COROLLARY 1-C: "The hijackers are still alive."
66% of the sites I surveyed made the claim that one or more of the hijackers are "still alive." All of these sites--and I do mean all, 100%--cite one single source: a BBC report from September 23, 2001 regarding confusion in the FBI as to the identity of the hijackers. Here it is. One media report--uncorroborated--most presented without any follow up.
To its credit, Prisonplanet.org--the site I have observed tends to be the least factually accurate and most distortive of all the major 9/11 conspiracy sites--is the only one that tries to offer any follow-up, by presenting a single AP report from September 2004 in which hijacker Mohammed Atta's father insists his son is still alive. Or at least, that's what the headline of the story wants you to believe; note in the story itself Mr. Atta is never quoted as saying that he believes his son is still living, and this story falls far short of demonstrating any proof whatsoever that the younger Atta did not die on American Airlines Flight 11 as it crashed into the WTC towers. Yet, it is on these reeds--two news stories, one of which doesn't even say what its headline says it says--two thirds of the major conspiracist web sites hang the assertion that the hijackers are still out there somewhere.
As you can see, the factual and scholarly credibility of the main conspiracist sites leaves much to be desired.
#2 BASIC CORE BELIEF: The Pentagon wreckage/damage is inconsistent with an airliner crash.
This is the next belief that unites almost the entire 9/11 conspiracist underground: that, whatever crashed into the Pentagon, it was not a 757. To be fair, this belief is not 100% universal; some sites, such as 911smokingguns.com, back off from this assumption. That is probably because the smarter members of the conspiracist underground realize that the fact of the Pentagon crash is irrefutable. Prisonplanet.org, to its credit, seems to admit this. Nevertheless, the sheer number of sites out there analyzing photos and frames of Pentagon crash video indicates this is still a very deeply-held belief in the underground.
Of the sites that do assert the Pentagon was not hit by American Airlines Flight 77, 100% engage in analysis of the photos, usually the same one (I'm sure you've seen it as an animated .gif on the Web); 83% claim that the hole in the side of the Pentagon was either 16 feet or 70 feet in diameter; 60% use exactly the same photographs and quotes to "prove" that the engine found in the wreckage was not the Rolls-Royce engine that should have been on a 757; and 60% repeat the claim, which stems from the opinion of one expert, that the flight maneuvers described by the 9/11 commission report would have been "physically impossible." Again, as in the case of "explosion" testimony, the poles on which this tent hangs are extremely precarious. One photograph. One expert. In fact there is plenty of evidence that a 757 crashed at the site, as can be plainly seen from the debris and wreckage that the conspiracists' sites don't show you. There is, in fact, no substantive debate that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Conspiracists who swear that the WTC towers were demolished, however, are almost universally tempted to broaden their claims to include a Pentagon conspiracy as well; after all, why should the WTC strikes have been faked if the Pentagon strike was genuine?
I was surprised by the treatment of the "pod" theory--that's the claim that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon had some kind of "pod" attached to it, presumably related to a missile. Prisonplanet.com and Whatreallyhappened.com both specifically refute this, and evidently "pod" material was excised from an early cut of Loose Change. Not to be outdone, however, some conspiracists claim that the "pod" story was deliberately planted by debunkers (i.e., people like me) so as to create a "straw man" that could be knocked down easily, thus humiliating the conspiracists. Uh, yeah, sure. Whatever.
It is interesting that some of the conspiracists who style themselves as serious researchers often warn fellow travelers not to trot out the "pod theory," because it's so easily discredited and makes conspiracists look like crazed, paranoid loons. This is, at least, some kind of progress, I suppose, and demonstrated that those of us who still believe in logic can occasionally make inroads into the conspiracists' fantasy worlds, given enough time, patience and argument.
#3 MOST COMMON BELIEF: SILVERSTEIN ADMITTED BLOWING UP WTC7.
I am amazed at how obsessively--and how tenaciously--conspiracists repeat this bizarre bit of lore, given how easily it is debunked. 77% of the web sites I surveyed devoted considerable time and space to this. It doesn't rise to the level of a "core belief," but it's pretty close. I myself talked about this extensively in a previous blog. You know the drill: Larry Silverstein, lessee of the WTC complex, was interviewed for a PBS documentary in 2002 about the disaster, where he said on camera that, due to the tremendous loss of life, he told a fire department official that it was time to "pull it," and this is supposedly a smoking-gun admission that he ordered WTC7 to be blown up.
If you analyze this ludicrous assumption, you will find that it hangs entirely--and I mean entirely--on the supposed meaning of the words "pull it." Supposedly this is demolition industry slang for "destroy a building." Yet, none of the web sites I surveyed reference why they believe this to be the case. Not one. All merely posit the belief, "'Pull it' is slang for a controlled demolition," and expect the reader to take that on faith. In fact, as I explained in my blog, it's very clear that Silverstein was referring to the last fire control team to leave WTC7. There's no reason whatsoever to assume, or even suspect, that Silverstein intended "pull it" to mean the destruction of the building, or that the person he was talking to on the phone when he claims he said it (a fire department official) would have understood the words in those terms.
Furthermore, you have to engage in an uncomfortable amount of self-deception to read an "admission" into Silverstein's statement. Do you really think, if he blew up his own building in some kind of twisted insurance scam, that he would readily admit it on national television? The PBS documentary was taped, not live. If you watch the footage of the interview it's obvious that Silverstein carefully prepared for it. This was not a spur-of-the-moment "Freudian slip" that just came out. If he's guilty, why on earth would he admit it?
It simply passes my understanding how any intelligent person could actually believe that this statement is an admission, and "proves" the conspiracy. However, it's a key example of a trend I found extremely common in the 9/11 conspiracy genre: one statement or press report, invariably taken out of context, uncorroborated, and subjected to very strained ideological interpretation is mythologized into a pillar of support for the entire story. Indeed, conceptually conspiracists are forced rather uncomfortably into the position of asserting that WTC7 was deliberately demolished as well; once you decide the main towers were wired, you are precluded, by logical consistency, from supposing that the destruction of WTC7 was innocent. This is why, I believe, conspiracists reach so far in trying to find an explanation for WTC7, and why they're prone to seize upon tidbits--such as Silverstein's statement--which can be easily blown out of proportion into "smoking guns" and "bald-faced admissions."
The Bottom Line
I believe that the conspiracists on the web who write and promote these sites--such as the college kids who made Loose Change--honestly and passionately believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy and that they're acting in the best interests of the nation to expose the "truth." But the more you look at the actual pillars that support their core assertions, the weaker they seem. They rely almost exclusively on external observations and media reports, usually taken out of context; the "official story," by contrast, is supported by the direct experience of hundreds of witnesses. When conspiracists employ witnesses of their own, their testimonies--such as William Rodriguez--focus again on external observation of phenomenon on the periphery of the believed conspiracy, and never direct participation in the conspiracy itself. (What I mean by this is that the witnesses trotted out by the conspiracists invariably testify to hearing "explosions" or seeing "suspicious activities"--all secondhand observation--and why you will never, for example, see a witness who claims directly, "I planted the bombs in the WTC," or "I saw plastique in the towers on September 9," or "I worked for so-and-so who told me he was involved in blowing up the WTC.") The scientific evidence used by conspiracists is usually suspect, and always employed in a destructive capacity (i.e., tearing down the "official version") rather than constructing an alternative hypothesis from the ground up.
What's unfortunate is that, to a conspiracist, the "official story" and the conspiracy theories look as if they're equally supportable by objective evidence--or, in more extreme cases, the conspiracists think their stories are supported by more evidence while the conventional explanations are rejected as being based on flimsy suppositions. The conspiracist will dismiss eyewitness testimony of WTC survivors given to the 9/11 Commission, but credit what Pat Dawson says Albert Turi told him as gospel truth. It's all a difference in thinking and in point of view.
I don't pretend to be able to sway any conspiracists' viewpoints, which are too deeply held to be susceptible to attack by reason or logic. But, I think a more reason-based viewpoint about the events of 9/11 should be available on the web, where there's so much clutter and hype, and thus I will continue to support the efforts of the valiant few (such as those who maintain the
www.911myths.com site) to keep it out there.
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