Do you believe any of the 911 conspiracy theories? - 2020 perspective

Beware of anti-American trolls bearing polls.

i am an old timer. But I get your assumption. I guess that data would help with propaganda targets.

But I doubt this is data they don't already have.

Sigh. The nutters are back.

The one thing that I thought was really weird and that stood out to me as odd is how the night of 9/11 they were reporting on the news that they had found five Korans in the hijackers’ parked car at the airport. Like, why even report that unless you’re gearing up for a war in the Middle East? They didnt report what else was in the car, just that there were multiple Korans. I thought that was such an odd thing to share. And right away too. My 9/11 conspiracy is that the federal government had vague info that an attack was going to happen at some point and used that info to plan in advance the invasions of Iraq and Afgghanistan.

All of these except the fourth one.

r5 - there are plenty of peaceful Muslims that might have been carrying those books. They might not want to carry them through the terminal because they didn't want to get hassled by the simpletons.

Like you

Huh? How am I a simpleton? I have nothing against Muslim people. It just struck me as odd the news was talking about the Korans found in the hijackers’ car. Why even mention religion unless youre trying to get people worked up and itching for a fight with the Middle East?

R5 Oh, that’s nothing. Explain this one: from the NYTimes September 16th 2001: "The passport of one hijacker was found today several blocks from the World Trade Center, prompting an intensive search for evidence in the area" Hilarious.

OP - What does a picture of autumn leaves have fuck all to do with this?

My apologies R7. Your right about the news people.

It will be fall soon.

Boris here. Gathering data

NO. Fuck off, OP.

No conspiracy- W didn’t read his fucking briefings. “Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The U S” was not rocket science. We just had ANOTHER incompetent president.

The smoking gun is the military diverted.

WTC 6

It wS a conspiracy, because it was a surprise attack, I believe, but that doesn’t mean things don’t change rapidly.

Two towers down and America in shock for months and months and beyond...

What do you think these boy-scouts, cowboys and Indians were gonna do with this tragedy / opportunity/ literal clouds of smoke /silver linings?

I do recall it like it was yesterday and I have never seen anything like it before, since or after.

Hope I never do again.

Actually you've seen many things just like it.

London 7/7 was just like it.

[quote] there are plenty of peaceful Muslims that might have been carrying those books.

Appalling in its breathtaking ignorance and Western projection.

It was real. What about it wasn’t “real”?

I will say, though, that I believe it was fully anticipated.

What I don’t understand is how many people say they turned republican after this attack. I think some called themselves 9/11 republicans. Why? It happened on the watch of a republican president. Then it came out that president was negligent. Republicans suck at everything so not sure why they are seen as the party to protect us.

Hi OP,

Questions for you about your poll:

What is "Guilliane"?

How were Jewish workers informed to take the day off? My father's side of the family is Jewish, but my mother's side is Spanish. Nobody suggested to me to take the day off, I had to work. In fact, I had a meeting that morning at 8:30 a.m. on West 57th Street, but I don't recall being told that Jewish workers should take the day off.

What does "Bombs inside the building / bring them down safely" mean? I do not understand this odd combination of words.

R23 You don’t want to know. Truthers went nuts and will send you down a rabbit hole. CTs make people lose their minds.

The only one I think is plausible is that the plane that crashed in Shanksville was shot down before it reached DC. The story of brave passengers rushing the cockpit was important for Americans to hear during a time of overwhelming fear; however, it hasn't been proven in any way, shape, or form.

Yeah, I was always confused as to how smoothly those towers fell straight down like they did. The only time you see that is in controlled explosions/demolitions.

R26, why bother with controlled demolition experts when you can just hit a building with an aircraft and end up with the same result. Not once but 2x and different impact sites.

the pancake fall reveals that the implousion was not external

[quote] the pancake fall reveals that the implousion was not external

You've convinced me, Mr. Internet Physicist.

I live in the DMV and know at least ten people who personally witnessed the plane fly into the Pentagon.

Geez, it's out in public, and there are hundreds of thousands and people who live or work nearby and could see it. And if you're local you know, from the flights into and out of Reagan National Airport, how low those planes regularly fly.

The FBI confiscating all the camera footage to hide that it was a cruise missile was a big giveaway.

[quote] The FBI confiscating all the camera footage to hide that it was a cruise missile was a big giveaway.

Immune to evidence, are you?

Well it was orchestrated and known in advance by a number of Gulf governments. VIP Iraqis knew "something big" the day before but not the specifics. And these were not VIP VIPs, just VIPs. Also true is there was Wall Street profiteering on it by middle-easterns.

Sadly, many of us can believe our government would do some or all of these things.

I think QAnon types are the loonies loons that ever looned, but we live in such an absence of government transparency and credibility these days that I sorta, kinda, in a very roundabout way understand why so many look for other explanations.

Where was the option 'There was no conspiracy theory' which in my books is the only choice.

There is a once a century deadly pandemic. The executive branch and probably the legislative branch know the facts. The executive decides to play it down and lie about it and give bad health and safety advice "because the markets", and "not my problem" and because he can't be fucked to organize a professional and ethical response. No, that could never happen.

It's always been weird to me that both towers fell in the exact same way. Too perfect. Flight 93 was probably shot down. Lots of questions about the Pentagon, no clear photos of a plane crashing.

Multiple world powers are at war. A once in century pandemic starts, but responding to it will hurt these nations' war strategies. Deny and suppress that there is a pandemic. Let the soldiers and civilians take the hit. Deny deny deny. That would never happen.

Wasn’t Donald trump in New York that day? Think about it.

No R32, you are immune to evidence.

Good comeback. You've convinced me, r40.

Believing in conspiracy theories is a sign of mental illness and indicates a complete inability to think critically. The best engineers in the world weighed in on 9/11 - there was no plot. What is a crime is the western worlds complete capitulation to Saudi Arabia.

Who is this Gulliane in your poll, OP?

.A syndrome following a vaccination with the hepatitis B vaccine?

I thought it was perhaps a typo for Giuliani?

read p. 51 of the document re the need for a new Pearl Harbor

Why did Building 7 fall? Why are there no pics of the "plane" that crashed into the Pentagon?

I don’t know if it’s considered a conspiracy theory but I still believe it was allowed to happen.

[quote]Your right about the news people.

Oh; dear!

[quote] The story of brave passengers rushing the cockpit was important for Americans to hear during a time of overwhelming fear; however, it hasn't been proven in any way, shape, or form.

Right!

Well, except for the cockpit voice recordings of the incident.

But still.

[quote] Why are there no pics of the "plane" that crashed into the Pentagon?

The plane was going 500+ mph, the time lapse photography didn’t pick it up.

But I guess all the witnesses, the broken street light on the highway that the plane’s wing clipped causing it to come crashing down on a taxicab, whose driver called 911, are all wrong.

The most likely cover up is Trumps claim that he lost many friends on 9-11 and attended many funerals, he didn't.

Building 7 wasn’t built to withstand Giuliani’s Ego.

I did a little internet search on the imploding theory. There are a lot of interesting angles.

What struck me was that all the main support columns were in the external walls (framed tube) Any walls inside are decorative. That probably has something to do with how they came down. Internal floors pancaking on top of each other would explain the controlled descent.

It still looked too perfect.

There is probably more to it

I remember either spring/summer 2001 or late 2000 hearing rumors going around that a big terrorist attack was going to happen. I was a college student in the Northeast. But I remember hearing that something was going to happen. Does anyone else remember this?

Ok, r20. Set me straight. I realize that it’s unusual, but are you saying that only terrorist carry the book with them?

R23, please DM us your contact info so the next time we do something like this we’ll have it.

Please forgive us our glaring oversight this time around though.

[quote] It still looked too perfect. There is probably more to it

Let me ask you this: how many buildings in your lifetime have you seen felled as a result of a fuel-laden jumbo jet crashing into them? With your own eyes, even if it was a video? Hell, even a movie.

R53, I think so, too. I worked for Deutsche Bank, across the street from the South Tower. Three months before the attacks, the department heads traveled to our disaster recovery location to do a test run, to make sure we could still perform essential operations from a backup office.

Also, one night in August there was a huge cohort of Port Authority official vehicles parked all around the WTC. It was about 8:00 at night. No idea what that was all about, but I remembered it in the days after the attacks. It could have been nothing.

^^ I had just come from another, similar financial institution, and they had zero backup plan for their NYC offices. The original documents and operations were located elsewhere, not across the street from a known terrorist target. Again, maybe it was just prudent policy after the 1993 bombing.

It was going 500 mph they couldn't tell a plane from a cruise missile

For people who don’t believe a Republican government would kill 3,000 Americans to get their way, just look at all the silent Republicans right now while the President kills over 1,000 Americans a day. It’s nothing to them.

Why do you think they fought so hard to get Bush into office - after the expected Jeb to just hand him Florida?

What was the Bush Administration doing got the first 8 months of his first term? A whole lot of nothing - it was like they were waiting for their moment.

Where did The Patriot Act come from so quickly? Republicans aren’t exactly known for their ability to legislate and yet there it was, within days.

There’s no reason to believe the tv version. Give it another 20 - 25 years. The truth will come out.

These conspiracy theories partly enabled the Trump phenomena. Alex Jones was crazily spreading the theories and I remember even viewing him as a legit source. Obviously it didn't take too long to realize what an asshat he is, although tbf I never followed him in any way.

My Jewish brother-in-law was informed around 8am that his 9 am meeting in the WTC had been canceled, so I do think that is suspicious.

R60 - well and within 24 hours wasn't there proof that Cheney and others in the White House said -this is now our chance to invade Iraq?

It wasn't long and it was a bizarre focus.

9/11 was not decided by structural engineers to be a normal result of a plane crash. Voices were silenced. The fear and speaking out that happened right after was intense in the US. People forget about that.

And of course, Republicans use the whole thing to paint anybody with criticisms as not being patriotic. It was digusting.

Alex Jones became big because of his deconstruction of 7/7

[QUOTE]My Jewish brother-in-law was informed around 8am that his 9 am meeting in the WTC had been canceled, so I do think that is suspicious.

Yeah, I have never had a meeting cancelled ONE HOUR BEFORE IT WAS SCHEDULED!

[quote] 9/11 was not decided by structural engineers to be a normal result of a plane crash.

Say what now?

This is a very detailed account of the cause of the twin towers collapse by specialist metallurgists. They seem pretty clear, and too boring to be conspirators.

The short story is this: the fire, because it was not uniform throughout the upper building, gradually caused steel supports to distort, crucially the floor supports among them. Once one floor crashed down onto the one below, the one below was trying to hold up more than twice what it was designed to hold, so the floors just kept falling on top of each other, gaining momentum as the weight increased, and the inertia took the outside walls with them. These guys say there was no way a building with that degree of wind resistance built in was ever going to topple over.

If you google Why did Tower 7 collapse? you will find a similarly sensible explanation. It was fire, again, over a much longer period because there was less fire all at once. A key factor was that the earlier collapse of towers 1&2 had knocked out the water supply. Had the sprinkler system been working Tower 7 would most likely have been OK. Investigators said if there had been a detonation everyone for a large distance around would have been looking at the tower when it fell, alerted by a very loud noise just before. Nobody reported one.

No. I believe this one, in some cases, though...

R67 that does not explain the collapse of the WTC concrete core

Also let's face it, it's not unusual for steel skyscapers to burn for hours or even days and not collapse (see LaSalle Bank building)

That there was the perfect pic of the flight 93 plane just before it struck the first tower. Yes, there was a crew of French filmmakers down around Tribeca that morning, filming a documentary that had nothing at all to do with WTC, and one guy just happened to have his camera rolling and heard the plane and the noise grew louder as it approached and he looked up, and . . . ok, right.

The original WTC towers were unique in that the vertical support was in the steel beams running around the building's perimeter that created its distinct facade. The windows were the opposite of picture windows; they ran up and down, not left to right. I don't know how wide they were, but they were narrow, maybe six or eight feet? The conceit was that with no wide, expansive view, it would keep the people who worked there focused on their jobs. So each floor was clear, uninterrupted space until the middle, where the elevators, stairwells and other internal/structural components were.

I have a close family member who at the time held a high level position with in a company dealing almost exclusively with government contracts. They were told to cancel all work and personal airline travel for that week. Someone knew something.

A lot of people immediately dismiss any notion of "conspiracy" because it's too complicated to comprehend - much easier to just take the basic explanation you've been given, accept it, and move on.

[quote]I don't know how wide they were, but they were narrow, maybe six or eight feet?

I worked in 1WTC for several years. The windows were 18" - 24" wide.

This allowed for a dedicated machine that climbed the tower 24/7 to clean the windows.

The view was made by your eyes stitching together those narrow little snippets of view.

[quote]R35: Where was the option 'There was no conspiracy theory' which in my books is the only choice.

Of course there was a conspiracy. A group consisting mostly of Saudi nationals conspired to hijack airliners and fly them into buildings.

[quote]R42: Believing in conspiracy theories is a sign of mental illness and indicates a complete inability to think critically.

That's a bit of a broad brush, don't you think, R42? Conspiracies exist. The Boston Tea Party was a conspiracy. There was a conspiracy to assassinate the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State just after the Civil War (killing the President was the only one they managed to fully carry out, although William Seward was severely maimed in the attempt). The Reichstag Fire was a conspiracy. The Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy. There are lots of conspiracies that really occurred, and it does not require mental illness to believe in them.

That said, I don't subscribe to any of the options offered in OP's poll. I think it's possible that certain elements of the US government may have known that something was afoot, and permitted it to happen. Per 'The Project For a New American Century,' the 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 for an event of this kind was certainly there ("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." - "𝑅𝑒𝑏𝑢𝑖𝑙𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎'𝑠 𝐷𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒𝑠: 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑒𝑠, 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦"). And the threat assessment had crossed Dubya's desk, but hadn't been acted upon. Conventional wisdom chalked this up to incompetence, just like much of what Trump has and has not done, at least until the Bob Woodward tapes of discussions with Trump were disclosed, and it was revealed that Trump 𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑤. Nothing like that has come across for Bush 43, at least in terms of a smoking gun. Whether Dubya's administration knew about this specific attack in advance will probably never be known for certain, but what 𝑖𝑠 certain is that, once it happened, they took full advantage of it in order to advance the neocon agenda in the Middle East.

R30, you live at The Department of Motor Vehicles?

The plane debris on the Pentagon lawn looked like it was placed by a Hollywood set decorator.

[quote]and it does not require mental illness to believe in them.

R75 Sure it does. Without it, you'd have a far more rational view of the world. Such as just because A was a conspiracy does not follow through that B is a conspiracy or even that it MAY even be a conspiracy.

You would think that the utter incompetence we've seen over the past four years would quash any notion that a government, or entities within a government, could pull something like 9/11 off. And keep quiet about it.

Two "separate" posters in the '2 Cops Ambushed' thread are parroting the exact same talking points (how Biden will lose unless he announces a plans to jail and execute all BLM protestors, whether peaceful or not).

Blocking them reveals them to be two "separate" posters in this thread who are parroting the EXACT SAME THING about CT being mental illness, "ALL THE EXPERTS SAID IT WAS NOT AN INSIDE JOB!!!!", etc.

See? The talking points trolls exist at DL, proving that "conspiracy theory."

Of course, they will say, "WHY would Russia/GOP send trolls to an OBSCURE, UNKNOWN Gay message board with only 14 members???????!!!!"

Shit like that makes 9/11 seem much more believable as a CT/inside job.

R79 - well, not letting people review any data (all Pentagon videotapes) would hardly make this a transparent investigation. And let's not confuse Trump with Bush - there was a cabal of smart but devious henchmen around Bush. Trump just has jackasses.

Nixon DID ask South Vietnam to delay peace talks. Republicans DID work with Iran to make sure the hostages were kept until Reagan was sworn into office.

OK City bombing victims received no compensation. 9/11 victims families did IF they signed a waiver not to pursue investigations or anything else. They gave them millions in hush money - something we've never done before.

Why can't we see any photos or videos from either the Pentagon or the Pennsylvania crash site?

Of course, Boris didn't include an option of "none of the above" so presumes that one of them MUST be the result of a conspiracy.

Idiot.

[quote]Sure it does. Without it, you'd have a far more rational view of the world.

𝑀𝑒 specifically, R78? (What do you think you know of 𝑚𝑦 view of the world?) Or just people in general? You think it would be mentally healthier for people if they disbelieved in those conspiracies that actually existed?

[quote]Such as just because A was a conspiracy does not follow through that B is a conspiracy or even that it MAY even be a conspiracy.

Define A and B.

One generally cannot use the existence of one conspiracy to validate another; they need to be evaluated separately, on a case-by-case basis. But I was addressing the flat statement that conspiracies don't exist. Clearly, they do.

I don't think it is unreasonable that people knew something unknown was coming that they didn't want release to the press. There was probably no meat with the potatoes. But if I had that info, I would be alerting my friends and loved ones.

[quote]Alex Jones became big because of his deconstruction of 7/7

Alex Jones produced third version of Loose Change, the 9/11 conspiracy theory "documentary" that many people view as a starting point of the current right-winger misinformation movement. I sort of found the documentary believable, which obviously was its intention, and even though I didn't care about conspiracy theories in general I remember Alex Jones starting to emerge after that.

Would someone please explain how one of the highjacker's passports could have survived the crash and the explosion of fire and then fluttered down to the street to be found by the FBI? Thanks in advance.

R86, when the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by cowardly Russians in Ukraine they found tons of luggage with passports and wallets on the ground. The Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian soldiers were looting the site and even used the credit cards for online purchases. So yes, it's very well possible various things can survive an explosion if the plane and everything inside don't totally explode in small pieces.

R87 Please. Just stop.

R88, stop what? Believing in the laws of physics? You asked whether it's possible that a passport from the airplane could've survived the crash and the answer is yes.

R59 It was not a mere crash. It was an explosion. The planes did not crash to the ground but blew up in a fireball 100 stories above ground. The front section of the planes pierced buildings. Everything was pulverized. EXCEPT for a passport that fluttered to the ground, landed on Vestry street and sat there for 5 days until it was found. You can only be mentally retarded if you believe that story.

[quote]stop what? Believing in the laws of physics?

LOL

[quote]Everything was pulverized.

Not true. From Wikipedia:

"Within a year, medical examiners had identified the remains of 33 victims who had been on board Flight 11. They identified two other Flight 11 victims, including purser Karen Martin, in 2006, while other unrelated body fragments were discovered near Ground Zero around the same time."

Then again what's the point of explaining anything to you since EVERYTHING is part of the conspiracy and you probably don't believe there were any body fragments found.

Apparently it is an utter impossibility to fly a passenger plane low over Manhattan at 600 mph; the plane would have broken-up into pieces. That is a speed that is appropriate for 30,000 ft., where the plane floats with the aid of air currents in the atmosphere.

Add to that: novice pilots just out of flight training who hit a narrow target at that speed- twice at the WTC site and once at the Pentagon. The odds become infinitesimally small..

And none of the American pilots ever hit the button that they were being hijacked.

And no phone calls were made from the planes. The signal would have been impossible at that elevation in the year 2001.

If you Google it there is an exhibit from the Massoui trial that shows the burnt corpse of a passenger still strapped to his seat. So I guess it is possible a passport survived intact

Creepy video. When you add all the oddball things up- it can't be a coincidence.

"Within a year, medical examiners had identified the remains of 33 victims who had been on board Flight 11." Yes, identifiable by DNA tests.

Why was there not a "none of the above" option?

[quote] And none of the American pilots ever hit the button that they were being hijacked. And no phone calls were made from the planes. The signal would have been impossible at that elevation in the year 2001.

R93 What utter nonsense. And downright disrespectful to those who lost relatives and friends in that event. You're insinuating that by telling they were able to talk to family members and friends on the plane, they lie.

Seriously, go fuck yourself.

R42

[quote]Believing in conspiracy theories is a sign of mental illness and indicates a complete inability to think critically. The best engineers in the world weighed in on 9/11 - there was no plot. What is a crime is the western worlds complete capitulation to Saudi Arabia.

This so much, I wish I could upvote it more than once

And why doesnt the poll have an option for "none of the above"?

The 911 conspiracy theories all fall apart for the same reason the moon landing ones do - to organise something that big requires thousands of people and a spectacular and consistent level of competence as R79 touched on, which just doesnt happen in the real world. Sooner or later people will talk

The best explanation for how the Saudis and Al Queda managed to pull this off is a mixture of good luck and incompetence on the part of US government agencies who weren't even talking to each other.

R87 thank you for the obvious and logical explanation, and thank you to every other rational person on this idiotic thread

R69, read R71. The towers' construction was unique (x2), and the core wasn't concrete, it was also steel. The fire had heated it and as the floors fell they pulled it down, same as the outer frame.

Also, I think we should make a distinction here between actual conspiracy theories, and the theory that W had prior intelligence about a terrorist attack and chose to ignore it, either for some political reason or just because he was [demonstrably] a twit. I thought that one was pretty much accepted? If so, then you could expect that people in the intelligence community, or people surrounding the President, may have warned others close to them to be careful in the week or two before. It doesn't mean they had any hand in the events.

Actually, not true, R99. Just allowing it to happen and letting it play out in real time seemed to work really well.

Yes, It would be difficult to stage 911. Too many eyes on the scene. I used to believe that there were charges inside the buildings to bring them straight down if they were falling. Then I saw how it was built and indeed the implosion does make more sense with the exoskeleton collapsing on itself.

But the moon landing? I am not taking a stand or anything. But you would just need to control one or two feeds and convince those involved that it was being faked for the good of America. There was still a Cold War then.

[quote] Why can't we see any photos or videos from either the Pentagon or the Pennsylvania crash site?

This sort of willful ignorance is the hallmark of conspiracy theorists.

R103 exactly

Some photos right here at the link below, and lots more if you put the words "Pentagon crash site" into Google images

Ditto the Pennsylvania crash site

CUNTY CUNTY CUNTS are us

9/11 - the QAnon gift that keeps on giving.

And, we all know with whom QAnon align itself.

My issue is not with how the towers fell, but how fast they fell.