Muddying Questions, Squandering Answers

More than anything else, what triggered the birth of The Mahablog were unanswered questions about September 11. About six months after that day, news stories in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere revealed that the feds had received copious warnings that a terrorist strike on U.S. soil was imminent, yet the Bush Administration took no action to prevent it. In the spring of 2002 I spent considerable time piecing together a September 11 timeline, mostly so I could get straight in my own head what the U.S. government had done to prevent terrorism in both the Clinton and Bush II administrations, and what warnings the Bush White House had received before September 11.

In 2002 Condi Rice protested that no one could have imagined that terrorists would use hijacked airplanes to carry out a strike on American soil. But we learned since that a presidential daily brief of August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” not only explicitly said that, um, Osama bin Laden was determined to mount a terrorist strike in the U.S., the strike might involve a hijacked airplane and the strike would probably be carried out by bin Laden followers already in the U.S. The briefing even mentioned the World Trade Center and Washington. Yet the Bush Administration was weirdly unconcerned.

We got a reminder of the Bush Administration’s misplaced priorities this week when Robert Parry wrote for Consortium News (emphasis added):

… the documentary evidence is now clear that in summer 2001 – at the same time Bush’s National Security Council was ignoring warnings about an impending al-Qaeda terrorist attack – NSC adviser Condoleezza Rice was personally overseeing a government-wide task force to pressure India to give Enron as much as $2.3 billion.

Then, even after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when India’s cooperation in the “war on terror” was crucial, the Bush administration kept up its full-court press to get India to pay Enron for a white-elephant power plant that the company had built in Dabhol, India.

And last week Rory O’Connor and William Scott Malone wrote for AlterNet about “the 9/11 story that got away” — an anonymous White House source leaked top-secret NSA intelligence to reporter Judith Miller about a planned attack by al Qaeda on the United States. The story never got published.

In spite of attempts at investigation, there are vast gaps in our understanding of what happened on 9/11. The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission submitted a long list of questions to the commission, most of which are still not clearly answered, IMO. Along with a full account of why intelligence of an impending attack was, apparently, ignored, there are many unanswered questions about NORAD and exactly what Bush and Cheney were up to — Cheney in particular — on that day.

My 9/11 timeline was obliterated without notification to me by the web host, Tripod, along with the first 13 months or so of Mahablog posts. But I remember a number of other loose threads, such as interference by the White House with the investigation of the U.S.S. Cole bombing. And let us not forget the 28 pages about the Saudis that were redacted from a congressional report on 9/11.

There’s little chance we’re going to get those questions answered as long as the Bushies control the White House and Congress, but I’ve hoped that someday the truth would come out. However, I fear that there are people — well-meaning people for the most part — who are working very hard to destroy any chance of a full accounting in our lifetime.

I’m talking about the “inside job” theorists. I’ve noticed what seems to be increased interest in the notion that the World Trade Center towers collapsed from controlled detonation rather than from being struck by commercial airplanes. And the theorists are getting more aggressive. Last week I deleted several comments linking to implosion theory sites and banned a commenter who would not respect my request to stop posting that junk here. I’ve received snippy emails from people who accused me of being a Bush dupe because I don’t subscribe to the detonation theory. Clearly, large numbers of people are determined to believe that the Bush Administration planned and carried out the September 11 attacks.

There are too many variations of the detonation scenario drizzled around the web to address every point. I could be flip and point out that, given their track record, if the Bushies had been behind 9/11 the WTC towers would still be standing. But to me the clearest sign the detonation theories are wrong is that the scenarios inevitably ignore basic, irrefutable facts about the WTC towers and their collapse. The theorists are frantically passing along misinformation to each other and spinning further and further into the Twilight Zone.

For example, this page — which calls itself “Hard Science and the Collapse of the World Trade Center” — goes on at length about the “mysterious” collapse of Tower 7 without mentioning the fact that the building had not only suffered structural damage when Tower 1 collapsed (among other things, the collapse set off an earthquake in lower Manhattan that registered on seismographs miles away), but also that fires raged unchecked on several floors for seven hours before the building finally crumbled about 5:20 that afternoon. (The FDNY was, you might recall, either dead or busy elsewhere that day.)

A New York Times article of September 12, 2001 (James Glanz, “A DAY OF TERROR: THE BUILDINGS; Towers Believed to Be Safe Proved Vulnerable to an Intense Jet Fuel Fire, Experts Say“) quoted Brian McIntyre, chief operating officer of the structural engineering firm that worked out the original WTC design (Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire), who said that WTC 7 was ”basically designed to resist heat buildup for three hours.” Catastrophic damage after seven hours of uncontrolled fire didn’t seem that mysterious to Mr. McIntyre.

I spent a big chunk of the day in a car with two other people trying to get off Manhattan island. When I got home that afternoon I remember flipping on the television and hearing a news report that WTC 7 was burning and severely damaged, and was expected to collapse soon, which it did. No big surprise.

Yet according to the “hard science” report hailed by several commenters as an amazing breakthrough, WTC 7 just sat safe and happy, nice as you please, all day long, until “WTC7 mysteriously imploded and fell to the ground in an astounding 6.5 seconds.” No mention of the fire.

Now, recall, we’re supposed to believe that each floor of the building “pancaked” on the one below. Each of the 47 floors supposedly pancaked and collapsed, individually. Yet WTC7 reached the ground in 0.5 seconds longer than freefall. Is this really possible?

I don’t know if that’s possible, but Tower 7 didn’t fall that way, according to New York Times news stories. Towers 1 and 2 fell that way (I’ll get to them in a second), but I haven’t seen any accounts of Tower 7’s collapse that claim it fell that way. Nor could I confirm the author’s claim that the collapse took only 6.5 seconds. A couple of news stories estimated the collapse took about 40 seconds, although that wasn’t official. The “hard science” guy doesn’t say where he got his data. I have to assume he hauled it out of his butt.

About the alleged “implosion” of towers 1 and 2 — as regulars know I watched the towers from a high rise office building on West 17th St., from which I had a clear, straight-on view. As I watched it was obvious to me that both towers collapsed when the weight of the floors above the impact sites was no longer supported and crashed down on the floors below, setting off a domino effect that brought both towers to the ground. Later I read a number of engineering reports that confirmed what I saw with my own eyes.

I’m not sure how this makes me a Bush dupe, but I’m told it does. Instead of relying on my own eyes, I’m told I must look at fuzzy and possibly doctored web clips that “prove” the towers “imploded.”

But let’s talk about implosion for a minute. According to this “how stuff works” explanation:

The basic idea of explosive demolition is quite simple: If you remove the support structure of a building at a certain point, the section of the building above that point will fall down on the part of the building below that point. If this upper section is heavy enough, it will collide with the lower part with sufficient force to cause significant damage. The explosives are just the trigger for the demolition. It’s gravity that brings the building down.

That’s pretty much what happened to the towers, except that the trigger was a loss of structural integrity caused by several factors resulting from a commercial airliner loaded with jet fuel plowing into each tower. Read the engineering reports linked above or here for details.

The “How Stuff Works” article continues to explain that controlled demolitions require considerable pre-demolition prepping and rigging. The whole process takes several days. The demolition team has to remove walls and cram explosive material into bore holes at several points in the building.

People, there’s no way a demolition team could have rigged the WTC towers to implode without anyone noticing them. That’s even dumber than thinking you could take the Brooklyn Bridge apart with a blowtorch without getting caught. The WTC towers had heavy security 24/7, and no one could have waltzed into, say, the Cantor Fitzgerald offices and drilled holes in the wall without somebody saying, um, excuse me? And you are here, why? No way.

[Update: From “World Trade Center – Some Engineering Aspects” by Tim Wilkinson at the University of Sydney:

Implosion firstly requires a lot of explosives placed in strategic areas all around the building. When and how was this explosive placed in the building without anyone knowing about it. Second, implosion required more than just explosives. Demolition experts spend weeks inside a derelict building planning an event. Many of the beams are cut through by about 90% so that the explosion only has to break a small bit of steel. In this state the building is highly dangerous, and there is no way such a prepared building could still be running day to day like WTC was.

Details, details … ]

Other arguments — the “inside job” people will tell you there were detonations on the lower floors, and they know this because people have testified they heard explosions. Of course they heard explosions. When big chunks of airplane and building fall nearly a quarter mile and hit pavement, this makes a big BOOM. Duh.

The “inside job” people also like to point to pictures that show billowing “smoke” that looks like smoke from a detonation. What they see is the billowing dust of pulverized building material. (Remember the news clips of people running to escape dust clouds?) The white dust was everywhere in and around the financial district after 9/11. I saw people walking up 8th Avenue covered in white dust that day.

Most of all the various “studies” created by the “inside job” people nearly always fail to consider the unique structure of the WTC towers and instead compare them to collapses of more conventional steel-supported skyscrapers. They’ll say jet fuel wouldn’t have burned that long, forgetting that the towers were full of all kinds of combustible things — furniture, carpeting, lots and lots of paper. Etc. etc. No, they say, the only way those towers could have collapsed was from a controlled demolition. End of argument. (And they say I’m closed minded.)

I’ve been loathe to bring this up, because I know as soon as I post this the tin foil hat crowd will flock here and post insults in the comments as fast as they can keyboard (which I will delete as promptly as possible). Clearly, some people have an irrational but overwhelming psychological need to exonerate the plane hijackers. But I decided to post this just once so I can link to it in the future when the theorists demand why I am so stupid as to believe the “official story” of 9/11, whatever that is.

There’s no question the Bushies benefited from 9/11 and have exploited it shamelessly. And as I said in the early paragraphs, I have big questions about what the feds might have known before the tragedy and why the White House took no action to prevent the tragedy they must have at least suspected was coming. But whatever they knew or didn’t know, it’s plain as day that Bush was unprepared for the Real Thing. If he’d known what was going to happen that day, he would have done a better job pretending to be a hero. But he was stunned. And he spent most of the day flitting about North America before pulling himself together to go back to Washington.

I fear the “inside job” theorists are poisoning the well. By mixing nonsense with legitimate issues they may be making all questions about September 11 seem absurd and further inquiry less likely. And, people, that pisses me off. And that’s why this blog will not be used as a conduit for the “inside job” theories.

Update: See also this British “September 11 Conspiracy Theories” page and this article from Popular Mechanics.

46 thoughts on “Muddying Questions, Squandering Answers

  1. “My 9/11 timeline was obliterated without notification to me by the web host, Tripod, along with the first 13 months or so of Mahablog posts.”

    archive.org seems to have the bulk of mahablog posts from april 2003 through late 2004, which, I think, are all before the post calendar on your current site. If you recall the url for your 9/11 timeline, the wayback machine on archive.org may still have it.

    mahablog index pages on archive.org:
    http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.mahablog.com

  2. Thank you for this. Living near NY, it’s painful to hear these theories presented as fact on the local leftwing radio (that means Pacifica/WBAI, not NPR).

    “Principle of Least Conspiracy” applies here. (A corollary of the “Principle of Least Malevolence”.) – Don’t ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by sloth or incompetence or indifference. It’s a rather good heuristic.

  3. Absolutely spot on post. The Bush administration is the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, not SPECTRE. They covered up their own indifference and incompetence, not a vast conspiracy to bring down the Towers.

  4. OK, That was weird. In the middle of a long rant, suddenly the page refreshes by itself, deleting my entire comment. Strange.

    Condensed version: you’ll never convince these people. I’ve argued with them quite a bit and they will not be convinced, ever.

    The thing I’ve noticed that seemed interesting, in my time I’ve argued with 9/11 theorists, Holocaust deniers, Evolution deniers, JFK theorists, Moon Landing Hoaxists (no really, swear to god I have … only a few poor deluded souls, but they do exist) etc etc and so on. And they all use PRECISELY the same tactics, the EXACT same types of arguments … I think there’s just a certain mindset that lends itself to this kind of thing…

    Fer instance, ALWAYS focus on the smallest details possible, find little corners to chew on, never ever ever focus on the Big Picture, because the Big Picture is ludicrous … like, have long passionate arguments, complete with pictures and diagrams and formal proofs, about how there MUST have been thermite used in the building …without ever focusing large enough to realize that even if you were going to take down the trade centers, you would never use thermite to do it… And absolutely never focusing on the general ridulousness of the idea that the government managed to fly planes into the buildings and ALSO blow the buildings up, and then just for good measure, since taking down WTC 1 & 2 would never be good enough by itself, also take down a little known adjacent office building.

    Like … evolution has no intermediate fossils. Well what about this one and this one and this one? Oh, well, those aren’t really intermediate fossils, they’re, um, something else. There was no wreckage of a plane on the pentagon grounds? Well what about this picture and this picture and this picture showing wreckage of a plane on the pentagon grounds? Oh, um, that’s not really wreckage of a plane … see, looks more like missile parts! Or, um, something else….

    Very odd having the same arguments over and over again with different topics….

    -me

  5. Good for you, Maha! Reality is crazy enough without making stuff up.

    Our family was aware of bin Laden’s threat back in Clinton’s time. We were worried sick when Bush and Condi didn’t appear to take it seriously. The way the towers fell made total sense to us (two of us are engineering/science-oriented) and we’ve watched numerous credible documentaries – and these were NOT made by any government entities trying to cover it up, unless these fuzzy-brained folks think that PBS and NOVA, among others, were Bush dupes.

    Your last paragraph is one everyone should keep in mind before they post another thing.

  6. Ian – I think you’re right. There must be some psychological thing going on. (Maybe alyosha could weigh in on this.) Remember Chariots of the Gods? How about belief in the devil and witches? They do get fixated on a certain view of the world, no matter what the real world tells them. It’s almost like they can’t trust the real world.

  7. Very well put. Does anyone seriously think these people are competent enough to pull off what would be a massive conspiracy? I strongly doubt it.

  8. Thanks for the explanation of the WTC 7 collapse. I hadn’t heard of the earthquake and fire before this. Thanks also for pointing out the difference in timing in a controlled demolition and a building collapse fueled by gravity. As you pointed out, there is plenty to question in the official 9/11 explanation and chronology; insisting that the towers weren’t brought down by a pair of hijacked airliners only confuses the issue.

  9. I don’t know if you’re being completely fair here. After all, the thousands of gallons of diesel fuel that was being stored in 7 WTC to power emergency generators would have totally put out any normal fire when the tanks were breached.

  10. If you want to get really depressed, read the comments to William Arkin’s post on the same general topic on the WaPo. There really is a conspiracy pathology that has some people in its grips and, boy, it makes them nuttier than fruitcakes.

  11. Thank you so much for this valuable public service!

    Early on, I was inclined to give a lot more credit to 911 conspiracy theorists, but then I realised that they were all being pulled toward the Alan Jones/Prison Planet crowd, and that way madness lies. Add to that the possibility of even whackier theories (pods, anybody?) and we may be talking black psyops. All providing a great excuse to tar all 911 critics with the same “denial” brush.

    As you point out, the leaders in the White House couldn’t plan their way out of a wet paper bag.

  12. Good on you. While I think much theorizing helps us question Official Stories, which is what ‘Loose Change’ et.al. did for me, treating anything as holy writ based on lack of evidence is a poor means of critical thinking.

  13. After all, the thousands of gallons of diesel fuel that was being stored in 7 WTC to power emergency generators would have totally put out any normal fire when the tanks were breached.

    It isn’t clear they were breached before WTC7 collapsed, because the diesel fuel was stored under the building and the fires were on upper floors of the buildng. There were a number of fuel oil tanks, pumps, generators, etc. in other parts of the building according to the report produced by FEMA and the American Society of Civil Engineers (see Chapter 5), but I’ve avoided using that report as a reference because it’s too easy to dismiss anything FEMA says out of hand.

  14. I hadn’t heard of the earthquake and fire before this.

    And one would think that an earthquake and uncontrolled fire raging several hours would be relevant in determining why a building collapsed, wouldn’t one? Yet the “inside job” crew always seem to leave those details out.

  15. we may be talking black psyops

    If I were Karl Rove and if I wanted to be sure there were no further investigations into What Really Happened, spreading whackjob conspiracy theories to muddy the water would definitely be an option.

  16. Two [conspiracy-generating] problems deny closure on our understanding of 9/11: an administration which puts politics above facts to the point of fighting, then undermining the 9/11 commission inquiry……and insufficient whole-hearted public discourse on the questions which remain unanswered.

    The Bush team extracted maximum political benefit from 9/11, so are simply not interested in a full accounting, especially one which finds them asleep at the wheel in the summer of 2001.

  17. Excellant Job, Barbara. Before noon on 11 Sept 01 I reaized that Bush had a great re-election topic. Little did I suspect it was so much more than that.

  18. Don’t ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by sloth or incompetence or indifference.

    I like the variation that says “Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

    Much as this administration seems to have more than enough malice to go around, it makes a whole lot more sense to chalk 9/11 up to their phenomenal stupidity.

  19. I think the other Donna hit the nail on the head. You are going to have conspiracy theories when we are not allowed to have answers to our questions. Putting politics above facts as she stated. We all know there is a cover up, but most of us believe they are simply covering their asses and don’t want us to know how they ignored all the warnings and did nothing to prevent the attacks; others will believe it is more sinister. The conspiracy theorists do ask alot of questions that should have been answered and we know there is alot of evidence that the government does not need to classify so that we can not see or read it, but does to cover their asses.

    My husband is a believer in the conspiracy theories, he is an aircraft mechanic too. He has also worked a crash investigation. The reason he believes is because there are things that don’t fit with what he knows compared to the official version.

    One other thing, the fact that Bush was out of the loop doesn’t really mean much. I think he is out of the loop about many things, he isn’t governing, he’s just a figurehead who leaves everything up to Cheney and Rove. He’s only brought into the loop when the shit hits the fan or if he has to go to the public to sell their B.S. Just look at his total unawareness before, during, and after Katrina.

  20. I think the other Donna hit the nail on the head. You are going to have conspiracy theories when we are not allowed to have answers to our questions.

    I don’t mind conspiracy theories that take what facts we do have into account. Theories about detonations at the World Trade Center do not do this, however. Detonation scenarios are all based on cherry-picked evidence at best, if not pure misinformation. But outside of detonations at the WTC I’m willing to consider just about anything. .

    What concerns me is not that people come up with absurd theories — people can believe what they want to believe. My concern is the obvious psychopathology of the more rabid and aggressive “theorists” will cause legitimate questions to seem absurd, too. This will make it easier for the MSM to dismiss all of it as tin foil hat stuff, enabling Bush apologists to maintain a coverup.

    I know you can’t reason with crazy people, but I hope that by pointing out some of the bigger absurdities in the detonation theories it will help the rest of us stay focused on the legitimate questions.

  21. My comment was deleted, maha works for the jews.
    The Israeli firsters, the jews, oh the still suffering victims of WWII, are not allowed to have pulled off this scam of the American public, “anti-semitism” before the truth, right Maha? You make me sick, you flaky, fake, not against the bush administration zionist whore!

  22. Donna in WI, I have a relative who is a civil engineer. He does not espouse conspiracy themes, but he has quietly and worriedly said that ‘official versions’ fail to address a lot of questions which need to be asked and answered in order to assure safety of other buildings.

    I did not know, until he told me, that engineers wear a ring to remind themselves to be extraordinarily responsible in designing structures. The ring idea originated in Canada where new engineers were given rings made of metal from failed structures. Every time an engineer is sitting at a drafting board, he/she is to see that ring and be reminded of ‘answering all possible questions’.

  23. From the great distance where I live, both physically on the west coast and mostly unexposed to the various conspiracy theorists’ ideas, let alone an timeline of actual events, the detonation theories always seemed prima facie crackpot to me, no need to go into the details as you have done here. Of course I understand your reasons and exasperation for doing so.

    To see a full blown post about this subject, understandably near and dear to an eyewitness such as yourself, says a lot about the crazy times we live in. I read a couple years ago that half the people in NYC think “the government did it”, which, if the survey was accurate, accounts for a lot. Of course this is what you get when the government is unwilling to be honest with us.

    BushCo is not SPECTRE (ROFLMAO at that comical 007 allusion!), and as I mentioned the detonation theories seem implausible, but there are degrees of “letting things happen”. I’m not ready to buy the idea that these people were as passive and blindstruck as they claim. Bush looking stunned while it happened, is how any figurehead would react. He’s just the PR front guy. Of far more interest is what Cheney and others in the command structure were doing.

    Of much greater interest than the detonation theories, which as you point out, only add noise and distraction to the discussion, are the degrees in which BushCo helped or let the whole thing happen. You may not want to entertain this on your blog (that’s your right), but these are the questions that won’t go away, in my mind.

  24. I’m sure some editing has gone on, but yeah – I’m willing to believe there’s more than meets the eye.
    Full-scale orchestration of 9/11 presented too much risk for the simple acquisition of power. I could see certain wily folks watching the insider wind-vanes and making specific political, financial, military and devious decisions based on them.

  25. Donna 1, Donna 2,, and comment 21 from Maha (as well as the post) are right on!!….comment 23… seek help, please.

    I once met a person who bought into the demolition theory.. whole heartedly..I took the time to sit down and listen to what he said because I don’t believe we have all the facts nor do we know the whole truth..I found as many holes in the theory as I do in the bushco 911 story…and the person,so set on the idea this was truth had no facts to clean up the testy little questions..like the one already pointed out here..How would a entire demolition crew go undetected?…….about a week after the conversation this person called me and told me he had never”done the math” but that after our conversation he started to and saw that the theory didn’t add up …It turns out when they thought for themselves, based on what facts we have rather then cherry picked parts,they were able to form a more solid view.

    I think someone who knows about the mind (not me) might have the most to say about the “inside job”people…it could be that this group somehow KNOWS the story we are told is not true and MUST reach a conclusion about what happened.Some minds may NEED to wrap around a story…some minds may not be able to function in a state of unknown.Some minds cannot deal with the un settled nature of reality so they create their own(yes it sounds nuts but the mind is a nutty thing)…

    All I am saying is perhaps we should see the “inside job” folks for who they are.Perhaps their minds tick differently then ours.I think we can all agree something is wrong with the 911 story…how we choose to deal with the lie is where we fork in different directions.

    That said I don’t trust the persons who would call you names because you will not allow YOUR blog to be hijacked ….do they share a ULR with karl rove?This seems weird to me…

    How can we ever get to truth if certain people have already drawn conclusions absent facts?

    Lets honor the fallen from 911 please..lets seek truth, not create it.

    I don’t believe in a demolition theory..the facts are not on the stories side…..That said I don’t trust bush or his people.The man ate cake while people drown in NO…I don’t know if this is the case, but I have no doubt if bushco thought killing 3000 people would win them re election they would do it..Perhaps there is a market for conspiracy theorists because bush is a rotten jerk who can’t be trusted…

    Don’t dismiss bush as a bungling idiot…foolish mistake.Be clear, bush didn’t screw up after Katrina,, he doesn’t care….There is no error in Iraq..they knew there was no WMD before hand…they knew liberation was bullshit…they only said it to shut up the masses…Iraq is going fine, all they wanted was control of the oil…they don’t care about the people.. the people only get in the way…bush has carried out his agenda well …his agenda was to gain financial control over as much of the worlds resources as possible , using the US treasury to fund it..and business is booming!(the control is not for the USA, by the way, but rather for his big times pals and himself)….

    If anyone is stupid it is “we the people”….we grade his failures based on what he tells us our goals were,sure he failed to do what he told us…but his agenda is right on track….anyhow, thats how I see it….

  26. Bush and company facilitated the attack of 9/11 by their dereliction of duty… they didn’t give the threat of terrorism the attention it deserved. Contrary to Condi’s assertion of the attack not being a foreseeable event,all evidence thus far revealed shows that the only element missing in it’s visibility was the date. I remember thinking back on the first attack of the World Trade Center and shuttering to think how devastating it would have been had it successfully accomplished it goal. If you don’t succeed at first..try, try again?

  27. Upon reading Ian’s comments I learned I am I fit into the poor deluded soul section…..I never believed the moon landing story…but I have an excuse ….Around the time of the moon landing I learned santa wasn’t real so as a tiny kid I refused to believe in anything I could not see…my little tiny eyes tried as hard as I could to see men on the moon…LOL…the adult in me still can’t talk the kid in me into believing it….Although it wins me the award for deluded soul -lifetime achievement I am glad to have had the experience…I never again took what a person said as truth and I question everything ..I am a better deluded soul as a result.. 🙂

  28. Thanks for doing this. The crackpot nutbars with their insane theories about implosion (and how the Pentagon hit was also faked, don’t forget) make the whole left look like equally insane kooks if we don’t disown and refute them.

    Not to mention they infuriate me, which is just personal.

    I get really really mad when (the few) blogs link to such crackpottery.

  29. Well, sorry to be a fart in the church of this happy little blog, but I resent being considered a nutcase because I happen to believe that BushCheneyRumsfeld are not beyond involving themselves in a plot to take over the government. I’m not saying they planted explosives, but I am saying they had their own good reasons for looking the other way and letting happen what they knew was coming. Coups d’ etat don’t always require tanks in the streets, it seems to me.

  30. Well, sorry to be a fart in the church of this happy little blog, but I resent being considered a nutcase because I happen to believe that BushCheneyRumsfeld are not beyond involving themselves in a plot to take over the government.

    I’m sorry to interfere with your fart, but OF COURSE BushCheneyRumsfeld are involved in a plot to take over the government. That’s obvious. The entire Bush Administration is engaged in a slow-motion coup d’etat. If you were a regular reader you would know I blog about this frequently.

    It is also obvious that EITHER the Bushies deliberately looked the other way and allowed 9/11 to happen OR they are just colossally incompetent and had their heads shoved up their asses and allowed 9/11 to happen. Or a combination thereof. Either way, I want the truth to come out and laid before the American public as soon as possible.

    I believe I wrote the post clearly enough that any reader would understand I have big questions about what happened on 9/11. Learn to read more carefully next time, OK?

  31. I am glad you address this topic. It is important not to write off people who subscribe to this controlled demolition theory or other conspiracy theories as unredeemably stupid or nutty. They are simply making a mental error that all humans are prone to – seeing a pattern where non exists. I think Michael Shermer in his various “Why People Believe Weird Things” books does a good job of explaining this phenomenon.

    Our ability to see patterns is a fundamental aspect of consciousness. The world is a chaotic and frightening place. Depending on personality, personal situation, and no doubt many other variables, we all carry this ability too far. Seeing a pattern, even a false pattern, even a false pattern of evil, gives us relief by the comfort that perceived understanding and its presumed sense of control afford.

    But, I may be seeing a false pattern here…

  32. I’m a little late to the show here, but should you link to this post in the future… there was a PBS special that aired a couple of years ago about the physics of the WTC collapse, and, as an amateur architecture nerd, I think it’s important to point out that the WTC was unique in its construction and design, very unlike other notable skyscrapers. The PBS special interviewed the engineers that built the WTC, and they found logical reasons for the building to collapse the way we saw the collapse. (A lot to do with the internal structure of the buildings and the length of time all that jet fuel was burning.)

  33. Dear Maha,

    A few days ago you wrote a long post (2,218 words) related to “unanswered questions about September 11,” an event so important to you that it “triggered the birth of The Mahablog.” I’d like to point out some errors in your post.

    Your post starts from the position that no-one is more eager than you to get a full accounting of the events of 9/11. After reviewing various suspicious actions and statements by administration officials, you reference “a long list of questions to the commission, most of which are still not clearly answered, IMO.”

    You then express the earnest hope “that someday the truth [will] come out.”

    All well and good. You have a deserved reputation as a thinker and writer and I am one of the many Mahablog readers who admire and applaud your enthusiasm for rational analysis in pursuit of the truth.
    However, your next series of statements completely undermine that reputation. You write: “I fear that there are people … who are working very hard to destroy any chance of a full accounting in our lifetime. I’m talking about the “inside job” theorists.”

    You don’t explain how “inside job” theorists could impede a full accounting, but you do expand on your revulsion for the “tin foil hat crowd” by making the illogical and intellectually vapid assertion that they all harbor an “irrational but overwhelming psychological need to exonerate the plane hijackers.” Finally you nail your colors to the wrong mast with another unsupported assertion: “I fear the “inside job” theorists are poisoning the well. By mixing nonsense with legitimate issues they may be making all questions about September 11 seem absurd and further inquiry less likely. And, people, that pisses me off. And that’s why this blog will not be used as a conduit for the “inside job” theories.”

    Methinks thou dost protest too much. Let’s leave aside the science for the moment, which you say supports the jet fuel theory. What is most striking about your piece is the tone of aggrieved irritation. Why are you so upset by a hypothesis that runs counter to the official story? Is it because you have already made up your mind about the exact scope of the 9/11 plot and will not have your tidy assumptions disturbed? What are those assumptions? That government officials allowed the hijacking plot to unfold but did nothing to assist, other than go to extraordinary lengths to look the other way? That there was a conspiracy but only a small one? That the near complete absence of airplane parts from any of the crash sites fully supports the hijacking theory? That 19 hijackers could get on four planes unhindered but that a 20th missed his flight? That an event that pulverised 200 floors of concrete into fine dust nevertheless gave up an undamaged passport – for one of the hijackers?

    Given the enormous number of unanswered questions and unexplained coincidences, why are you so pissed off about the “inside job” theory? After all, the demolition theory – however unlikely a scenario you may think it is – answers many of the unanswered questions you profess to be interested in. Make a check list of known observable phenomena that match a controlled demolition and compare it with the predictable results of a fire in an office building (which do not include total collapse – ever).

    But you won’t do that because you have something to protect. What are you protecting? Your innocence? Your faith in government-sponsored accident investigations? Your belief in FEMA as a competent and appropriate investigative authority? Maybe you should make a list of your assumptions and cross check them with the supporting evidence.

    Your confusion is understandable, if not admirable. Most people will believe anything. What people believe often has more to do with cultural norms than with unassailable facts. Given a superficially reasonable and popular cover story, most people will go along. Only when the cover story has too many holes in it will a significant number of people amend their previous convictions. For an example, look at the long and tangled process whereby most Americans have come to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman.

    I’m not accusing you of criminal behavior, or even of being a dupe. However, I am accusing you of sloppy thinking and an overly protective attitude to the rules of discussion on your blog. You, of all people, should be sensitive to the possibility that you have been fed disinformation. You, of all people, should be open to a rational discussion of non-official accounts of the events of 9/11. You, of all people, should be prepared to accept and evaluate ideas that challenge your worldview.

    I’m disappointed. I mistook you for someone smarter.

    I think that’s the gist of my main complaint. If you’ve read this far, you may want to learn more about errors of fact in your original post.

    You make the sweeping statement that “the clearest sign the detonation theories are wrong is that the scenarios inevitably ignore basic, irrefutable facts about the WTC towers and their collapse.”

    What are these irrefutable facts? You explain that “the “inside job” people nearly always fail to consider the unique structure of the WTC towers and instead compare them to collapses of more conventional steel-supported skyscrapers.” What was unique about the structure of the WTC towers? Oh yes, it was something about the lattice work that supported the concrete floors, and shoddy construction, and it was all explained in The New York Times, which you can always rely on for accurate, spin-free reporting. And the FEMA report, written by volunteers with no significant engineering or forensic qualifications, told the same story. As did the NIST report. All accounts make more or less the same claim and all work backwards from the same premise: that a kerosene and office materials fire can soften structural steel to the point that it spontaneously disintegrates into neatly cut sections. Of course, there is no physical evidence to support this cockamamie theory because all of the steel was removed from the crime scene under extraordinary security.

    And what comparison with the “collapses of more conventional steel-supported skyscrapers” are you thinking about? Do you know of any other skyscraper collapses due to fire? Do tell.

    You really need to get past the jet fuel distraction. Kerosene doesn’t produce enough heat to melt steel under any circumstances and the videos show that it had all burnt off or evaporated after about fifteen minutes. After that the only materials burning in WTC 1 and 2 would have been “all kinds of combustible things — furniture, carpeting, lots and lots of paper. Etc. etc.” So the implication here is that any New York firefighter who enters a burning office building is on a suicide mission – after all, the furniture and carpet and paper may generate heat sufficient to “melt” the structural steel, causing a total collapse of the building (into its own footprint, no less, at least based on the record of the only three buildings known to have collapsed in this manner – WTC 1, 2 and 7.)

    The only reason the jet fuel theory has been accepted by you and others is that it sounds initially reasonable. Big fireball, lots of smoke, must have been really hot, don’t bother me with the physics. Like you, many people who saw that building 7 had collapsed said to themselves, “OK, right, it had some fires going on. Must have fallen down like the other two towers, on account of the fires and all.”

    This is rubbish. Yes, there are sites and reports that push the jet fuel theory. But none of them rely on science, only conjecture. And there are as many sites and scientific experts who can and do refute the official story. Once you accept that the jet fuel story is a smokescreen, the only logical alternative is controlled demolition.

    You have fallen into the trap you accuse others of – you believe an incredible story because it seems plausible and came from a credible source. And, in true wingnut fashion, you deride and discredit any account that differs from your own preferred view.

    Let’s move on to another error. You say that “it was obvious to me that both towers collapsed when the weight of the floors above the impact sites was no longer supported and crashed down on the floors below.” That is a reasonable observation, but it does not answer the question of why the floors were no longer supported. To uncritically embrace the “jet fuel” theory and ignore other theories that hew closer to established scientific facts is just being irrational and self-important. And, as you well know, just because you saw it happen doesn’t mean your perceptions are correct.

    Similarly, you selectively address the assertion that “[the] “inside job” people also like to point to pictures that show billowing “smoke” that looks like smoke from a detonation. What they see is the billowing dust of pulverized building material.”

    You are confused or being ingenuous. No-one claims that the dust cloud was the tell-tale sign of explosions – the tell-tale signs are the “squibs” seen in the videos. As you say, most of the dust cloud was made up of pulverized building materials. But what pulverized them? And what caused a dust cloud so large and fast-moving that to produce it would consume more kinetic and thermal energy than was available? You will not find any credible claim that one or more falling concrete slabs provides sufficient energy to not only collapse a steel-frame building but to pulverize the contents into a fine powder.

    Finally, I think you will come to regret this statement: “I decided to post this just once so I can link to it in the future when the theorists demand why I am so stupid as to believe the “official story” of 9/11, whatever that is.”

    Well, I don’t expect you to post this as you’ve made your exclusionary policy clear. But I’d be interested in hearing your excuse for your intemperate and unfocused rant. If you can defend it, go ahead. If not, admit as much.

    Yours,

    Chris Michie
    [email protected]

  34. Dear Chris Michie: Learn to read. Every statement you challenged is explained and/or documented through links in the post. There is nothing to defend.

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  36. This post was very helpful to me. I should always keep in mind the “incompetence more likely than conspiracy” rule. Particularly with this administration. You’re also right that Bush and Cheney were NOT prepared for this. We know what it is like when Bush IS prepared because he gives answers like the one last week about “mistakes he had made.”

  37. I recently discovered your writing through your incredibly insightful post at Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory. I was excited to read your blog and even more excited to see apost about my own favorite waste of time, 9/11 research.

    First, let me start by saying I have no idea exactly what happened on September 11, 2001.

    I believe strongly from the evidence available, several things:

    Hijackers flew planes into the WTC towers, the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville.

    I have incredible problems with the logistics of how three large and busy buildings in downtown Manhattan could be rigged for demolition.

    I will give the benefit of doubt about the Twin Towers. No structure in history has ever been subjected to the kinetic energy and stress of being hit by modern airliners and then the resulting fires.

    But you make, for someone of your intelligence a startling admission about the collapse of WTC 7: “Nor could I confirm the author’s claim that the collapse took 6.5 seconds”
    Ummm…undoctored video clips of the collapse show that, uh yeah it took 6.5 seconds. Unless of course you consider clips from CNN, ABC, and CBS news to be doctored that is. Do yourself a huge favor and find those. Then compare them to any clip or still photo of a controlled demolition. That building, which footage shows, had fires burning on two seperate floors, not “several” floors, fell straight down with no resistance whatsover. Something that has never happened before in a high rise fire. Initially the folks from FEMA were stumped, then after months of investigations without the benefit of the material from WTC 7 that had been sold as scrap within 48 hours, they decided that the damage from the collapse of the The South Tower must have caused more damage than they originally supposed. How scientific of them.

    So you’re telling us that you are willing to totally discount the fact that WTC 7 was demolished in a controlled implosion yet you’ve never bothered to look at the footage of it’s collapse ?

    And here you talk about being angered by people muddying the waters of this investigation. How dare you.

    I have no doubt that I will be one for the “twit filter” since I question how you could come to your conclusions without even looking at some of the most interesting and provocative evidence, the videos of the collapse of WTC 7 itself. That’s OK because I know you will have read it and that’s really all that matters.

    You are thoughtful and well-read on the subject of religion, but you have far too little knowlege of the actual facts of 9/11 to be writing about it or dismissing the claims of those people who actually have troubled themselves to look at the evidence.

    Too bad, you almost had a fan.

  38. But you make, for someone of your intelligence a startling admission about the collapse of WTC 7: “Nor could I confirm the author’s claim that the collapse took 6.5 seconds”
    Ummm…undoctored video clips of the collapse show that, uh yeah it took 6.5 seconds. Unless of course you consider clips from CNN, ABC, and CBS news to be doctored that is.

    First, I don’t believe the “hard science” guy said where he got the 6.5 seconds. Second, unless the video clips are three-dimensional I don’t see how they could absolutely prove how quickly the bulding fell. There may have been structural damage in a part of the building not seen on the video, such as inside the building or on the other side of it.

    I know from my own experience that some various video clips of the collapses of towers 1 and 2 are deceptive, compared to what the collapses looked like with the naked eye. I believe at least some of the “detonation” theories are based on visual distortions in the videotapes.

    In short, video clips alone don’t prove anything, and I don’t see much point to looking at them.

    There are a number of independent structural engineering analyses of the collapses of towers 1 and 2, but there’s much less hard data anywhere on tower 7. People weren’t paying that much attention to it. However, given what verifiable facts we have — that WTC7 housed large quantities of oil and deisel fuel, that it burned for seven hours before it collapsed, and that other buildings all around it sustained considerable damage — the fact that it finally collapsed in the early evening of 9/11 just doesn’t seem a big mystery to me.

    The precise cause of death may never be known, but it’s undeniable that the patient was real sick.

    Regarding the timing — as I said, I haven’t found any independent analyses. The only detailed anlysis of the collapse of Tower 7 was the one prepared by FEMA and the American Society for Civil Engineers. I have not relied on this because, you know, it’s FEMA. But for what it’s worth, that analysis says the collapse began at 5:20:33 p.m. and finished at 5:21:10 pm. The collapse began when two mechanical penthouses at the roof on the east and west sides crumbled, it says, and it took about 35 seconds for the penthouses to disappear completely. This suggests that the inside of the buildings had already collapsed, which is not something that would have showed up on a video clip. Once the penthouses had disappeared it took only a couple of seconds for the rest of the building to go.

    I’m not saying that FEMA’s account must be absolute truth, but there’s nothing about it that seems fantastical, and you need more than a video clip, doctored or not, to disprove it.

    Too bad, you almost had a fan.

    Too bad, you almost had an argument.

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  41. If the earthquake was so severe, why were no other lower Manhattan buildings collapsing like WTC7? There are numerous masonry and brick buildings that would have higher risk of collapse than a steel structure. Why did Bush and Co. (1) Not want an investigation (2) Try to appoint Kissinger to head it when forced to anyway (3) do nothing in the way of prevention in August.

    Why has not one accomplice ever been identified or arrested who may have helped the ‘hijackers’? How did Atta and his bunch get located in little Venice, Florida? Why did not one hijacked plane enter the hijack code on their transponders?

    If the case for controlled demolition is admitedly doubtful, the question of qui bono has to arise as to whether the ‘conspirators’ who did cause the planes to fly into the buildings were in caves in Afghanistan, or here in this country with a sinister agenda.

  42. If the earthquake was so severe, why were no other lower Manhattan buildings collapsing like WTC7?

    It wasn’t that severe; it was just one of several factors that, put together, could have resulted in damage to buildings. Several buildings in the area other than WTC towers were severely damaged and a few condemned. At least one of the all-but-demolished buildings, the Deutsche Bank building, was a steel-construction skyscraper. If you walked around the financial district in the weeks after 9/11 you could see structural damage to many buildings in a several square block area. Buildings all around where WTC 7 was were seriously messed up. The point is that the “controlled demolition” people seem to think that WTC 7 was untouched and unaffected until, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, it collapsed. That’s not what happened.

    As for the rest of your questions, many are excellent questions (although you lost me on the “hijack code”; my understanding is that the hijackers turned the planes’ transponders off). Also, I think you are underestimating the ability of those people in “caves in Afghanistan.” Al Qaeda has shown itself to be capable of clever use of technology and sophisticated, coordinate attacks. They aren’t primitives. But I’m open to considering many possibilities, which you would have known had you read my post.

    I think the most likely reason the Bushies didn’t want 9/11 investigated is that they were given all kinds of warnings something massive was about to happen, but they took no action to stop it. I am willing to consider that this was deliberate, not just incompetence. However, the Bushies couldn’t possibly have pulled this off. These people can’t find their own butts with both hands. I’ll bet on guys in caves in Afghanistan to have been the planners, any day.

    The only other part of the 9/11 “conspiracy theories” I think is insane is the “controlled demolition” theory. Other than that, there are a great many questions about 9/11 that still need answering.

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