Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:57, 5 September 2005

Template:Sep11

A number of conspiracy theories have emerged concerning the September 11, 2001 attacks. According to the official account, 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, Virginia, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to regain control of the plane.

Overview

Although some conspiracy theories propose that the nations of Israel or Iraq were behind the attacks, these following theories have gained the most popularity are based one of these 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.
• That individuals within the U.S. government orchestrated the attacks themselves.

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 prosecuter 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: Rumors about the September 11, 2001 attack: Claims that the towers were demolished with explosives and 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.
• 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 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."

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 the only photographic evidence of plane wreckage lying on the grounds of the Pentagon to be ambiguous and unconvincing.
• Pentagon surveillance cameras captured 5 frames from before, during, and after the impact, but none show exactly what hit the building.
• 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.

The President's Behavior

The President's location on the morning of the attacks was highly publicized. 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. At this time there would have been no way of knowing whether the President himself was in danger.

One theory uses this fact 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 in a normal situation, the Secret Service protecting such an important person would act much faster 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.

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 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 assasination 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

• 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 Defences: 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 to the poll conducted by Zogby International from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004.
• Rep. Cynthia McKinney is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them. Rep. 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."

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• To cover-up the failures of a bumbling and incompetent intelligence community.

Demonstrably False Claims and Theories

• In a PBS documentary, former WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein recalled telling firefighters to "pull" building 7. While many insist that Silverstein could only have been refering to demolition, 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.

• Some have reported Minoru Yamasaki, architect and designer of the WTC, as saying "We designed the towers to take multiple jumbo jet strikes, this is not architecturally feasible," in reference to the collapse of the towers. However, this is not possible as Minoru Yamasaki died on February 6, 1986.

List of Rumors

Claims that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were involved in the attacks.

See also Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

Critics of the Bush Administration have argued that the U.S. Government strongly implied that Iraq was involved in the attacks, in order to whip up public support for an attack on Iraq. Polls have shown that as much as 60% of the U.S. public has at one time believed that Hussein was involved, and that this percentage has been higher for those who support President Bush and consider themselves Republicans. Given these numbers, the "Iraq connection" is the most widely held false conspiracy theory regarding the 9/11 attacks, as well as the one that is most relevant to public policy.

Despite initial statements by the Bush administration to the contrary, no evidence has been seen publicly linking Iraq to the attacks. The two captured planners of the attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, have reportedly denied Iraqi involvement. Other assertions, such as one claim that Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, have either been disproven or discounted.

The 9/11 Commission Report states on page 335 that Paul Wolfowitz had pressed the administration to invade Iraq just days after the attacks. "Secretary Colin Powell recalled that Wolfowitz--not Rumsfeld--argued that Iraq was ultimately the source of the terrorist problem and should therefore be attacked. He argued that if there was even a 10% chance that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack, maximum priority should be placed on eliminating that threat. Wolfowitz contended that the odds were far more than 1 in 10, citing Saddam's long record of involvement in terrorism and theories that Ramzi Yousef was an Iraqi agent and that Iraq was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center." However, the report also notes that Secretary Powell said that the President did not "give Wolfowitz's argument 'much weight'" and that the President "saw Afghanistan as the priority."

The Report also observes that "Condoleezza Rice's chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda."

On page 61, the Report notes that "Bin Laden had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army."

In Chapter 5, the Commission reports that "To Mohammed Atta , Saddam Hussein was an American stooge set up to give Washington an excuse to intervene in the Middle East."

Retired General Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to George H.W. Bush, wrote an essay published in the Wall Street Journal in August 2002 in which he wrote, "Saddam's strategic objective appears to be to dominate the Persian Gulf, to control oil from the region, or both. That clearly poses a real threat to key U.S. interests. But there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them. There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression. Rather, Saddam's problem with the U.S. appears to be that we stand in the way of his ambitions. He seeks weapons of mass destruction not to arm terrorists, but to deter us from intervening to block his aggressive designs."

Claims of Kashmiri responsibility

There were early claims of Kashmiri responsibility for the attacks. These were quickly disproven. It is nearly universally accepted that Kashmiri terrorists played no role in the attacks.

Claims of World Trade Center survivors after September 13

The search for survivors from the wreckage of the World Trade Center continued for weeks, but the search was fruitless. Several reported rescues on September 13 proved to be false. The only persons rescued were some firefighters who became trapped earlier that day in the search and rescue operation. An office worker named Genelle Guzman-McMillan was, however, rescued from the remains of the South Tower on September 12.

Claims that approximately 10,000 people died in the September 11 attacks

The sheer number of casualties and the chaos of the day meant that missing persons lists were greatly inflated. The true total casualty figure of the day was very close to 3,000. The claim of 10,000 came from a variety of sources that proved to be unreliable, especially from early guesses based on the full capacity of the World Trade Center buildings (around 20,000) and the assumption that the evacuation was not as successful as it proved to have been.

Claim that over 130 Israelis died in the September 11 attacks

Early estimates of Israeli deaths, as of the total death toll, proved substantially exaggerated. George W. Bush cited the figure of 130 in his speech of September 20. In reality, there were a total of 5 Israeli deaths in the attack: Alona Avraham, Leon Lebor, Shay Levinhar, Daniel Lewin, and Haggai Sheffi. (Many American Jews were killed, however.)

Claim that over 250 Indians died in the September 11 attacks

Early estimates of Indian deaths, as of the total death toll, proved somewhat exaggerated. George W. Bush cited the figure of 250 in his speech of September 20. In reality, there were a total of 17 Indian deaths in the attack (plus another 100 persons of Indian origin ).

Claim that "hundreds" of British citizens died in the September 11 attacks

Early estimates of British deaths, as of the total death toll, proved somewhat exaggerated. George W. Bush cited the figure of "hundreds" in his speech of September 20. In reality, there were a total of 67 British deaths in the attack.

Claim of an alleged Nostradamus prediction

The following text (and variants) began to spread through the Internet within days of the attack:

In the city of god there will be a great thunder,

two brothers torn apart by chaos,

while the fortress endures,

the great leader will succumb.

The third big war will begin when the big city is burning

NOSTRADAMUS 1654

This is not an authentic Nostradamus quatrain. It appears nowhere in his works, and Nostradamus died long before 1654.

It has since been revealed that this passage made famous in email was originally written by a Canadian student as part of an essay on the open, general and often misleading nature of predictions both by Nostradamus & others. Following the September 11 attacks, the original work appeared and then rocketed around the world in email but was the victim of many misleading revisions by people who received and then forwarded on the passage.

Rumors of a passing UFO

Soon after the attacks, webpages appeared that claimed to show 'unreleased' stills of a UFO rushing past the towers several seconds after the second plane hit.

Others assert that the object in question may have been a bird flying between the World Trade Center and the camera. And there are some who assert that the object in question may have been a military jet.

Claim that President Bush masterminded the attacks to delay NESARA announcement

Believers in NESARA, The National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act, claim that it is a secret law passed in the year 2000 with wide reaching effects which would require the resignation of President Bush and other far reaching changes to the government. NESARA supporters believe that the law was scheduled to be announced and implemented on September 11th, 2001, and that Bush carried out the attacks to prevent that announcement.

Claim that a tourist had a photograph taken of himself on top of the north tower seconds before plane struck

An e-mail was circulated which showed a photograph of a tourist on top of the north tower just seconds before American Airlines flight 11 struck it. The view of the northern side of the city, and the American Airlines markings on the plane, are both unmistakable. However, this photograph is beyond any reasonable doubt a hoax. (The picture is shown, and its story discussed, on the snopes.com website.)

There were many initial clues that the photograph was inauthentic. Flight 11 was moving at hundreds of miles per hour just before it struck the World Trade Center; at that speed, it ought to have been a blur, yet the shot of the plane in the photograph is very clear -- it almost seems to be stationary in the air. The aircraft pictured is a Boeing 757, while Flight 11 was a Boeing 767. The World Trade Center did not open its observation tower facilities until 0930 hours; the plane struck at 0846 hours. September 11 was a warm and sunny day in New York City, yet the man is shown wearing a heavy coat and thermal cap, both designed for cold weather. Finally, there was no observation deck on the north tower.

The original picture was taken when a Hungarian named Peter (who wished that his last name be withheld) visited the Towers on November 28, 1997. The original picture without plane and other pictures of Peter can be found on Wired's website. Since then the 'Accidental Tourist' has become an internet phenomenon.

Claims that Osama bin Laden owns part or all of Snapple soft-drinks and Citibank

He does not. Citibank is owned in part by Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who at some point after the attacks was apparently confused with Osama bin Laden. Bin Talal has no connection with al-Qaeda.

The New York Post reported the Snapple story as part of a general story about the Saudi bin Laden Group owning part of this company. The Chief Executive of Snapple, Michael Weinstein, released a statement denying it.

Claims that September 11's events generated a baby boom

There was no recorded rise in the US birth rate in June 2002, or in any other part of that year.

Warnings to avoid malls on October 31

A number of people across the country received an e-mail chain letter making this warning. It said that an Afghan left a letter to his girlfriend on September 10, 2001, asking her not to take any flights on September 11 and not to go to any shopping mall on Halloween. It was said that the letter is now in the FBI's hands. The letter implied that there is a second phase of the terrorist attacks and the targets will be trick-or-treaters.

The e-mail was traced back to a person named Laura Katsi, who apparently has no first-hand knowledge of the event and regrets passing the note along. The FBI has investigated the matter and took the unusual step of issuing a statement on the hoax, declaring the claim to be unsubstantiated. A few variations on this message are also circulating. All of these have been shown to be false.

Claims that Mohammed Atta was a known terrorist

There have been persistent rumors that Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the September 11 attacks, was a known terrorist. Reportedly he had bombed an Israeli bus in 1986 and was freed from Israel on insistence by the US as a result of the Oslo Peace Accords. This is incorrect. The bus bomber is the Palestinian Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta. He is a naturalized US citizen and was extradited by the US to Israel in 1990. He was freed after that extradition was held to be invalid by the Israeli supreme court. His whereabouts are unknown. He was 47 years old at the time of the September 11 attack, while Mohammed Atta was 33.

Claims that Oliver North warned about Osama Bin Laden

There have been claims that former Iran/Contra figure Oliver North issued a warning about Osama bin Laden during testimony in the 1980s to the U.S. Senate. This claim has been circulating via e-mail since shortly after September 11. Oliver North did mention a terrorist during his testimony to the Iran/Contra committee, but the individual he mentioned was Abu Nidal, who has no connection to Bin Laden. The U.S. News and World Report looked into this urban legend and interviewed North himself, whose aides "confirmed the fake. North, in fact, suggests that at the time of the Reagan-era Senate hearings into the scandal, rebels like bin Laden were U.S. friends lined up against Soviet invaders." The "Urban Legends" web site also has a page debunking the Oliver North story.

Rumors of celebrating Arab-Americans

Claims that certain groups of Arab-Americans celebrated the attacks circulated through e-mail shortly after 9/11. These e-mails included calls to boycott certain businesses, such as Dunkin Donuts, which supposedly had a franchise owned by Arabs. Another rumor is that American Football Hall of Famer, Terry Bradshaw, attacked five Arabs whom he saw celebrating that day. Yet another rumor was that the Lebanese owners of the Middle Eastern restaurant La Shish, in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, were celebrating the attacks on 9/11. These claims are false. More information can be found on a snopes.com page.

The Americans Radio Editorial

Following the attacks, an e-mail was widely forwarded purporting to be Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair's response to September 11. While his stirring denouncement of those who criticize or attack Americans provided great comfort to many who read it, Sinclair -- who died in 1984 -- had in fact written the editorial in 1973, in response to the end of the Vietnam War.

Claim that 4,000 Israeli/Jewish employees skipped work at the WTC on September 11

This claim, made by Al-Manar, has been repeated by a wide variety of other sources, such as Amiri Baraka; see 9/11 conspiracy claims regarding Jews or Israel. 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". There were 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.)

However, since September 11 was an election day in New York that year, it is quite possible that many people did not necessarily skip work, but rather many may have gone to the polls to vote, intending to go in to work later in the day. This fact may account in part for the magnitude of the number suggested, if indeed the occupancy figures at the time of the impacts was significantly lower than would otherwise be expected.

Claims of an Israeli conspiracy to frame Arabs

Various rumors circulated in the Arab world following the attack to the effect that non-Muslims, in particular Israelis or supporters of Israel, perpetrated the attack to frame Arabs and Muslims; see 9/11 conspiracy claims regarding Jews or Israel. No specific proof has been presented in support of this claim (other than the already-refuted contention that Jewish workers avoided going to the towers). The nature of such a conspiracy claim makes it virtually impossible to conclusively disprove - just as it would be impossible to prove that the attack was not actually perpetrated by the Chinese, by Zimbabweans, or by members of any other group.

Claim that Sharon stayed away because of a Shabak warning

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 massive pro-Israel rally, led by the United Jewish Communities, 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.

Claims of a "credible threat" against Bush

After President Bush faced some criticism for flying around the US in Air Force One instead of returning immediately to Washington or New York, members of his administration (Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice) told the press on several occasions that there had been a "credible threat" against Bush by terrorists. Later, AP and CBS news investigated this claim and found it to be false. In response to this, the Administration officials said that there had been a "misunderstanding". White House officials also claimed that the plane which crashed into the Pentagon originally was aimed at the White House. That claim was also debunked, although the 9/11 Commission concluded that the fourth plane, Flight 93, was in fact targetting either the White House or Senate.

Claims that the towers were demolished with explosives

Some claim that the towers could not have been leveled only from damage caused by collision with the hijacked planes. They find it implausible that the relatively small amount of rapid-burning jet fuel could have melted the towers' steel beams. Some furthermore indicate as suspicious the fact that both buildings fell straight down even though the plane crashed into the corner of Tower 2. (One might wonder, though, why the attackers would want the buildings to fall straight down, if their goal was maximum damage.)

Several variations of this claim exist, but each concludes that the World Trade Center must have been detonated from within. Contemporaneously, several news commentators made statements to the effect that the collapse 'looked like a controlled demolition'.

For example, video footage has led some people to believe that the buildings were demolished professionally with explosives. . A group of engineers believe the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center strangely collapsed, regarding the vertical collapse of the three buildings as an unlikely occurrence without the aid of explosives. "Explosives put in WTC concrete.." One documentary on 9/11, "911 In Plane Site", features video footage of Larry Silverstein, the lease owner of the World Trade Center, giving an interview on PBS. In the interview he stated that a decision was made to "pull" 7 WTC (however, there are theories that this statement was in reference to "pulling" rescue and other personel out of the building before its collapse). Whether demolition charges were also present in the other buildings, including the Twin Towers, continues to be debated.

However, most engineers view the collapse as sensible and even predictable given the conditions. According to this view, the jet fuel (which never burns hot enough to actually melt steel anyway) acted to instantaneously spread the fire. The impact furthermore blew insulation off of steel beams. Because of these factors, the steel was quickly heated enough to lose significant strength. In concert with structural damage, this softening of steel caused failure. Once failure thus occurs, the monolithic mass and internal center of gravity permitted each tower to fall essentially in only one direction: straight down. This view has been officially confirmed by forensic analysis of key components of debris.

Significant debate among engineers exists about exactly which mechanisms felled the towers, but claims about explosives are, for the most part, not seriously entertained by 'mainstream' forensic and structural engineers.

See also: Collapse of the World Trade Center

Claims that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757

A French Web site has disputed that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. It does not explain what happened to the plane and its crew and passengers. Its claims have later been published in two books by Thierry Meyssan, The Big Lie (ISBN 1592090265) and Pentagate (ISBN 1592090281).

In March 2002 the US authorities released photographs from a surveillance camera. The pictures, complete with times (set to another time zone) at the bottom corner, can be found on this BBC webpage or at this CNN webpage. The first picture is timed 17:37:19 and the last 17:37:23. It is however impossible to recognize the shape of a plane from these pictures, and only a ground-level explosion can be seen, fueling speculation that the Pentagon was not hit by a commercial jet.

Some claim the object depicted in photographs about to strike the building has a different shape and size than a Boeing 757, and that photographs taken after the Pentagon was hit and before the damaged part collapsed, show the hole being less than that a 757 would produce, even assuming that most of the wings did come off. It's claimed that the small hole in the Pentagon is inconsistent with the damage caused by similar planes to the World Trade Center. Opponents to the theory counter that the Pentagon's wall's greater mass limited structural damage that a plane's wings could cause. On the other hand, the massive Kevlar walls of the Pentagon, blocking the wings from slicing through the construction, may have caused a lot of plane debris and parts to be visible in the area if they were not pulled into the building. The lack of significant debris in pictures of the pentagon lawn also fuels speculation that a 757 did not strike the building.

Some have alleged inconsistencies in the official version and also purport that video footage from at least 4 cameras alongside the plane approach (on hotel rooftop, at a gas station and on the highway) route were confiscated by the FBI minutes after the explosion and never released .

Immediately after the explosion some eyewitnesses described the object as a missile, although most recalled some sort of plane. Indeed, several specifically recall a large plane . Conflicting recollections demonstrate at best the unreliability of memory around tragic events. Other quotes supposedly come from firefighters working inside the building who claim no debris from the Boeing 757 plane exist. Other witnesses and photographs show parts in the wreckage that are identifiable as parts used in a 757. .

External links

The speculations about what happened at the Pentagon have caused much interest, and there are websites in support or against this rumor.

• The Pentagon No-757-Crash Theory: Booby Trap for 9/11 Skeptics by Jim Hoffman October 7, 2004

• the "Pentagon Missile" hoax distracts and discredits evidence for complicity - includes lots of photos and eyewitness testimonies that refute the "no plane" claims

• This is a webpage that claims it is mathematically impossible for the plane to have hit the Pentagon in that time without moving at mach speeds. (Note, however, that these calculations are based on the erroneous idea that the surveillance camera was operating as a video camera at 30 frames per second. In fact it was taking one frame per second, as can clearly be seen from the time stamps, so these calculations are inaccurate.)

• A rebuttal page exists at snopes.com.

• This page shows pictures of wreckage and debris inside the pentagon, and also the hole in the Pentagon's wall.

• This site presents many pictures and graphic analyses of them, and suggests that it was likely that a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon, but also that the official version is faulty and that the truth is being hidden.

• This site contains a flash presentation that purports to prove that a plane couldn't have crashed into the Pentagon. Some of the photos used show the external wall of the Pentagon mostly obscured by firefighting foam, so the full damage is obscured.

• The Pentagon Attack and American Airlines Flight 77 by John Judge

"Hundreds of people saw the plane from windows of nearby buildings, from cars along the nearby highways, and some ducked because it flew over so low. Pentagon employees and construction workers at the site saw the events unfold before their eyes. Hundreds more took part in the clean-up operation and saw the wreckage. It is not difficult to find eyewitnesses to the event in DC. ... "Families of victims and others who work at the airlines, as well as many witnesses I have spoken to, are offended and shocked by these unfounded speculations. Those willing to do a modicum of investigative work here in DC will be quickly disabused of this disinformation. "There are many legitimate unanswered questions about the events of September 11, 2001, its sponsorship, and the official version of events. We benefit from serious research and the issues raised by victim's families seeking accountability. Not the least of these is the apparent lack of standard FAA/NORAD response to these emergency events. Rather than use our time proving and belaboring the obvious, or focusing on areas of total speculation that can only hurt our public credibility, I encourage serious researchers to focus on the historical context of the event, the alleged conspirators, the funding, and the government response or lack of it."

• Jeff Wells, Rigorous Intuition

"I think there's a grave problem of "sexing up" the truth with spectacular yet specious arguments. For instance, some of the splashiest and attractive 9/11 material is devoted to supporting the "Pentagon Missile." Sure, it gets people's attention - in fact, it dominates the public perception of alternative theories of the attacks - but is it right? Well, no; as I've said, I don't think so. And truth will suffer again and again when those who fell for the missile "hook" come to the same conclusion and chuck the whole thing, and those who were turned off the "missile" refuse to look any further."

Claims that US military aircraft shot down Flight 93 to stop it from reaching Washington

US authorities have denied shooting down Flight 93, but some claim there is contrary evidence.

Although US authorities claim the plane crashed at 10:03, seismic activity in the region indicates that the plane actually crashed at 10:06. One hypothesis presented is that an F-16 shot out one of the engines just after UA 93 flew over the Johnstown Cambria County Airport around 10:03 AM after which the plane crashed in Shanksville at 10:06 15-16 minutes before it would have otherwise reached Washington, D.C. This would be consistent with the seismic activity and consistent with a timeline given in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Wreckage (including engine wreckage) was found upwind of the crash site, and roughly in the direction from which the plane came, implying that the plane broke up at least to some degree before it crashed. However, this is ambiguous and much wreckage can be expected to be strewn as a result of the crash that occurred. Had the plane broken up in midair, at least some of the bodies would have been scattered. Instead they were all found in the crater.

There are observations by many eyewitnesses who saw other aircraft in the area. US authorities have said that they have identified a civilian aircraft that was in the area, and that it had nothing to do with the downing of Flight 93.

Additional evidence can be garnered from a Meet the Press interview on September 16th 2001 between Tim Russert and Dick Cheney:

• Cheney: Well, the - I suppose the toughest decision was this question of whether or not we would intercept incoming commercial aircraft.
• Russert: And you decided?
• Cheney: We decided to do it. We'd, in effect, put a flying combat air patrol up over the city; F-16s with an AWACS, which is an airborne radar system, and tanker support so they could stay up a long time.

More speculation was fueled by a statement made by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Christmas Eve 2004 during a visit to troops after the suicide bombing of a mess tent. He said that the people who committed the tent bombing were the same ones who hit the World Trade Center and "shot down the plane over Pennsylvania".

A statement that a sonic boom was detected shortly before the crash has now been withdrawn by its author.

One phone call that is unexplained -- to this day -- was made by passenger Edward Felt. The day after September 11, the Washington Post (and other newspapers) reported the incident as follows:

• Westmoreland County emergency dispatchers said they received a last-ditch 911 cell phone call from a passenger at 9:58 a.m., just minutes before the crash. Dispatch supervisor Glenn Cramer told the Associated Press that the call came from a passenger who had locked himself inside one of the plane's lavatories. "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked," Cramer quoted the caller from a transcript of the call. The caller described the plane as "going down," Cramer told AP. "He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane, and we lost contact with him."

Shortly thereafter, as the Washington Post story also reported, "FBI agents quickly took possession of the tape of that 911 call, which constitutes the only public evidence so far of what went on during the doomed plane's last moments."

Then, in an odd twist, the New York Times reported on March 27, 2002, that the caller had never said anything about an explosion or smoke:

• Earlier reports have said that a previously unidentified passenger, Edward Felt of Matawan, N.J., said in a 911 call from a restroom that he saw a puff of smoke and heard an explosion, leading some to cite this as evidence that the plane was shot down by the military to prevent it from crashing into sensitive targets. But the 911 dispatcher, John Shaw, and others who have heard the tape, including Mr. Felt's wife, Sandra Felt, say he made no mention of smoke or an explosion when he said, 'We're going down.'

But that report would be itself be contradicted. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported the following on April 21, 2002:

• Edward Felt, a computer engineer who had been on his way to a business meeting in San Francisco, may have been the last person to place a phone call from the doomed plane before it crashed on Sept. 11 near Shanksville, Somerset County. Eight minutes before the crash, he had called 911 from an airplane lavatory and reached a dispatcher in Westmoreland County. And so, before they joined the other relatives to hear the cockpit voice recorder tape, Edward's widow, Sandy, his brother, Gordon, and his mother, Shirley, were led to a small conference room at the Princeton Marriott Forestall Village Hotel, where they were joined by two FBI agents and a victim-assistance counselor. Sitting around a polished wood table, the agents handed each of the Felts a typed transcript of the 911 call, and then played it. Ed's call was made at 9:58 a.m. In a conversation with dispatchers lasting about one minute, he spoke in a quivering voice saying, "We are being hijacked. We are being hijacked." He went on to describe an "explosion" that he heard, and then white smoke on the plane from an undetermined location. Then the line went dead.

It has never been explained why Edward Felt would have reported an explosion and white smoke.

Claims that Bush knew of the attacks in advance

President Bush certainly knew that bin Laden was a terrorist who would like to attack the USA, as is confirmed by the release of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, but the specificity of Bush's knowledge is hotly debated. Some rumors suggest that Bush may have had detailed knowledge of the actual attack, and that he allowed the attacks to occur for political reasons, but no substantiating evidence has been made public. The PDB does mention "seventy full field investigations" and that the intelligence community has been unable to "confirm some of the more sensational threat reporting", leaving open the question as to whether detailed information about the plot was available to the administration.

Bush has claimed many times that he had no specific forewarnings of an impending attack on U.S. soil, and it remains unclear exactly what Bush might have anticipated.

Bush's December 4 2001 comment, and I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot.", even though footage of the first plane hitting the WTC was not televised until the a day or two after, was interpreted by some as proof that the President had advance knowledge of the attack. Bush is not known for his clarity of speech, and the statement could also be taken to mean "I saw that an airplane had hit the tower" - meaning, Bush had seen the damage to the building caused by the first crash, as was widely televised before the second crash, rather than the impact of either plane.

(For whatever reason, he substantially repeated himself a month later: "when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake.")

This is further discussed in 9/11 domestic conspiracy theory.

Reports that Zacarias Moussaoui was the '20th hijacker'

When Zacarias Moussaoui was initially taken into custody he was alleged to have been part of the September 11 plot. He was commonly referred to as the "20th hijacker".

Although Moussaoui seems to have been training for an act of aircraft terrorism, there has been no evidence found to link him with Flight 93 or any of the other aircraft. He did not train with the other hijackers and seems to have had no contact with them. According to Ramzi Binalshibh, a person who was part of the plot, a role for Moussaoui was contemplated but never materialized.

Claims that the hijackers took control of the aircraft solely with box cutters

What little information that is available about tactics used to take control of the aircraft came from the phone calls from passengers and flight attendants. They used a variety of weapons, in which box cutters did play a part.

Barbara Olson, who was on Flight 77, reported that the hijackers had knives and box cutters. Passengers on Flight 93 reported knives and bomb threats (including a box that reportedly contained a bomb). A flight attendant on Flight 11 said she was disabled by chemical spray, and references were also made to a bomb. Box cutters were also presumably used on Flight 11, as Mohammed Atta purchased some at Portland on the night of September 10. Stabbings were also reported by a passenger on Flight 175. The term 'knife' in all of these reports may well have included 'box cutter,' especially when one recalls the stressful circumstances, and the fact that many people would not be familiar with the term 'box cutter.' The 9/11 Commission concluded they used Leatherman Utility Knives which explains why the passengers claimed they saw the hijackers with knife-like devices.

Claims that the attackers planned to use crop-dusters for a biological or chemical attack

The federal government twice grounded crop-dusters after 9/11 and the original indictment of Moussaoui suggested that he and the other plotters were investigating crop dusters. There were even reports from Florida that Atta and other Arab men inquired about crop dusters. A Department of Agriculture official claimed that Atta asked for a government loan to buy a plane for crop-dusting.

Although this evidence seems compelling, it doesn't hold up well to deeper examination. First of all, the date that Atta was purported to have visited a crop-dusting facility doesn't match with any dates where he was in the vicinity. The Moussaoui indictment later dropped any references to crop-dusting. In their interrogations, the captured planners did not indicate any interest in a crop-dusting attack and that the plan was always to fly airplanes into buildings. While a loan may have been sought from the Agricultural Department for a stated purpose of crop-dusting, it does not necessarily mean that the airplane was intended to be used for this purpose.

Claims that supporters of the attacks profited on airline stocks

Although there were reports that trading of put options on airline stocks was unusually busy before 9/11, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation has so far yielded no complaints of illegal activity.

Osama and "Evil Bert"

Claim that a "Bert is Evil" website was removed because of an image showing Osama bin Laden and the popular muppet.

A photograph of a pro-bin Laden rally in Bangladesh showed a poster of Osama bin Laden with a small but clearly identifiable image of Bert, a muppet from the children's television show Sesame Street, over his right shoulder. (Another smaller image of bin Laden is immediately to the right of Bert's image.) The photo is from Reuters, and was not doctored. In fact, the image of Osama and Bert had been created (using an image editing tool) by a humorist earlier and placed on a website, and the person who made the poster must have copied it from the World Wide Web, leaving in the image of Evil Bert.

As a response to this, the creator of the "Bert is Evil" website has taken down the site and posted a note explaining the decision. "I am doing this because I feel this has gotten too close to reality," he says, "and I choose to be responsible enough to stop it right here." For full message text, see . For a detailed account of the use of the image, in South Asia as well as by Western news agencies, see . (The latter also argues against the notion that inclusion of the Bert image of the photo is some kind of coded communication.)

Although the creator of Bert is Evil requested that all mirror versions of his site be taken down, versions of the site remain widely accessible online as of 2004.

The smoke demon

Several photographs were circulated throughout the Internet in the days following the tragedy that depicted smoke rising from the Twin Towers that resembled demonic heads. It has been confirmed by AP that at least one of these photos is authentic. See and .

The pictures certainly seem to be genuine, but most people see this as an example of pareidolia.

Parallel War Games

In the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen, which aired in March 2001, a small cabal within the military-industrial complex used a wargame scenario as cover for the hijacking of a commercial flight and crashing it into the World Trade Center. In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, the US was holding multiple war games during the September 11, 2001 attacks, some strongly resembling the actual attacks.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml "Crossing the Rubicon: Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney by Michael Kane and http://www.oilempire.us/wargames.html have detailed information about some of the wargames on 9/11.

Hidden images on the $20 bill

Within a few months of the attacks, it was discovered that one could generate images that look like the attacked buildings by taking a new-style $20 bill and folding it in the following manner:

• With the picture of the White House facing you, fold the bill in half lengthwise by folding the top down to the back. Now just the bottom of the White House should be visible.
• Fold the ends down (toward the front) so that the top forms a point and the two ends are even at the bottom.

When the bill is turned so that the point is at the bottom, an image of what looks like the smoking World Trade Center is visible.

File:$20billbackside.gif

Flip the bill over, and an image of what looks like the smoking Pentagon is also visible.

File:$20billfrontside.gif

In reality, the "images" are portions of the picture of the White House, with the image of the smoke coming from the trees beside it. It startled many to see that such an amazing coincidence could come from a few simple folds, with a bill that was issued several years before the attacks took place. The folding process will not produce the images on an old-style $20 bill (from before edition September 24, 1998), but it will work with the series 2003 "colorful" type of twenty that contains the same picture of the White House.

False fundraising

Scambusters reported instances of e-mail fundraising scams in the wake of the tragedy, and posted tips to help consumers ensure their donations reached the right agencies.

Five Israelis were filming the event

This claim formed part of a mostly false Al-Manar report which triggered many of the 9/11 conspiracy claims regarding Jews or Israel; it 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 correct: Yossi Melman did indeed make a report to that effect in Haaretz on September 17, 2001, still available from Haaretz' site, and used the precise words "puzzling behavior" and "what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery." It has been followed up on by several mainstream Western media groups, including ABC, some of which are listed at the Sunday Herald's website.

Claims of other Attacks on 9/11/2001

On September 11th 2001 reporters for WCBS TV NY Channel 2 and CNN claimed that there were reports that a massive car bomb had just exploded outside of the United States Department of State, FBI Headquarters, and NASA Headquarters, and that they had found hundreds of pounds of explosives on the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River and at the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. It was later said that these claims were just "bad reporting."

Also on September 11th, at about 6:00 AM (before the attacks), just as President Bush was waking up for his morning jog in Longboat Key, Florida, a van full of Middle Eastern men reportedly arrived at the resort where Bush was staying, claiming they had a poolside interview with the President. They were turned away because they had no appointment. Some suggest that this was part of an assassination attempt on the President (perhaps modeled after the successful attack on Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Other rumors

Various incidents have occurred since September 11, 2001, with no evidence to support a causal link to the terrorist attack. They include:

• On September 21, 2001, the AZF chemical factory in Toulouse, southern France, exploded, causing 29 deaths. On October 4, 2001, France's environment minister declared that it may have been a terrorist attack.
• In the morning of October 3, 2001, a man slit the throat of the driver of Greyhound bus No. 1115, en route from Nashville to Atlanta, 50 miles southeast of Nashville. The bus crashed, killing four of the 36 passengers. Early reports stated at least 10 were killed. Later reports assert that the bus attacker was a drug addict with a history of erratic behavior.
• On October 4, 2001, a Russian jetliner en route from Tel Aviv to Siberia with 77 passengers exploded in mid-air before plunging into the Black Sea. All flights from Ben Gurion International Airport were grounded in response. Later reports asserted that a Ukrainian missile mistakenly took down the jetliner. Missile fragments were recovered from the crash site, and the government of Ukraine has accepted responsibility for the accidental targeting of the jet.
• On October 4, 2001, it is announced that Bob Stevens, a 63-year-old Lantana, Florida, resident was admitted to a hospital on Tuesday with non-contagious pulmonary anthrax. He later died. Bob Stevens, a British-born outdoorsman and gardener, was a photo editor at the supermarket tabloid The Sun. On October 8, 2001 health officials and the FBI report that they have discovered bacillus anthracis spores on a computer keyboard at the offices of The Sun and in the nose of a co-worker, who was not diagnosed with the disease. The FBI sealed the building.
• On October 11, 2001, 700 pounds (318 kg) of explosives were discovered missing from a facility in Texas.
• On October 12, 2001, a case of anthrax was reported in New York City. A female NBC Nightly News employee was reported to have been exposed to anthrax. It was believed that she received it from a letter containing powder on September 25. The powder in the letter tested negative for anthrax. A skin test of the employee by the CDC returned positive for non-contagious cutaneous anthrax. She had been exposed on September 25. She began presenting symptoms on September 28. She began receiving Cipro on October 1. A biopsy was done on October 10 and sent to the CDC.

Less Common Theories

• Some theories claim that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein conspired in 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. 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.
• Numerous theories have been put forward suggesting conspiratorial involvement of Zionists, Israel, Jews and/or the Mossad. (Main article: 9/11 conspiracy claims regarding Jews or Israel)
• The Church of Scientology claims that the 9/11 hijackers were brainwashed by psychiatrists, who were the real masterminds behind the attacks.

9/11 Conspiracy claims related to Jews and Israel

• September 11 - Rumours start the same day as the attacks with an anonymous article published by InformationTimes.com, a Virginia-based newsletter edited by the Pakistani-American journalist Syed Adeeb, suggesting that complicity of "the terrorist Government of Israel in the genocide of the American people and in the destruction of World Trade Center and the Pentagon building cannot be ruled out". No basis was given for the speculation in the article, which argued that Israel had an "ulterior motive" (if the attacks were blamed on Islamist groups, this would strengthen its hand against "certain Muslim/Arab groups... fighting to liberate Occupied Palestine"), and that Osama bin Laden did not have the resources to carry out such an attack. The USS Liberty incident was cited in support.
• September 12 - Dr. Anwar Ul Haque (a Pakistani pathologist) made a roughly similar suggestion on the Canada-based "Islamic News and Information Network" site, considerably expanding on the supposed motivations and throwing in John F. Kennedy's assassination.
• September 13 - this suggestion reached Jordan: two columnists mentioned it in one Jordanian paper, Al-Dustour, (), claiming that Israel stood to benefit, and arguing that only Mossad could have evaded American intelligence. One columnist (Jihad Jbara) suggested in another Jordanian paper, Al-Rai, that Israel might have orchestrated the event to give itself a chance to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque without American objections.
• September 14 - Major General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's intelligence service (see quotes below) suggests that "Mossad and its American associates are the obvious culprits. Who benefits from the crime?" .
• September 15 - The English-language Tehran Times suggested that "The Zionists and certain anti-Islamic elements in the West, however, would benefit from any action that would serve to discredit and demonize the Islamic movement" and would thus be the only parties to benefit.
• September 16 - The Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, according to MEMRI, told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam that "it was a large intelligence operation, behind which might be the Mossad and American intelligence, with the aim of a new war in the region so as to impoverish and conquer it"; if MEMRI's claim is correct, this quote should be found somewhere here.
• September 16 - an e-mail allegedly originating on September 13 from "David Stern" of "Stern-Intel" (thoroughly investigated at ) claimed that "an internal (US-)intelligence memo... points to the Israeli Mossad intelligence service having links to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks". This email represents a mutation of the story: initially slow to spread, its claims were reprinted in the Frontier Post (Peshawar) on September 16, and in the Daily Jang on September 23.
• September 17 - Probably the widest-spread rumour took off when the Lebanese Hezbollah-owned satellite channel Al-Manar asserted in an article that the Israeli secret services and their Zionist supporters were most likely responsible, claiming that 4000 Israelis had stayed away from work at the World Trade Center that day. This claim was picked up by InformationTimes.com, and rapidly spread to other anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli and/or anti-Semitic sources around the world. It briefly became a chain email. By the end of October, this claim had been referenced to Iran's IRNA, Egypt's Al Ahram, the London-based Al-Hayat, and Russia's Pravda amongst others.

Al-Manar's original article claimed the following:

1. 4,000 Israeli employees did not show up to work on September 11 (the source's term, "Israeli", was frequently changed to "Jewish" as the rumour spread)
2. Unnamed "Arab diplomatic sources" had told a Jordanian newspaper, Al-Watan, that the Israeli Shabak had warned these employees not to show up at work
3. According to "Aharon Bernie" of Yediot Aharonot, Shabak had prevented Ariel Sharon from going to New York City for a pro-Israeli festival there
4. The FBI had arrested five Israelis four hours later who were filming the burning building with, in Al-Manar's words, "what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery."

These are detailed more fully below. The first claim (and hence the second) are false - there were fewer than 100 Israeli employees there to begin with, and 3 were in fact killed - though the fourth is true.

Specific allegations

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." This was been followed up by several mainstream Western media groups. 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). Several other sources are listed at their website.

See also: Israeli art students

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. What appears to be a transcript of the original can still be read at .

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).

Examples of conspiracy claims in the press

There are many examples of these kind of allegations:

WASHINGTON, DC, 11 September 2001 - "CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA and all other U.S. Government agencies should also deeply investigate to determine that did the anti-American regime of Israeli international terrorist, serial killer and war criminal Ariel Sharon play any role in the Sept. 11 suicide airplane attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center that have killed and injured thousands of innocent Americans and caused huge financial losses amounting to billions of dollars. Top secret role of the terrorist Government of Israel in the genocide of the American people and in the destruction of World Trade Center and the Pentagon building cannot be ruled out..." ( Information Times)

September 20, 2001, No. 270 - "It is clear that Israel is the one to benefit greatly from the bloody, loathsome terror operation that occurred yesterday, and that it seeks to benefit still more by accusing the Arabs and Muslims of perpetrating this loathsome attack.... Only Israel does not fear the discovery that the Jews are behind this operation, if indeed it was so; who in the US or outside it would dare to accuse them, as every blow to them means talk of a new 'Holocaust?' They, more than anyone, are capable of hiding a criminal act they perpetrate, and they can be certain that no one will ask them about what they do." (Source: Al-Dustour, Jordanian newspaper, September 13, 2001, by columnist Rakan Al-Majali (MEMRI,

September 14, 2001 - "I tell you, it was a coup , and I can't say for sure who was behind it, but it's the Israelis who are creating so much misery in the world. The Israelis don't want to see any power in Washington unless it's subservient to their interests, and President Bush has not been subservient." (Source: Major General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's intelligence service, in an interview with Rob Nordland of Newsweek)

Written on September 17, 2001 - "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 4000 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. Arab diplomatic sources revealed to the al-Watan newspaper published in Oman that those Israelis remained absent that day based on hints from the Israeli General Security Apparatus, the Shabak, the fact which evoked unannounced suspicions on American officials who wanted to know how the Israeli government learned about the incident before it occurred, and the reasons why it refrained from informing the U.S authorities of the information it had." (English version of the Web site of Lebanon's Al-Manar Television)

September 20, 2001 - "What happened is, in my opinion, the product of Jewish, Israeli, and American Zionism, and the act of the great Jewish Zionist mastermind that controls the world's economy, media, and politics.... The goal of the suicide operations in New York was, in my opinion, to push the American people, President Bush, and NATO to submit even more to the Jewish Zionist ideology and the historical goals since the Basel Congress in 1897, under the Zionist-Jewish slogan of 'Islamic terror'.... We have said in the past that Jewish-Israeli-American Zionism is leading the region to disaster, and that it is trying to lead the Americans and its worldwide allies to world disaster. Perhaps what happened on American is the beginning of the world disaster." (Source: Al-Dustour, Jordanian newspaper, September 13, 2001, by columnist Ahmad Al-Muslih (MEMRI, No. 270))

"On , Georgios Karatzaferis asked Foreign Minister George Papandreou to inform him as to whether he was aware of the articles published in two Israeli newspapers (Ha'aretz and Yedioth Ahronot), and if he had brought them to the attention of his European counterparts. According to George Karatzaferis, these publications “reveal” that the “4000 Jews working in the Twin Towers did not go to work on the day of the attack”; that “Ariel Sharon canceled his trip to New York that day where he was to speak at a celebration of Zionism”; and that “5 Jews were arrested while videotaping the destruction 4 hours after the event are being held by the FBI for suspicious behavior interpreted as ridiculing the tragic event.”" organizations/ghm_mrgg_antisemitism_2002.rtf Anti-Semitism in Greece: A Current Picture

According to the Washington Post (Oct. 13, 2001), surveys in the Muslim nation of Pakistan showed that 71% of Pakistanis thought that it was a "possible fact" that 4000 Jews stayed away from the WTC that day because they were part of a Jewish conspiracy which had advance warning of the terrorist attacks.

"This year's most characteristic example was the widespread espousal as truth of the preposterous rumor that 4000 Jews had been warned and did not go to their offices on September 11th, the day of the terror attack in New York. This was substantiated by a television poll conducted for state TV NET on 17-18/10/2001, which showed that 42% of Greeks subscribe to this rumor, as opposed to 30% who do not. In another poll, published in Eleftherotypia, the Greeks who believed that the September 11 attacks were the work of Bin Landen (30%) or of some Arab terrorists (9%) were fewer than those who believed that they were perpetrated by the secret services of America (28%) or Israel (8%), or by Americans of the extreme right (4%) or the extreme left (2%)."organizations/ghm_mrgg_antisemitism_2002.rtf Anti-Semitism in Greece: A Current Picture

"The September 11 terrorist attacks on World Trade Centre (WTC) in New York and Pentagon in Washington were masterminded by an international Zionist organization, 'The Elders of Zion,' as a reaction to the strong condemnation of the religio-ethnic cleansing policy being carried out by the Israelis in the Palestinian territories at the 3rd UN Conference against Racism recently held in the South African town of Durban. According to an article published in a Lahore-based Urdu weekly, 'The Jihad Times,' the 300-member apex Zionist body consisting of peers of the Judaism in the world, decided to avenge the anti-Israel bashing at the Durban moot. It tasked the Zionist-controlled FBI and the Israeli secret agency Shabak, just second to Mossad, to carry out the devastating attacks, writes the weekly on the basis of strong evidence.... Another extremely important information leaked out was that around 4,000 Israelis working in the World Trade Center had been issued a secret directive before the incident not to report for duty on September 11 which they complied with. This is evident from the fact that not a single Israeli or American Jew working in the WTC was reported killed or missing. The EoZ is learnt to have instructed the Zionist controlled media to unleash a vilification campaign against the Muslims portraying them as the perpetrators of the attacks on the U.S. cities." (Zionists Could Be Behind Attack on WTC and Pentagon, posted October 14, 2001 on the IslamWeb site, registered to the State of Qatar Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs. The claim made in this article that no Jews were killed in 9/11, like the claim of the existence of the Elders of Zion, are fabrications.)

"Following the incident, Muslims and Arabs stopped feeling that is was safe to leave .... Muslims do not feel safe even going to the hospitals, because some Jewish doctors in one of the hospitals poisoned sick Muslim children, who then died.... Although the Americans suspect that the Zionists are behind the act , none had the courage to talk about it in public."

Source: Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gamei'a, the Al-Azhar University representative in the U.S. and former Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City, in an interview for the Lilatalqadr Web site an unofficial Al-Azhar University site, October 4, 2001 (The Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), October 17, 2001, No. 288)

"The Syrian official said that the racist Zionist regime will be the beneficiary of the recent incidents and added that one day after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Israel killed 12 Palestinians and was proud of it. He also said that there are reliable evidence to prove that the Israelis have been involved in these incidents and added that no Jewish employee was present in the World Trade Organization buildings on the day of the attack, and Sharon's visit to the U.S. was postponed before the incident." (Tehran Times.com, Iranian newspaper, October 25, 2001; Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), October, 24, 2001)

"Bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida is a possible suspect, but I would also suggest the involvement of the Israeli Mossad. The scare may be an attempt to shift attention from greater Israeli atrocities in the Palestinian territories." (Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Egyptian newspaper, October 25-31, 2001, Who's doing it? by Mamdouh Attiya)

"Six Israelis suspected of involvement in the attacks on New York and Washington were arrested in the US, to be later released. This confirms our strong suspicions about the involvement of Israel's Mossad in the ugly crime. If we look carefully into this matter, we find no more influential sides in the US that the Israeli Mossad agents, who have the ability to penetrate and the capability to execute with high efficiency." (Editorial in Okaz, Saudi newspaper, November 6, 2001 on The Times of India online)

"Von Bülow told AFP that he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks. These attacks, he said, were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs and boost military and security spending." - American Free Press, a Washington-based paper that critics call antisemitic. Date not given, but its reference to the Fox News report indicates December 2001.

"It is the latter, the IDF, which, as part of its war aims, has carried out an aggressive espionage and covert operations penetration of the U.S.A., including the recruitment of American-born assets. It is so far unknown, but strongly suspected, that some of these Israeli assets may have contributed an included feature of the rogue networks whose complicity abetted the successful attacks of Sept. 11." - "EIR Blows Israeli Spies' Cover In September 11 Case", Jeffrey Steinberg and Edward Spannaus in Executive Intelligence Review, the magazine of Lyndon LaRouche's movement, a tiny fringe group that critics call antisemitic, 4/7/2002 ()

"It is clear that Israel wanted the 911 attack against America, and Israel knew in advance the details of the attack, and treacherously did not reveal these details to American officials, because they needed the attack to accomplish their objectives against the Palestinians." - David Duke, a leading extreme right organizer who critics call anti-Semetic, 9/11/2002 (on his site: .)

External links

• 4,000 Jews, 1 Lie: Tracking an Internet hoax
• The case of the missing 4000 Israelis: Truth, hoax, or urban legend? A little bit of all three
• A timeline of events drawn from the mass media taken to suggest Israeli foreknowledge
• "Bogus 9/11 websites that muddy the waters" - claims that theories like this merely serve to discredit the "real" 9/11 conspiracy
• The Anthrax Murders: The Israeli Connection
• snopes.com, Urban Legends Reference Pages, "Absent without Leave"

See also

• 9/11 domestic conspiracy theory
• 9/11 conspiracy claims regarding Jews or Israel
• Background history of the September 11, 2001 attacks
• September 11, 2001 attacks
• Coincidence theory

External links

Discussion and Evidence of various conspiracy issues

• Alex Jones Responds To Ben Chertoff, Popular Mechanics 9/11 Debunking Campaign
• 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 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
• Independent 911 Truth Radio stream
• 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
• www.conwiki.com
• Reply to Popular Mechanics re 9/11
• Martial Law: 911 Rise of the Police State (FREE FOR YOU!)

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

• September 11, 2001 attacks
• Conspiracy theories