If your friends and family are too skepitcal to spend time investigating 9/11 for themselves, perhaps a simple questions and answers session is the best approach, backed up with links for further reading, often using Wikipedia. I Dedicate this blog to my brother, whose main objection to the idea of a conspiracy is the question concerning the French Newspaper Le Monde.

The Government would never kill their own people, would they? Conspiracies are just a new Internet-fad thing.

A philosopher once wrote:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

But you would be forgiven for not appreciating the relevance of state sponsored terrorism as it is generally not part of the school curriculum. History is littered with false flag attacks, where a political organization attacks itself and blames it on the opposition. You may have heard of the Gleiwitz incident where Nazi-Germany staged an attack against itself in 1939 and blamed it on Poland as a means of legitimising their invasion of Poland immediately after.

It is shocking for many to find out that the USA and the UK have carried out their own similar covert operations. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 the US Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up the Operation Northwoods plan detailing several staged attacks against the US and blaming it on Cuba, as a means of generating US public support for military action against the Cuban government. The plan did not go ahead because it was refused at the highest level, probably by JF Kennedy himself, who was assassinated later that year.

In 1953 the UK aided by the US hatched the covert plan Operation Ajax to rid Iran of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh as a reaction to his decision to nationalize the Iranian Oil Industry which up until that point had been largely in the control of the British. The CIA orchestrated a coup to undermine Mossadegh’s government by bribing influential figures, generating false propaganda in newspapers, and provoking street violence that led to the death of over 300 people. Once Mossadegh was out of the way, and many of his staff executed, the newly formed British Petroleum company took control of the majority of Iran’s oil output.

Operation Gladio was a NATO operation sponsored by the CIA that perpetrated false flag attacks in Italy to generate propaganda against the communist movement by blaming the attacks on the Red Brigades. Many Italian civilians died in these attacks such as the Piazza Fontana bombing. None other than Henry Kissinger was at one point or another involved in promoting Operation Gladio, not to mention Operation Condor, a man still much involved with the US Administration today in providing advice in the War in Iraq.

Do you still not believe in conspiracy theories? These are all proven cases thanks to the declassification of information, and are well documented on Wikipedia, which is a highly controlled site that will only allow information to be published if citations are clear.

But why would the Government go to such lengths to kill their own people? It doesn’t make sense.

One can only speculate why the Government would commit such an atrocious act, although there is strong evidence that it is linked to the need to control the oil supply in the middle east, and to be in total control of its nation through the erosion of civil liberties.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a neo-conservative think-tank that involved such illustrious names as US Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush himself, established in 1997. When they issued the 90-page report Rebuilding America’s Defenses they were shameless in their call to extend America’s position of global leadership and that when diplomacy or sanctions fail, to be prepared to take military action. In recognition that it will be difficult to justify an immediate and massive increase in investment in the military they state:

“ … 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 Pear Harbour.”

And there we have a clear motive. Looking at why there is such an interest in the Middle East, you have to understand how important the petroleum industry is to the US, not just as a nation, but to many individuals involved in the US Administration. Control of the world’s oil and gas supply is of paramount importance. Attempts to build the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean, through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, broke down when the CentGas consortium failed to reach a deal with the Taliban in 1998. On September 11th 2001 in George W. Bush’s first address to the nation after the attacks, he rallied with a promise to catch those who perpetrated these acts stating:

“We will make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbour them”.

A clear indication that Afghanistan was the target. Despite the Taliban offering to give up Osama Bin Laden if the US could show evidence linking him to the attacks of 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan ensued. To this day, on FBI’s most wanted list Osama Bin Laden is wanted for various crimes but NOT the attacks of 9/11.

And let’s not forget Dick Cheney’s famous comment in 1991 while still CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010.

"So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

Six weeks after the 9/11 attacks, George Bush was successful in passing the Patriot Act with minimal debate, which dramatically expanded the powers of the US Law Enforcement agencies and seriously weakened the civil liberties of the American people, basically initiating the passing of the US into a Fascist state. An article in the Guardian gives a very good description.

The 9/11 conspiracies have all been debunked, haven’t they? I saw that BBC documentary and it suggested it was all Internet speculation.

The simplest way to debunk a conspiracy theory is to take all the most outlandish aspects of the theory and demonstrate it cannot be proved. The debunkers also regurgitate the official story and yet it is the official story that is being challenged. The most well known debunker is the Popular Mechanics magazine. Popular Mechanics is owned by the Hearst Corporation who were famous for their yellow journalism in the late 19th century. It’s interesting to observe the efforts they go to debunk the conspiracy theories while never at any time challenging the official story. One is lead to question why this particular magazine is so interested in supporting the official story to the extent they do.

The BBC Conspiracy Files documentary has been heavily criticized as a hit-piece and any person knowledgeable of the subject matter quickly realized in watching it that it was glossing over the important issues and concentrating on the easily-debunked aspects. An in-depth analysis of the BBC documentary at prisonplanet.com cleverly takes apart the whole program.

But I saw planes hit the building! Are you going to tell me I imagined it?

No, I’m not, I agree with you, planes did hit the building. It’s much easier in a conspiracy to make real planes hit the building than project holograms into the sky. It’s possible that drones were used, but really this is not important for the purpose of proving a conspiracy. While some people claim that planes did not hit the towers, they have very little to backup their claims other than grainy video evidence.

A conspiracy of this size would require too many people to be involved to be successful.

The conspiracies discussed in the first section of this article all required tens if not hundreds of conspirators. There is no doubt that 9/11 is the mother of all conspiracies, but if you can find tens or hundreds of conspirators, no doubt you can find enough for one the scale of 9/11. However, it should be noted that many people are just doing their jobs, following orders on a need-to-know basis and not aware they are playing the part in a conspiracy.

It is very difficult to carry out such a complex conspiracy without information being leaked.

Exactly! That is why we have Whistleblowers and there have been quite a few of them. It’s a shame then that the media has not followed their stories, or that they have been blocked from having their day in court to make their accusations, given that they have received gag orders by the government, or their revelations have been ignored. Two examples are Sibel Edmonds and Indira Singh.

Sibel was fired from her position as an FBI linguist for accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activities involving foreign nationals, alleging serious breaches of security, cover-ups, and international blocking of intelligence which presented a danger to the security of the US. Among her claims are FBI foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. She has been completely ignored by most of the mainstream media, although if you search the archives of the Independent newspaper you’ll find quite a few articles about her case that can only be described as very worrying at best.

These theories only exist on the Internet. The real news I see on TV does not give much credence to these theories.

The mainstream media is now controlled. The owners all have interests in common with the US government, and so while they are willing to criticize governments on day-to-day matters, they are not prepared to rock the boat by making accusations that blow away the foundations of our very existence. Sky News in the UK and Fox News in the US are owned by Rupert Murdoch, a republican and friend of Ronald Reagan, and all his newspapers strongly supported the Bush campaign in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

Even the BBC, long-renowned for having impartially brought the world’s news to our homes for decades, is no longer above suspicion. Otherwise how can we explain their “mistake” of reporting the collapse of WTC building 7 twenty minutes before it actually happened, followed by a sort of cover-up where they scorned people for thinking that the BBC were involved (something nobody was accusing them of), and repeatedly failed to say how they managed to have such incredible foresight, while at the same time claiming to have lost all their tapes of that day.

So many people hate Bush and America, that if it were really a Government Conspiracy, the Anti-American lobby would have been all over it like a shark to dead-fish. Why has the French newspaper “Le Monde” not talked about it if it’s so obvious?

It’s not for me to say why a newspaper like Le Monde does not see fit to investigate 9/11, I can only speculate. Maybe it’s because 9/11 is just so big, that challenging it and proving it would bring down the world’s economy, something nobody wants. Or maybe they are just ignorant on this matter, like the majority of the world’s population, who don’t even know that three, not two, towers fell on that day of September 11th, 2001, the third being World Trade Center building 7, that had not been struck by a plane. Or who knows, maybe they fear a backlash in the allegation that France allowed the Rwandan genocide to happen. Or maybe they are just caught up in the huge myth that is 9/11, that was apparently perpetrated by 19 muslims who managed to take over 4 planes with nothing more than utility knives, and fly three of them into four of their targets, while the US defense slept, with 50 minutes separating the first plane hitting the North Tower and the third plane flying over possibly the most heavily defended air space of Washington into the Pentagon, and it was all coordinated from Afghanistan. Now that is a conspiracy theory!

As time goes on, however, many are waking up to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job. Just look at the Canadian Winipeg Sun and read the editor John Gleeson’s article where he declares that it is in fact possible, based on the evidence, and the failed War on Terror, that the official story is a web of lies, and this from an unabashed conservative tabloid.

You’re just like a Holocaust Denier.

No I’m not. This is the kind of sly comment that Jim Meigs of the Popular Mechanics magazine likes to throw in to the conversation when debunking 9/11, as well as claiming we are all a bunch of nuts that cannot handle the real truth and so must find some other explanation that appeals to our imagination. It’s a clever but sick tactic.

What about the Inquiry? Didn’t they prove it was Osama Bin Laden?

The 9/11 Commission report was full of omissions and distortions, so much so that David Ray Griffin wrote a book about it, and after 567 pages the report managed to blame nobody in particular for the death of nearly 3000 people. Consider that World Trade Centre building 7 fell at free-fall speed without a plane hitting it, and yet this report didn’t even mention it.

Consider that investigation of insider trading on the shares of the airlines used in the hijackings revealed that 95% of this trading was carried out by one trader, but the conclusion was that it wasn’t suspicious because the investor had no conceivable ties to Al Qaeda, as if having a tie to Al Qaeda was necessary before you could be deemed suspicious.

Consider the families of the victims of 9/11, in the form of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, including the Jersey Girls, without whose efforts the 9/11 Commission probably would never have happened. Only one third of the questions that this fine group put together were answered by the 9/11 Commission.

Then we have the fact that the 9/11 Commission was all too cosy with the US Administration, if you consider the conflict in interest of Philip Zelikow being the Executive Director, a man who co-wrote a book with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The Commission was widely criticized as being anything but independent. So much so that one of the 9/11 Commission members, senator Max Cleland resigned during the investigation because he claimed it was a whitewash.

Even the Vice Chairman of the Commission, Lee Hamilton, admitted on TV that officials in the various agencies had lied and covered-up.

How come the experts aren’t all talking about a conspiracy? They are all backing the official version.

It depends on which experts you listen to. There are in fact very few experts that support the official story. The National Institute of Standards of Technology (NIST) investigated the collapse of the Twin Towers on behalf of the official investigation, and had a great deal of difficulty in getting their tests to demonstrate that the collapse was inevitable without tweaking a computer model with extreme values for many of the data, a model that was not available to the general public for scrutiny. There were so many distortions in their report that there are too many to mention here. In response many experts are now coming out and challenging it. Note that in doing so, they are putting their careers on the line – many have been forced out of their positions in Universities or other institutions for making known their beliefs.

There are experts from all walks of life now challenging the official story. Senators, Pilots, Physicists, Architects, Engineers, Professors, ex-members of the CIA, FBI, Air Traffic Control, and so on. This group is growing all the time, and it’s just a matter of time before the media are forced to report it. Even celebrities such as Charlie Sheen and Rosie O’Donnell have come out questioning the official story, only to be slammed and slandered by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, as if questioning the government somehow makes you unpatriotic and a defender of terrorists. When you start hearing statements to that effect, it becomes apparent something sinister is at large.

Conspiracy theorists are just people that cannot deal with the reality of such a horrific event and so need to believe in something more esoteric.

Or perhaps people who believe in the official version cannot deal with the idea of its own government killing nearly 3000 of its own people? And yet we know the Iraq war was started based on the lies of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and let’s repeat that they were lies, and not inaccurate intelligence information. Some studies say that as many as 600,000 people have died as a result of those lies, according to one BBC News article. Entertaining the idea that the government could willfully kill its own people is just a step to far for many.

Well, this is all well and good, but I still don’t believe it was a conspiracy. There’s no proof.

If the President of the United States came out and said he did it, would that be proof enough that it was in fact a government conspiracy? Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, but he’s not going to do that. Research the topic for yourself. This is important. Not only did nearly 3000 people die as a result of the 9/11 attacks, but many more have died as a result of the actions that were taken on the back of 9/11. We owe it to those people to at least investigate for ourselves.

I’ve shown to you that governments have done this kind of thing before, albeit on a smaller scale, that they had the motive, that it allowed them to take draconian steps against civil liberties and illegally wage war on foreign nations. I haven’t even begun to talk about three (not two) steel-framed buildings collapsing at near-free-fall speed, molten metal, traces of thermate incendiary, the planted evidence to identify the hijackers, the lies told by vice president Cheney of his whereabouts at the time the Pentagon was hit, the confiscated CCTV footage of the Pentagon crash, the Flight Data Recorder analysis that shows the plane was too high to hit the light poles and the Pentagon, the fact that Mayor Giuliani was warned of the first twin tower collapse while First responders were not, the five Israelis dressed as Arabs dancing in the New York streets while filming the collapsing towers, the explosions in the towers BEFORE the first plane hit, as well as after and at the time of collapse, the Anthrax attacks post 9/11 that were traced back to a US department of defense laboratory, and … oh my god I could go on and on forever.