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9/11 conspiracy theories

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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
File:310954.jpg
Madrid's Windsor Tower burned for days but did not fall.
  • 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 at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida on the morning of the attacks was highly publicized in the local press. However, after the second plane struck the World Trade Center, the Secret Service permitted the President to remain in a classroom for 10 minutes and then to give a speech to the nation from the same school. At this time there would have been no way of knowing whether the President himself was in danger. At this time, there would also have been no way of knowing whether another location was safer.

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. Others note that, unlike guests at the White House, Bush was thousands of miles away from any likely national target and that he was thousands of miles away from the two actual targets in Washington, DC and New York City.

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 assassination of JFK began after only 9 and 7 days, respectively.
  • The commission was given a startup appropriation of only $3 million and made a subsequent funding request for $11 million in order to meet its target date for completion. As a point of comparison, $50 million was set aside to investigate the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia.

Other Points of Interest

  • 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.


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


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: .)

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See also

External links

Discussion and Evidence of various conspiracy issues


Skeptical of or debunking larger conspiracy claim
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