The 9/11 Conspiracy

 The 9/11 Conspiracy

By: Quentin Caruso

    The one question many Americans have asked each other is, "Where were you on 9/11?".  The attacks of September 11th, 2001 where multiple coordinated attacks happened. It was the morning of September 11th, 2001 when four flights departed from Boston's Logan International Airport. These flights were headed towards the West Coast. It is suspected that Al-Qaeda, hijacked and crashed flights, United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. From the impact of the two flights into the Twin Towers, it resulted in fires and the collapsing of the towers. The Pentagon was severely damaged by the impact of the airline and started a fire amongst the buildings. The final plane where the hijackers took control was on target for Washington D.C. and planned to crash into the White House. Bravely, some passengers of the flight fought back the hijackers and crashed the plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. America was warned prior to these attacks by Al-Qaeda were unfortunately ignored due to lack of communication between the law enforcement and intelligence personnel. 

Ever since the first couple hours after the attack, conspiracy were popping up on chat rooms online. The first discussion of the conspiracy is taken from the “9/11 Truth Movement”. Within the first six hours after the attack, a suggestion popped up that the collapse of the towers looked like a controlled demolition, even being quoted as saying, “If, in a few days, not one official has mentioned anything about the controlled demolition part.” It continues on saying, “I think we have a REALLY serious problem.” The first week, allegations were popping up. The most common one was shot down instantly that came from a fake EMail that consisted of not a single Jewish individual who died in the attack. 

In 2004, mainstream coverage of conspiracy theories started to increase and become more known by the public. One main conspiracy that started gaining popularity stemmed from the growing criticism on the handling of the Iraq War and new re-elected president, George W. Bush. In 2006, the United States government decided to finally address the conspiracies publicly, the government issued a formal analysis by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the collapsing of the World Trade Center. The State Department revised webpages of the conspiracies, also even televised addressing the situation. While live on the air, the State deemed these webpages and chat-rooms as “subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation.” and that “terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda.” While this was happening in America, overseas in the Middle East, Al-Qaeda was repeatedly claiming responsibility for the attacks. 

While hundreds of conspiracies floating around regarding the 9/11 Attacks, here are some of the most noticeable and popular: 

Planes Didn’t Make Twin Towers Collapse, Bombs Did: Conspiracy Theorists have subjected the collapse to appear to be a controlled demolition by bombs. Many believe that the towers were blown down with explosives that have been placed in selected locations throughout the towers. There have been accounts of witnesses recounting hearing explosions from inside the building as they were escaping the towers. More popular, “Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams”, is a phrase that has been popularized online when discussing the collapsing of the Twin Towers. Many architects and scientists have agreed that the plane’s fuel could not produce enough heat to melt the steel frames of the two towers… causing them to collapse. 

No-Planes Theory: Morgan Reynolds, a former chief economist within the Labor Department under the Bush Administration, argues that there were no planes used in the attacks on 9/11. Reynolds claims that it is “physically impossible” that the two planes could have penetrated the steel beams of the Towers, and that digital compositing (CGI) was used to depict the plane crashes from low quality footage of the planes hitting the buildings. The theory can even go as far as claiming that there were missiles lined up to hit the towers. 

Cockpit Recorders: The black boxes from Flight 77 and both the black boxes from Flight 93 were recovered. The one from Flight 77 was too damaged to recover unfortunately. In 2002, the FBI allowed the families of the victims to hear the last voice recordings. On trial for Zacarias Moussaoui (an Al-Qaeda member conspirarcing for the 9/11 Attacks) in 2006, a transcript of the black box was revealed. On the scene of the wreckage at ground zero, it has been accounted that federal agents found and took the black boxes:

“At one point, I was assigned to take Federal Agents around the site to search for the black boxes from the planes. We were getting ready to go out. My ATV was parked at the top of the stairs at the Brooks Brothers entrance area. We loaded up about a million dollars worth of equipment and strapped it into the ATV. There were a total of four black boxes. We found three.”

With all the conspiracy theories floating around, it is up to the American public to devise and come up with their own conclusions about attacks of 9/11.