’ assertion that a missile struck the Pentagon by saying, “A crashing jet does not leave a cartoon-like imprint of itself in a structure made of reinforced concrete. One wing of Flight 77 hit the ground upon impact with the Pentagon, while the load-bearing columns severed the other.”

Wedge One had recently undergone renovations, which is why the Pentagon sustained relatively minimal damage from the incident, according to Architecture Week. (Wedge One was the first of five buildings in a repair initiative that had been started in the 1980s.)

Researchers from the 9/11 Truth Movement, like Jim Hoffman, have described evidence that disputes some conspiracy theorists’ assertion that a missile struck the Pentagon in his essay “The Pentagon Attack: What the Physical Evidence Shows,” as well as other evidence that largely refutes the involvement of other conspiracies in the attacks.

The black boxes from Flight 77, the nose cone, the landing gear, an airplane tire, and an unbroken cockpit seat are among the airplane debris that disproves missile accusations that were made. DNA testing verified the passengers’ identities from Flight 77, whose remains were discovered at the scene of the Pentagon accident.

The foreign governments that have confirmed the deaths of their people on Flight 77 include the Chinese Foreign Ministry (FMPRC). Numerous witnesses observed that the jet hit the Pentagon.

Additionally, passengers on Flight 77 called to claim that their jet had been hijacked. For instance, a passenger, Renee May, called her mother to inform her that the plane had been hijacked and everyone had been herded to the back.

A different traveler named Barbara Olson called her husband, U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, to report that the plane had been hijacked and that the hijackers were armed with knives and box cutters.

According to some conspiracies, the passengers’ phone calls were faked using voice morphing, their bodies were disposed of, and a missile was fired at the Pentagon.

On December 15, 2004, the watchdog organization Judicial Watch demanded access to video records from the Pentagon security cameras, the Sheraton National Hotel, the Nexcomm/Citgo fueling station, and the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Judicial Watch received access to videos from the Pentagon’s security cameras on May 16, 2006, from the government. The BBC described American Airlines Flight 77 as “[a] white blob” and “a white streak,” while The Associated Press described it as “a thin white blur” and “a silver speck low to the ground” (in The Washington Post).

In sequence, five frames from one of the videos first appeared in the media in 2002. In the opinion of some conspiracy theorists, the new video does not address their concerns.

United Airlines Flight 93

United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth hijacked aircraft on 9/11, crashed into an open field close to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, resulting from a passenger uprising. Flight 93 was the only one of the four aircraft hijacked that day to miss its destination.

One conspiracy theory concerning this incident holds that a U.S. fighter jet shot down Flight 93. Large portions of the aircraft, including the engine’s main body, are said to have crashed miles away from the primary location of the accident, which is too far away for a typical plane crash, according to claims made by David Ray Griffin and Alex Jones.

Jones believes the wreckage accounts discovered further from the primary crash site are incongruent with airplane crashes, typically leaving a narrow debris field. One witness asserted that the engine’s main body had been discovered kilometers from the primary crash scene, damaging as a heat-seeking missile would do to an airliner.

Some beliefs hold that the government had to shoot the jet down because the passengers had learned of the purported plot.

Phil Molé of Skeptic magazine claims, “This claim is mostly based on unsubstantiated claims that the main body of the engine and other significant airplane components were discovered miles distant from the primary crash site, which is too far away for them to have come from a typical accident.

“This assertion is false because the engine was located within 300 yards of the primary crash site, and its location was consistent with the plane’s course.”

According to Michael K. Hynes, a specialist in aviation accidents who looked into the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, it would only take a few seconds to move or fall across the ground for 300 yards at very high speeds of 500 mph or more.

The locals’ claims that wreckage was found in Indian Lake are true. According to CNN, authorities discovered crash wreckage at least eight miles distant, including near New Baltimore. The things comprised “mainly papers,” “strands of burnt insulation,” and an “approved paycheck,” according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from September 14, 2001.

CNN claims the debris was all relatively light material that the wind could have easily blown away. FBI agent Bill Crowley is quoted in the same story as saying, “After the airliner crashed, a fireball that witnesses claimed flew hundreds of feet into the air was likely what caused lighter, smaller debris to shoot into the air. Then, it most likely traveled on a wind that was blowing roughly nine mph from the southeast.”

Additionally, some stories misreported the distance between the accident location and Indian Lake. Based to the BBC, “Indian Lake is only a little more than a mile away from the crash site in a direct line. The 6.9-mile circular path explains the incorrect reports that the road takes between the two places.”

According to specific conspiracy theories, Flight 93 may have been shot down by a missile fired from a small white plane that was spotted flying over the disaster site. According to government organizations like the FBI, this little plane was a Dassault Falcon business jet that was instructed to fly to a height of about 1,500 feet to observe the accident.

According to Ben Sliney, who oversaw FAA operations on September 11, 2001, no military aircraft were in the vicinity of Flight 93.

Some online films, like Loose Change, assume that Flight 93 successfully landed in Ohio and that a different aircraft was responsible for the tragedy in Pennsylvania.

A preliminary news story that Flight 93 had landed at an airport in Cleveland is frequently recounted; however, it was eventually discovered that Delta Flight 1989 was the aircraft that had been mistaken for Flight 93, and the information was retracted as unreliable.

The wreckage at the scene, eyewitness testimony, and the difficulty of covertly switching one plane for another are used by a number of websites within the 9/11 Truth Movement to refute this assertion.

They assert that “hoax theories… appear calculated to alienate victims’ survivors and the general public from the 9/11 truth movement.” The accusations have since been refuted in writing by the article’s editor.

Valencia McClatchey, a local who captured the sole image of Flight 93’s mushroom cloud seconds after it struck the ground, claims conspiracy theorists have harassed her over the phone and in person and have implied that she staged the image.

After carefully examining the image and the film negatives, the FBI, Somerset County officials, Smithsonian, and the National Park Service’s Flight 93 National Memorial staff agreed that the image was genuine.

Others in the 9/11 Truth Movement, such as Jim Hoffman, and Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, refute conspiracy theorist assertions that passengers of Flight 93 and/or Flight 77 were killed or moved with the intention that they would never be found.

Hijackers From Hell: How 9/11 Unfolded

The BBC released the names and identities of those they suspected to be some of the hijackers during the first chaos that followed the 9/11 attacks. Later it was determined that some of the people listed were still alive; 9/11 conspiracy theorists used this information as evidence that the hijackings were staged.

The BBC explained that the names they published in 2001 were standard Arabic and Islamic, which may have contributed to the initial mistake. According to the FBI, all nineteen hijackers have been identified, and none of the other probes have revealed any concerns about their identities, in answer to a request from the BBC. These instances of mistaken identity were acknowledged by the New York Times as well.

The FBI’s list of names released on September 14, 2001, according to John Bradley, a former managing editor of Arab News in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was the only source of information available to the general public regarding the hijackers.

The false identities were swiftly cleared up when the FBI published photos on September 27, four days after the reported stories. Apparently, Bradley “All of this can be attributed to the turmoil that ruled in the days right after the attack. We’re dealing with names that are coincidentally the same.”

According to Bradley, Said al-Ghamdi and Walid al-Shari, two of the reportedly still-living attackers, are “as prevalent in Saudi Arabia as John Smith is in the United States or Great Britain.”

Thomas Kean, the 9/11 Commission’s chair, claims, “Sixteen of the nineteen should never have been allowed to enter the country in the first place since their visas and passports both had errors. Simply stopping them at the border would have been appropriate.

“Of the nineteen, that was number sixteen. Of course, there would have been no plot if even half of those individuals had been stopped.”

The CIA had identified Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi as members of al-Qaeda. Still, neither the FBI nor U.S. Immigration knew this, allowing the two men to enter the country lawfully and plot the 9/11 attacks.

Foreign Intervention in 9/11?

Allegations have been made that members of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may have had a significant financial impact on the attacks.

There are additional allegations that Saudi Arabia may have assisted in funding the bombings and that other foreign intelligence services, including the Israeli Mossad, had prior knowledge of the attacks.

General Hamid Gul, a former chief of the ISI, believes that the assaults were an “inside job” from the US, carried out by neo-cons or Israel.

The 9/11 attacks were a cooperative effort between the CIA and Mossad, according to Francesco Cossiga, the former president of Italy from 1985 until his resignation in 1992 from Operation Gladio.

Later reports revealed that he did not genuinely have this belief.

Israel and 9/11

According to a conspiracy theory cited by the Anti-Defamation League, Thom Burnett, and others, the state of Israel may have planned the attacks.

A number of justifications are put up, such as provoking the United States to attack Israel’s adversaries, deflecting public attention from Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, assisting Zionists in seizing control of international affairs, and convincing Americans to support Israel.

Theoretical variations assert that Ariel Sharon, Mossad, or the Israeli government were responsible for planning the attack. According to the website Slate, Kevin Barrett, a former lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, is a “leading proponent of ideas that Israel’s Mossad organized the 9/11 attacks.”

Some supporters of this theory contend that Israeli intelligence advised Jewish workers to skip work on September 11, preventing any Jewish fatalities at the World Trade Center. Cinnamon Stillwell claims that some 9/11 conspiracy theorists estimate that as many as 4,000 Jews may have skipped work.

According to the September 12 edition of The Jerusalem Post, which stated that “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 attacks” this was first reported on September 17 by the Lebanese Hezbollah-owned satellite television channel Al-Manar.

Between 270 and 400 Jews are thought to have perished in the attacks, according to various estimates. The lesser number is in line with the region of New York’s concentration of Jews and preliminary studies of the victims’ reported religion.

In response to allegations that fewer Jews/Israelis perished in the WTC attacks than should have been present at the time, the U.S. State Department has released a partial list of 76. In the incident, five Israeli citizens also died.

Conspiracy Theories Containing Antisemitism

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) attacked “hateful conspiracy theories” that Israelis and Jews carried out the 9/11 attacks in a report published in 2003, claiming that they might “rationalize and fuel global anti-Semitism.” It was discovered that these views were generally accepted not only in Europe and the United States but also in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The Big Lie has “unified American far-right extremists, white supremacists, and groups within the Arab and Muslim world,” according to the ADL research. According to this assertion, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to lay out a Jewish plot for global dominance in the 19th century, were said to be the modern equivalent of many of the beliefs.

The Jeff Rense website is alleged to contain anti-Semitic content by the ADL, including statements like “American Jews staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks for their own financial gain and to induce the American people to endorse wars of aggression and genocide on the nations of the Middle East and the theft of their resources for the benefit of Israel.”

Former UN official Pedro A. Sanjuan claimed that after the attacks, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories were widespread at the highest levels of the organization.

Arab States

In their 2011 book The Eleventh Day, British investigative journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan argued that the Saudi Royal Family gave the hijackers material and financial support and that the Bush Administration covered up this fact and their own alleged incompetence.

The 9/11 Truth movement, according to the authors, supported this cover-up by drawing attention away from these behaviors. A “Lloyd’s insurance syndicate” filed a lawsuit in September 2011 seeking Saudi Arabia’s restitution of the £136 million it had given to 9/11 victims.

The Saudi government was charged with using a number of well-known charities and banks, as well as a prominent member of the al-Saud royal family, as “agents and alter egos” to fund al-Qaeda and incite anti-Western sentiment.

These hypotheses have historically focused on the alleged information contained in the 28 pages of the 2002 report of the Joint Inquiry of the United States Congress that were postponed from publication until July 15, 2016.

Bob Graham, a former Florida senator and co-chairman of the Joint Inquiry, and other former officials who have read the Joint Inquiry’s report in its entirety—which is still partially classified—believe that the U.S. government is concealing the significant assistance that the Saudi government officials gave the 9/11 attackers.

They specifically point to the role of Fahad al-Thumairy, a diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles.

Americana Pax motives

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published a military manual titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses in September 2000. Paul Wolfowitz prepared the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance on behalf of Dick Cheney, the defense secretary at the time.

In his book American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy, Andrew Bacevich called this “a template for enduring American global hegemony.”

In his book The Great Derangement, Matt Taibbi argued that conspiracy theorists had “completely taken out of context” what was written in the paper and that the “transformation” mentioned therein is explicitly stated to be a decades-long process to transform the Cold War-era military into a “new, modern military” that could handle more localized conflicts.

He claimed that for this to be evidence of motivation, the perpetrators would have had to declare their goals either publicly or have seen the article in 2000 and used it as inspiration to lay the groundwork for the 9/11 attacks quickly.

Did 9/11 Pave the Way for Invasions?

Whether or not The Oil Factor and 9/11 gave the United States and the United Kingdom justification to start a war they have long desired has been questioned by conspiracy theorists, who contend that this offers them a compelling rationale for either carrying out or permitting the attacks.

Andreas von Bülow, a former research minister in the German government, has claimed, for instance, that 9/11 was orchestrated to support the wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is “solid proof,” according to former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad that the attacks were staged so that the United States could wage war on Muslims.

Despite these accusations, the Bush administration admitted that there was no proof of Iraqi complicity in the attacks and notably rejected calls to launch an attack on the country right away in response to 9/11.

The New World Oder: The Global Elite

According to Alex Jones and other others, a wide range of corporate, banking, globalization, and military interests conspired to start 9/11 to establish a globalist government. Such conspiracy ideas about the New World Order precede 9/11.

Historical Examples: Preludes to 9/11

The 9/11 attacks, according to conspiracy theories, were carried out by the U.S. government as a false flag operation and subsequently attributed to Islamic radicals. Operation Northwoods frequently support these theories.

The US Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Northwoods in 1962, but it was never carried out and appears to have been abandoned. One recommendation in the plan was for undercover agents to carry out several terrorist attacks in American cities while blaming Cuba to provide a pretext for an invasion.

Time article compared 9/11 conspiracy theories with those that are sparked by historical events like the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

There is no event so evident and unambiguous that a determined human being can’t find ambiguity in it, according to Time, which compared the assassination of Kennedy to the World Trade Center attack, which was witnessed by millions of people and captured on film by hundreds of videographers.

Controlled Demolition of the World Trade Center

According to some conspiracies, explosives that had been placed in the buildings beforehand may have contributed to the World Trade Center’s collapse and the airliner crash damage that occurred as a result of the September 11 attacks and the ensuing fire damage.

Conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 frequently involve controlled demolition.

Early proponents included physicist Steven E. Jones, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin.

They argued that the only aircraft impacts and ensuing fires could not have weakened the buildings enough to cause the catastrophic collapse and that without additional energy, the buildings would not have collapsed entirely or at the speeds they did.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) studied and disproved these theories and published Popular Mechanics. Experts in structural mechanics and structural engineering agree that the World Trade Center buildings collapsed due to fire and gravity, an explanation that excludes the use of explosives.

According to NIST, “other hypotheses alleging that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition utilizing explosives planted before Sept. 11, 2001” were not supported by any corroborating evidence.

But in 2006, it was proposed that the buildings may have been destroyed with thermite or super-thermite by government insiders who had access to such materials and the structures themselves.

The editor of The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Prof. Marie-Paule Pileni, Dane Niels H. Harrit, and seven other authors published a paper in April 2009 under the title “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” which claimed to have discovered nano-thermite in samples of the dust created during the collapse of the World Trade Center.

In response, NIST stated that there was no “clear chain of custody” demonstrating that the four dust samples originated from the World Trade Center. Many requested that NIST undertake its own research using its own “chain of custody” dust, but NIST chose not to look into the matter.

Who Supports the Controlled Demolition Theory?

In September 2001, conspiracy claims around controlled demolition were first put forth. The controlled demolition idea is openly promoted in his book Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, written by Eric Hufschmid. The two most well-known proponents of the hypothesis are David Ray Griffin and Steven E. Jones.

The New Pearl Harbor by Griffin, which was released in 2004, is now a standard text for the 9/11 Truth movement. Griffin produced the 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions in the same year. In it, he claims that the Bush administration was implicated in the 9/11 attacks and that the report’s shortcomings amount to a cover-up by government authorities.

Another advocate of the theories of demolition is Steven E. Jones. He wrote a study titled “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?” and it was released in 2006. In anticipation of a formal assessment of his conduct, Brigham Young University placed Jones on paid leave on September 7, 2006, citing the “increasingly speculative and accusatory tone” of his statements.

Jones left the institution six weeks later. In a statement, the university’s structural engineering department stated that they “do not support the assumptions of Professor Jones.”

NIST claimed in its final report that “alternative theories proposing that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition utilizing explosives planted before September 11, 2001, were not supported by any corroborating evidence.  Additionally, NIST discovered no proof that missiles were launched at or impacted the towers.

Instead, images and videos taken from various viewpoints clearly demonstrate that the collapse began at the fire and impacted floors and that it continued from those beginning floors downward until dust clouds covered the view “ in August 2006, it published a FAQ on related problems on its website.

Mainstream engineering scholarship has determined that controlled demolition claims lack any scientific basis. In its unique feature “Debunking the 9/11 Myths,” the journal Popular Mechanics discovered that the hypotheses lacked scientific backing.

In scientific and engineering journals, supporters of controlled demolition have submitted articles, letters, and comments.

Fourteen points of agreement with the official government report on the destruction of the World Trade Center were outlined in a letter that Steven E. Jones, Frank Legge, Kevin Ryan, Anthony Szamboti, and James Gourley published in The Open Civil Engineering Journal in April 2008.

A few months later, in July 2008, Ryan, Gourley, and Jones published an article in the Environmentalist titled “Environmental Anomalies at the World Trade Center: Evidence for Energetic Materials.”

Later in the same year, in October 2008, the Journal of Engineering Mechanics published a comment by chemical engineer and lawyer James R. Gourley in which he outlined what he saw to be critical flaws in a 2007 work on the mechanics of progressive collapse by Zdeněk P. Bažant and Verdure.

In the same issue, Bažant and Le refuted Gourley’s claims, claiming they were unfounded in science. To avoid “misleading and improperly influencing the public with inaccurate information,” they advised future critics to “get acquainted with the essential content from an adequate textbook on structural mechanics.”

A study titled “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” was published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal in April 2009 by Danish scientist Niels H. Harrit of the University of Copenhagen and eight other authors.

The study’s findings suggest that dust samples may contain chips made of unreacted and partially reacted super-thermite or nano-thermite. The publication’s chief editor later tendered his resignation.

The movement of those who believe that placed explosives demolished the World Trade Center has grown due to online websites and videos. Over 2,400 architects and engineers are members, according to the website of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

The controlled demolition hypothesis frequently makes claims that U.S. government insiders planned the collapse of the World Trade Center and/or took part in it to support the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Popular comedies like Loose Change and the Documentary 9/11: Blueprint for Truth by San Francisco-area architect Richard Gage heavily use the theory.

The magazine New York stated in 2006 that a “new generation of conspiracy theorists is at work on a secret history of New York’s most terrible day.” However, the theory has been backed by several well-known actors, musicians, and politicians, including Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson, and former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.

What is the Controlled Demolition Theory Regarding 9/11?

On September 11, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the North Tower (1 WTC) and the South Tower (2 WTC), respectively, using Boeing 767 airplanes. After the hit, the South Tower collapsed 56 minutes later, followed by the North Tower 102 minutes later.

According to a NIST study, the collapse was brought on by a combination of fire insulation and support column damage from aircraft crashes and the weakening of columns and floors due to flames sparked by jet fuel.

Additionally, NIST concluded that “other theories positing that the WTC towers were brought down by deliberate demolition using explosives planted before September 11, 2001” lacked supporting evidence.

Jones, among others, cites numerous accounts from workers at the rubble pile of the World Trade Center that mention the presence of molten steel there as well as a stream of molten metal that poured out of the South Tower before its collapse as proof of temperatures higher than those caused by the fire.

According to Jones, the molten metal might have been the thermite reaction byproduct of elemental iron. To look for signs of nano-thermite in the dust, Jones and other researchers examined samples of dust collected from the World Trade Center buildings and presented their findings.

When Jones notified NIST of his results, NIST stated that there was no “clear chain of custody” demonstrating that the dust in question had originated from the WTC site. Jones invited NIST to undertake its own research using dust that was kept in NIST’s care, but NIST still needs to comply.

NIST concluded that the material coming from the South Tower was molten aluminum from the plane, which would have melted at lower temperatures than steel because the condition of the steel in the towers’ wreckage does not provide conclusive information on the condition of the building before its collapse.

NIST also noted that to cut through the vertical columns, a massive number of explosives would need to be covertly planted in heavily guarded structures, ignited remotely, and kept in contact with the columns.

Despite the vertical column being far smaller than those used in the World Trade Center, the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center’s test with conventional thermite failed to cut it.

In response, Jones and others stated that they did not think thermite was employed but rather a type of thermite called nano-thermite, a nano-energetic substance created for use in military applications, propellants, explosives, or pyrotechnics.

The comparatively sluggish energy release rates of conventional thermites have historically restricted their use in explosive applications. However, energy release rates are significantly increased by producing nano-thermites, which are made of reactant particles that are close to the atomic scale.

The NIST assessment states that progressive collapse is unavoidable after an initial collapse occurs due to the massive kinetic energy imparted by the falling component of the building. This analysis only covers the structural reaction of the building up to the point where collapse begins.

According to a report by Zdeněk P. Bažant, once collapse started, the kinetic energy that a falling upper component imparted onto the floor below was a factor of an order of magnitude higher than what the lower section could support.

Most engineers who have looked into the collapses concur that controlled demolition is not necessary to comprehend the structural response of the structures.

They contend that despite a significant tilt at the top of one of the towers, it could not have ultimately fallen into the street because any such tilting would put enough pressure on the lower story (acting as a pivot) that it would collapse long before the top had sufficiently shifted its center of gravity.

In fact, they contend, there is little difference between progressive collapse carried out with or without explosives regarding the resistance the structures could offer once the collapse started. The controlled destruction of a building to code needs weeks of preparation, which includes placing much dynamite and cutting through beams, making the building extremely risky and necessitating working covertly to avoid catching the notice of thousands of employees.

Buildings are often demolished safely from the bottom up rather than the top, though there are certain exceptions depending on the structure. There is little doubt that the collapse began at a height near the plane’s impact. Any explosives would also need to hold up to the impact of the airplanes.

Members of the organization Scholars for 9/11 Truth have gathered testimonies from witnesses who saw flashes and loud explosions just before the fall.

Eyewitnesses have frequently stated that explosions occurred before the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, and the “International Center for 9/11 Studies” has distributed films obtained from NIST along with cues as to when such explosions could have been heard.

Seismographic records of the collapse show no signs of explosions, and explosives do not create numerous other loud, sharp noises.

According to Jones and others, horizontal plumes of smoke during the towers’ collapse would suggest that controlled explosions were used to bring them down. According to NIST, these puffs are caused by air pressure that is caused by the building above that is falling, going down elevator shafts, and leaving via the open elevator shaft doors on lower levels.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran and holder of a Ph.D. in transportation engineering and planning, claimed in September 2011 that it would have been impossible for two jetliners to bring down the towers by simply colliding with them and that instead, a deliberate explosion had to have occurred.

In their English-language newspaper, Inspire, Al-Qaida harshly denounced Ahmadinejad, calling his claims “a foolish idea that stands in the face of all logic and proof.”

07 World Trade Center: What Happened to It?

According to proponents of the World Trade Center controlled demolition hypothesis, the 47-story skyscraper known as 7 World Trade Center, which was located across Vesey Street from the main World Trade Center site, was deliberately demolished using explosives. 7 World Trade Center, unlike the Twin Towers, was not struck by a plane.

Still, it was destroyed by fires that raged for seven hours and were struck by debris from the Twin Towers before collapsing at around 5:20 p.m. on September 11th (a new building has been erected on the site of the old and opened in May 2006).

Multiple videos of the collapse event are available in the public domain, allowing for comparative study from various viewpoints. According to supporters, the 9/11 Commission Report did not include the fall of the 7 World Trade Center.

It took NIST, the federal agency tasked with looking into the incident, seven years to finish its investigation and publish a report.

A television ad campaign called “BuildingWhat?” featuring 9/11 family members asking concerns about 7 World Trade Center and calling for an investigation into its collapse was sponsored by Geraldo Rivera, a reporter for Fox News, in November 2010.

The television advertisements, according to Rivera, were “not so easy to reject as those protestors were.” If explosives were used, “it would suggest the most obnoxious protesters in recent years… was right,” he added.

Days later, Rivera spoke about the BuildingWhat? TV ad campaign on the Fox Business Network shows Freedom Watch with legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano. As Napolitano said: “I find it difficult to accept that [7 World Trade Center] collapsed on its own. It made me happy to see Geraldo Rivera looking into it.”

Some proponents of the World Trade Center controlled demolition theories contend that the 7 WTC was destroyed because it may have served as a hub for operations during the destruction of the Twin Towers, while others contend that government insiders may have wanted to destroy crucial records related to corporate fraud that were kept in the structure.

Numerous federal, state and local government entities were housed in the WTC buildings. The building, which housed some unusual tenants, including a covert CIA office on the 25th floor, a branch of the U.S. Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and New York City’s emergency command center, was destroyed, according to a statement from Loose Change film producer Dylan Avery that the BBC reported.

Richard Clarke, a former principal counterterrorism adviser to the President, disagreed that 7 WTC was a strange building and claimed anyone might have rented floor space there.

Although there have been instances of smaller steel structures collapsing or partially collapsing owing to a fire in the past, no steel frame high-rise had ever collapsed due to a fire at the time.

However, the collapse of the Plasco Skyscraper in Tehran in 2017 and the Wilton Paes de Almeida Building in So Paulo, Brazil, the following year would show that such a building may be entirely destroyed by fire. In addition, according to NIST, structural damage in 7 WTC from debris expelled during the fall of 1 WTC existed before the fire.

Twenty minutes before it did, the 7 WTC collapse was reported by BBC News. According to the BBC, on the day of the attacks, numerous news outlets were speculating on the impending fall of the 7 WTC.

When faced with a claim she could not verify, Jane Standley, the reporter who prematurely declared the collapse, called it a “very modest and very honest mistake” caused by her thinking quickly.

The owner of 7 WTC and the leaseholder and insurance policy holder for the rest of the WTC complex, Larry Silverstein, recalled a conversation with the fire department in which concerns about putting out the fires were voiced in the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, which aired in September 2002.

Silverstein recalls saying that we’ve had a such awful loss of life, maybe pulling it is the best course of action. He added, “They decided to pull, and we witnessed the building collapse.” In a response, Silverstein refuted theories’ claims that “pull” was used in a demolition-related sense by stating that the firefighting squad, not the building, was to be pulled.

NIST document

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a general inquiry into the World Trade Center collapse in 2002 but quickly decided to concentrate first on the collapse of the Twin Towers.

In August 2008, the organization released a draught of its final report about the collapse of the 7 WTC. The intricacy of the computer model the agency used, which simulated the collapse from the moment it started to the ground, has been criticized by the agency for the study’s sluggishness.

According to NIST, the investigation into the 7 WTC took about as long as one into an airplane disaster. The organization adds that 80 additional boxes of documents pertaining to the 7 WTC were discovered and needed to be evaluated.

These delays prompted people who were already doubting the veracity of the September 11 attacks to believe that the CIA was having trouble coming up with a convincing conclusion.

On November 20, 2008, NIST released its final report on the fall of the 7 World Trade Center. Investigators used recordings, pictures, and architectural design drawings to reach their conclusions. The materials from the structure lacked features that would have allowed them to be positively identified, thus they were disposed of before the investigation could begin.

As a result, the investigation could not contain physical evidence. The report concluded that the nearly seven-hour-long fires were to blame for the building’s collapse. The 13^th-story collapse dealt the building its fatal blow, weakening a crucial steel support column that resulted in catastrophic failure.

Additionally, excessive heat caused certain steel beams to lose strength, leading to additional failures throughout the building until the entire structure gave way. The surrounding towers’ fall, which damaged the city water main and cut off water to the building’s lower half’s sprinkler system, was also pointed to as a contributing reason.

The employment of thermite to sever columns in the 7 WTC on 9/11/01 was deemed doubtful by NIST, which also looked into the possibility that 7 WTC was brought down using explosives.

According to the inquiry, the explosion would have been audible at a level of 130-140 decibels at a distance of half a mile, yet neither a boom could be heard during recordings of the fall nor was one recorded by witnesses.

In support of their claim that explosions occurred before the towers collapsed, proponents of demolition have presented films obtained from NIST and information on the times when such explosions could have been heard.

According to NIST’s analysis, Thermite in the required quantities could not have been brought into the building covertly.

Thermite was not utilized, according to proponents of demolition, who assert that nano-thermite, which is much more potent than thermite, was. The NIST investigation disproved the hypothesis that fires caused the building’s collapse from the substantial amount of diesel fuel stored there.

UAF Research

Leroy Hulsey, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), then oversaw a lengthy investigation that lasted four years (2015–2019) and was titled “A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7.”

This investigation took advantage of the vastly improved computing power since NIST’s study to carry out the precise kind of more in-depth modeling that earlier commentators anticipated Contrary to what NIST and other private engineering firms that looked into the collapse had found, Hulsey’s team’s main finding is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11.

“The secondary finding of our research is that every column in the building failed almost simultaneously during the fall of WTC 7, which was a worldwide failure.”

—The University of Alaska Fairbanks, Hulsey JL, Quan Z, and Xiao F

Engineers & Architects For 9/11 Truth

Engineers and Architects for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth) is a non-profit organization based in the United States that advocates the conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center was destroyed through a controlled demolition while contesting official reports on the September 11 attacks, such as the 9/11 Commission Report and FEMA’s “WTC Building Performance Study” (2002).

What is the Engineers & Architects For 9/11 Truth?

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth was established in 2006 by architect Richard Gage of the San Francisco Bay Area. According to Gage’s website, he is a member of the American Institute of Architects, has 20 years of experience as an architect, and has worked on several “fireproof” steel-frame buildings.

After hearing theologian David Ray Griffin on an independent radio station, he was persuaded of the necessity of founding a group that brings together architects and engineers.

Throughout the United States and Canada, Gage has spoken at conferences sponsored by the 9/11 Truth movement. He has also presented his multimedia presentation “9/11 Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction” in 14 different nations.

His presentations, which feature films of the three World Trade Center towers collapsing and footage of planned demolitions, center on the series of events that led to their destruction. In 2008, he traveled to Europe, and in 2009, he spoke in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

A booth for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth was presented in 2009 at the American Institute of Architects annual meeting. “We have no relationship with his group in any way,” said Scott Frank, head of AIA’s media relations.

According to supporters of the 9/11 Truth movement, the contentious two-hour film 9/11 Blueprint for Truth is based on a speech given by Richard Gage in Canada. Gage was also interviewed for a documentary by the Canadian television news magazine The Fifth Estate, an episode of the ZDF series History based on a BBC and ZDF co-production, and an episode of the BBC television program The Conspiracy Files.

The company is the principal member of the ReThink911 group, which in 2013 undertook a marketing campaign that included the installation of signage and billboards in seven American cities as well as Vancouver, Toronto, London, and Sydney.

In September 2021, Gage resigned from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth after facing backlash for comments he made claiming vaccines were harmful and accusations of antisemitism.

What does the Engineers & Architects For 9/11 Truth Say?

Conspiracy claims surrounding the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center are also Investigations into the World Trade Center’s collapse.

Members of the group counter that the World Trade Center buildings couldn’t have fallen only due to the plane’s impact or the flames they had started. On the one hand, Gage has stated that it is crucial to the organization’s objective to avoid speculating about the Pentagon assaults or the Bush administration’s complicity.

However, Gage has asserted that if the World Trade Center were demolished deliberately, this would imply that parts of what occurred on September 11, 2001, had been prepared by “some form of an inside organization.”

According to Gage, an elevator renovation program that had been in place before the attacks would have given access to the WTC buildings’ central regions without raising any red flags.

The buildings’ collapse was caused by the impact of the planes and the ensuing flames, according to investigations conducted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

According to a 2005 NIST report, the World Trade Center towers’ demise was caused by a progressive collapse brought on by aircraft hits and ensuing fires. According to a 2008 NIST report, the 7 WTC, the third-tallest structure on the World Trade Center site, was destroyed due to a similar progressive collapse.

Because they don’t want to give 9/11 conspiracy theory proponents unwarranted legitimacy, many mainstream scientists refuse to argue with them. The structural engineering and structural-mechanics scientific community unanimously concur with the NIST explanations of the collapses.

Towers Of the World Trade Center

Asserting that “the official account of the total destruction of the World Trade Center buildings has explicitly failed to address the substantial evidence for explosive demolition,” Gage attacked NIST for failing to look into the full sequence of the World Trade Center tower’s fall.

Gage specifically claims that the World Trade Center towers could not have collapsed at the reported rate without using explosives to shatter several structural supports. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth bases its argument on the acceleration of 7 WTC into “free fall” during a portion of the collapse, “lateral ejection of steel,” and “mid-air pulverization of concrete.”

According to Gage, the absence of “massive progressive deformations” linked with the collapse would suggest that the buildings were destroyed under controlled circumstances.

According to the organization, the three World Trade Center buildings “fell via what should have been the path of greatest resistance” because vital columns had to be removed precisely when they were needed, which office fires cannot do.

According to Gage, “there was “nothing left to drive this structure to the ground” because the top of the North Tower’s mass had been thrown outward during the collapse.

Gage contends that controlled demolition was required for the towers to fall “sudden and spontaneously,” that pools of molten iron discovered in the building debris were proof that thermite existed, and that scientists discovered unignited nano-thermite in the dust created by the World Trade Center collapse.

This substance “is not created in a cave in Afghanistan,” claims Gage. Iron-rich micro-spheres, which the organization claims independent lab investigations have discovered in the dust of the World Trade Center buildings, would suggest temperatures during the collapses that were significantly greater than those that would come from hydrocarbon fires.

Eyewitness descriptions of alleged explosions and flashes observed in the buildings are included on a DVD made by the group.

Zdeněk P. Bažant, a professor of civil engineering and materials science at Northwestern University, co-authored a paper in 2008 with three other authors to investigate if claims of controlled demolition might be supported by science.

The size of the concrete particles is consistent with comminution caused by impact. The high velocity of compressed air explains why material from the towers was ejected to a distance of several hundred meters from the tower. They discovered that the available video records do not support the free fall hypothesis.

The writers conclude that there is no scientific basis for the claims of deliberate demolition. A NIST representative claimed that any sightings of molten metal, including the metal that was observed flowing from the South Tower, were most likely caused by melting aluminum from the aircraft.

Gage, however, argued that this explanation is invalid because of the molten metal’s distinctive color. According to Michael Newman, a spokesman for NIST, “basically, gravity and the sheer force of the top floors brought the towers down.”

07 World Trade Center

Richard Gage claims that the collapse of 7 World Trade Center (7 WTC), a 47-story high-rise building that was a part of the World Trade Center complex and fell during the afternoon of September 11, 2001, is the “smoking gun” of the attack and the strongest proof that there was a questionable factor at play that had not been made known to the general public.

As “the clearest example of deliberate demolition,” Gage said, “7 WTC.” Gage asserted that removing a building’s columns, which offer resistance to gravity, would be the only method to bring it down with free-fall acceleration.

A crew member named Scott Grainger, a fire protection expert told the BBC that the evidence he had seen suggested that the fires in the 7 WTC were dispersed throughout the floors and would have spread since they would have discovered no more combustibles. Therefore, he argues that the fires couldn’t have generated enough heat to collapse the structure.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) claimed that uncontrolled fires and the buckling of a crucial support column were to blame for the collapse of the 7 World Trade Center. Gage rejects this explanation, claiming that it would not have resulted in the uniform collapse of the building.

He claims that it was impossible for the remaining columns to be destroyed all at once quickly enough to bring the structure down into its own footprint. According to Gage, buildings damaged by “hotter, longer-lasting and larger fires” have not fallen.

According to Gage, “buildings that fall in natural processes move along the route of least resistance” rather than falling through themselves directly. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth also casts doubt on the NIST study on the collapse of the 7 WTC and claims that evidence supporting the use of explosives was left out.

The NIST study broadly supports the explanation for the fall of the World Trade Center buildings offered by the community of structural mechanics and structural engineering professionals.

The timeline of the fall of the 7 WTC, which shows roof elements sinking into the building while the façade was still intact, suggests that the appearance of a deliberate demolition, in this case, can be explained by an inner breakdown of the building.

Either way, in the end, the towers fell to the ground, and the United States entered a phase where it constantly looks over its shoulder. The innocence of the nation is lost.

RIP Victims.

Next, read about the Inter-Continental Murderer of Villisca and Hinterkaifeck. Then, I bet you’d love to read the Disturbing History Behind the Bridgend Suicides of Wales!