9-11/anomalies

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9/11: anomalies

Overview

A number of irregularities have been pointed out regarding the events of the 9/11 attacks, mainly along the lines of objections to the official story as given by the 9/11 Commission. Unfortunately, although many of these are reasonable, a number of very unlikely scenarios have also been suggested and widely circulated, causing many people to overlook the more reasonable objections to the official story or even to believe that those unlikely scenarios are the only objections to the official story.

There are also many reports of pre-9/11 warnings which were, one way or another, not acted upon in any useful way. Whether or not this is the result of honest error, the fact that this happened does not seem to have been investigated; a reasonable expectation would be that there would be a significant amount of recrimination and political infighting over the assignment of blame for these errors, but there does not appear to have been any. This in itself is highly suspicious.

At this point, the basic facts are not yet clear or complete enough to begin trying to piece together any kind of coherent picture of what, if any, common cause (e.g. conspiracies) might be behind the various irregularities; once each item has been more thoroughly investigated and can reasonably be judged as either "reasonable" or "dismissable", we can start trying to piece together a larger picture.

The Latest

• 9/11 anomalies/2007-04-04 new articles has links to some articles with possibly-new information.

The List

Note: One good litmus test for classifying an anomaly as an objection, as opposed to circumstantial evidence, is the presence of a clear contradiction between what someone (including official reports) says or does versus what they should have said or done given the information available. The objection does not have to explain the discrepancy (in order to be valid); it merely seeks an explanation.

Reasonable Objections

• The majority of objections center around collapse-related anomalies, as well as the fact that WTC7 collapsed at all despite apparently sustaining only minor damage
• Pentagon-related anomalies (see [1]):
  • Intense suppression of evidence (especially 3rd-party videos) which might have resolved many questions and allowed inquiry to focus on real issues
  • Odd patterns of activity afterwards (men in office suits moving around debris)
  • Inconsistency between the known piloting skills of the alleged pilot and the apparently difficult maneuver required to turn around and hit the far side of the building from the direction the plane was traveling
  • Why didn't the plane just hit the nearer side of the building? Perhaps this is easily explained, but haven't seen any explanations yet.
• Discrepancies regarding the identification of the hijackers [2]
  • The amazing coincidence that the passports of two hijackers somehow escaped the fireball when AA11 crashed into WTC1, and the lack of any specific information about how they were found [3] (How many other passengers' passports were found? Where may images of the passports be viewed online, so as to answer a number of questions about how they were used?)
• The fact that George W. Bush remained in a widely-known vulnerable location for the better part of an hour after being told that "America's under attack".
• The substantial number of people who have come forward with evidence that there was foreknowledge of the attacks, and the apparent lack of investigation into these leads [4]
• The seemingly unnecessary levels of secrecy surrounding information which should be available (future article: 9/11 information concealment) Why were the families of UA93 victims not allowed to make copies of or take notes on what they heard? [5] Why have officials not offered any plausible reason for these restrictions?
  • Government Refuses to Release Communications From 9/11 Planes
• More questions here need follow-up work; perhaps a page listing all the questions and everything known in relation to the answers? A rather massive project...

Dismissable Theories and Points

• The Pentagon was not hit by AA77: theories include a truck bomb, a cruise missile, a smaller aircraft, and similar variations
• This video claims:
  • In the first impact, the initial flash is seen before the plane's shadow is visible on the building. (Actually, it looks to me like the shadow is visible; it just gets much clearer after the impact, when it is greatly thickened by smoke from the explosion.)
  • In the first impact, the initial flash is wider than the plane's fuselage. (Is there any reason to think that an impact flash would NOT be wider than the impacting object?)
  • In the second impact, "extra equipment" is visible on the plane's underside. (It's not clear to me that this is anything more than a trick of the light, though it would be nice to find a soon-before-9/11 photo of UA175 from the right-hand side to help figure out what this might be.)
  • In the second impact, the plane fires a missile at the building milliseconds before impact. (Wouldn't this be both extraordinarily difficult to arrange AND unnecessary? Again, though, a contemporaneous photo might help; what is that bright-shiny thing near the plane's nose, just before it hits, if it's not a missile? The video shows the same thing from 4 different angles; where are the originals of those videos so we can do the same frame-by-frame slow-down of the impact?)

Always remember, though:

The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.

— J. Edgar Hoover
(credit)

Further Investigation Needed

• "Third NYC Jet" theories [6] [7]: if true, is probably "circumstantial" at best, but still a loose end worth tying down. (Note that some "third jet" video clips show what seem to be birds, without further explanation; is this an attempt to discredit "3rd jet" theories, or just paranoia?)
• The alleged pilots of the aircraft in each case were abysmal at flying, based on the testimony of their flying instructors (rebuttal: the twin towers made an easy target; no significant skill required. I've seen rebuttals of this rebuttal elsewhere; must find sources.)
• Why did the man in the video of Osama bin Laden taking credit for the attacks look utterly unlike him (except superficially)? (Or was the video on Loose Change misdirection? Need to find actual videos. See wikipedia:Videos of Osama bin Laden.)
• There has been repeated mention of an unusually large number of "put" orders placed on American Airlines and United Airlines for the 3 weeks prior to 9/11, and no apparent official investigation. [8]
• Debris patterns and eyewitness accounts suggest UA93 was shot down, rather than the passengers seizing control and deliberately crashing it
• The debris from UA93 in Pennsylvania was curiously sparse; news reports [9] show only small bits of scattered debris, and one smoking hole. Where are the high-resolution photos and the accountings of all the debris found? (This may be addressed here; haven't had time to check.)
• Why were there reports that UA93 landed safely in Cleveland? What was the "threatened" plane that landed there, causing evacuation of the Cleveland airport? Are these reports false? Is Loose Change [10] the only source for these reports? (Where did this report get its video?) Is there any confirmation of the "small white plane" that Susan McIlwain reports flew very low over her moments before the crash? (Was she still in her car when she ducked? If not, why did she get out; if so, why did she duck? Potential answers are semi-obvious, but the questions need to be asked in order to reduce the informational search-space. Who filmed the video shown here? Clearly it was not filmed for YouTube, comments notwithstanding, but for a broadcast documentary ("IQ1"?).)
• The 'Stand-Down Order': "The shocking failure of the air defense system to protect New York City and the capital would seem to require either an incredible series of failures or an order to stop intercepts -- a stand-down order. Yet apparently there have been no cases of military officials disciplined for gross negligence surrounding 9/11/01, nor have there been publicized reports of commanders admitting to having received stand-down orders."
• Remote Control and the 9/11/01 Attack: "magining that teams of hijackers could successfully take over four jetliners then flawlessly fly three of them into relatively small targets, even though none had ever flown a jet, requires enormous leaps of faith. In contrast, robotically flying the jetliners into their targets could have been accomplished using the flight control computers that were standard equipment on the targeted planes."
  • One of the counter-arguments at 9-11 Research – "it fails to explain how the pilots were silenced without the help of another theory, since any flight recovery system would not block communications, and calls might be made using cell phones" – misses one possible scenario: there were hijackers, but they were stooges – told only to take over the plane, perhaps told that it would be landed safely somewhere. To do: check the Boeing specs, both these and these, to see if "Boeing documentation shows that in fact, the 757/767 flight computer has nearly all of the required capabilities as standard equipment, including guidance, communications, GPS navigation, and traffic control functions."

Circumstantial Evidence

There is already an alarming amount of circumstantial evidence seemingly connecting the leaders of the United States and with the events of 9/11 and giving strong indications that a significant number of people had pre-knowledge of some kind regarding the attacks, but this may yet turn out to be a coincidence; people who operate in powerful circles often turn out to have unusual connections with each other.

Nonetheless, in case it turns out to be significant later on, here is a collection of all the known circumstantial evidence:

• George W. Bush ignored a number of warnings about the imminent likelihood of terrorist attacks on US soil
• The administration has displayed a complete lack of interest in (indeed, antipathy toward [11]) resolving any of the noted irregularities
• On 2001-11-10, Bush addressed the UN, saying "Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists..." It seems odd that, almost 3 years before the 9/11 Commission released its official report determining what had happened, Bush would be so certain of the outcome of that investigation as to label any alternative theories as "malicious lies".
• Evidence from Ground Zero was rapidly hauled off and disposed of; comparatively little of it was retained for forensic examination (some obvious reasons for this suggest themselves, but we are not currently aware of any official explanation), leaving crucial questions unanswered which might otherwise have laid to rest (One official comment is here)
• suspicious financial transactions prior to 9/11: a huge number of "put" options were placed, days in advance, on both the airlines and various companies negatively impacted by the attacks; unusually large numbers of credit card transactions were processed by computers at the WTC in the minutes before the attacks.
• The impacted section of the Pentagon had just undergone an extensive refit to harden it against impact damage, and was not fully occupied
• George W. Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Center, Dulles Airport and United Airlines [12]
• George W. Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama bin Laden's brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz (link found here is now 404)
• George W. Bush's uncle (George H.W. Bush's brother) Jonathan Bush is CEO of Riggs Bank N.A. which was found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million [13] [W]
• US intelligence used Al Qaeda as an asset ([14] is somewhat murky) U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars Macedonian dailies see links between Albanian Rebels and bin Ladin
• more stuff here to list but I don't have time
• Although $100 million was allocated to investigate Bill Clinton (in which zero deaths were involved), only $14 million was allocated to investigate 9/11 (involving the deaths of over 2000 people and a monetary loss of far more than $14 million) – up from an initial budget of $3 million.
• Statements made by Bush (and recorded on video) contradict the official timeline. The contradictions certainly make one wonder what really did happen, but there don't seem to be any major implications either way (aside from being consistent with the "Bush planned 9/11" theory, in which case Bush's misremembrance could be a symptom of his having known in advance what was going to happen but certainly does not prove anything). It would be nice, however, if Bush would issue a statement clarifying what he meant and how it is consistent with the official report.

Links

Reference

• Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth: contends that WTC1 and WTC2 were also controlled demolition, as well as WTC7, and gives specific reasons
• Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice
• 9/11 Research
  • How They Get Away With It by Michael Green: some analysis of contradictions between evidence and official story leads to a discussion of other national traumatic events (Kennedy & MLK assassinations, Oklahoma City bombing, WTC 1993)
• 9-11 Review
• 9/11 Truth Movement
• Journal of 9/11 Studies: "a peer-reviewed, open-access, electronic-only journal covering the whole of research related to 9/11/2001. All content is freely available online."
• Physics911, a "Scientific Panel Investigating 9/11 (since June 9 2003)
• Scholars for 9/11 Truth
  • Respected Leaders and Families Launch 9/11 Truth Statement Demanding Deeper Investigation into the Events of 9/11
• Emperor's Clothes Articles on 9-11
• Cooperative Research apparently began as a timeline of 9/11-related events, but seems to have grown into a more general resource.

lists of people requesting an investigation

• 100 Professors Question 9/11 Commission Report
• Senior Military, Intelligence, and Government Officials Question 9/11 Commission Report

Opinion

• 2006-10-24 THE LOW POST: Murrah Redux by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone: "9/11 Truth is a bald regurgitation of a silly tale we heard ten years ago"
• 2006-09-14 The Path From 9/11 by Rory O'Connor, AlterNet
• 2006-09-12 THE LOW POST: Why Ask Why?: "Five years after 9/11, the question remains unanswered" by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Loose Change

Although the Loose Change documentary film raises some valid points, it also has its screws loose in many other ways and should not be taken as representing a summary of reasonable objections to the official story of 9/11.

• Wikipedia: includes some debunking
• Debunking the "Loose Change" Documentary at daylightatheism
• 9-11 Loose Change Second Edition Viewer Guide at ccdominoes
• 2006-09-26 THE LOW POST: I, Left Gatekeeper: "Why the "9/11 Truth" movement makes the "Left Behind" sci-fi series read like Shakespeare"

Criticism

• 2006-10-24 THE LOW POST: Murrah Redux by Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone: "9/11 Truth is a bald regurgitation of a silly tale we heard ten years ago"
• 2006-09-26 THE LOW POST: I, Left Gatekeeper: "Why the "9/11 Truth" movement makes the "Left Behind" sci-fi series read like Shakespeare"
• 2004-08-15 The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11 by Jeff Wells

Video

• 9/11: Press for Truth (official web site): contains a lot of specific information, once you get past the emotional appeals which tend to be heavier towards the beginning of the video. Spins an interesting connection between Mohammed Atta, the Pakistani IIS, and back to the US government.
• Penn & Teller on 9/11 conspiracies (this should be moved to 9/11 anomaly denial, and probably the criticism links above belong there as well)
• Italian documentary about the collapse of WTC7. Reiterates some of the old arguments, but includes some new details.

News

• 2001-09-12 Expert tells of inside help by David Kidwell, Miami Herald

Notes

Despite stereotypes, there was very little evidence of citizen panic -- even inside the burning buildings. where civilians broke into vending machines to get bottles of water and handed them to the firemen on their way up to extinguish the blaze. [15]