AN EXPLOSION OF DISBELIEF
- FRESH DOUBTS OVER 9/11 -
- From London Evening Standard
- London, Monday February 12, 2007
The official story of what happened on 9/11 never fails
to shock. Four American airliners are hijacked by Osama
Bin Laden's terrorists in an attack on the heart of the
Western world on September 11, 2001. 
Two are deliberately flown into New York's famous Twin Towers,
which collapse. A third rams into the United States defence headquarters
at the Pentagon, in Washington D.C.
The last goes down in rural Pennsylvania, 150 miles north of
the capital, after a tussle between the hijackers and some of
the passengers onboard, whose bravery was recently portrayed in
a Hollywood film, United 93.
Nearly 3,000 ordinary, decent Americans die in the attacks,
provoking the U.S. President George W. Bush to mount a global
war on terror, which leads to the invasion of Iraq, with Britain
in tow.
Or that's how the official story goes.
Yet today, more than five years on, this accepted version of
what happened on 9/11 is being challenged by a 90-minute internet
movie made for £1,500 on a cheap laptop by three young American
men. The film is so popular that up to 100 million viewers have
watched what is being dubbed the first internet blockbuster.
The movie was shown on television to 50 million people in 12
countries on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 last autumn. More than
100,000 DVDs have been sold and another 50,000 have been given
away. In Britain, 491,000 people have clicked on to Google Video
to watch it on their computers.
Called Loose Change, the film is a blitz of statistics, photographs
pinched from the web, eyewitness accounts and expert testimony,
all set to hip-hop music. And it is dramatically changing the
way people think about 9/11.
A recent poll by the respected New York Times revealed that
three out of four Americans now suspect the U.S. government of
not telling the truth about 9/11. This proportion has shot up
from a year ago, when half the population said they did not believe
the official story of an Al Qaeda attack.
The video claims the Bush administration was, at the very least,
criminally negligent in allowing the terrorist attacks to take
place. It also makes the startling claim that the U.S. government
might have been directly responsible for 9/11 and is now orchestrating
a cover-up.
Unsurprisingly, the film's allegations have been denied, even
roundly condemned, by White House sources and U.S. intelligence
services.
Only this week, the letters page of the Guardian newspaper was
full of discourse about Loose Change, which was made by a trio
of twentysomethings, including a failed film school student and
a disillusioned ex-soldier.
Indeed, the movie's assertions are being explored by a number
of commentators in America and Britain - including the former
Labour Cabinet Minister Michael Meacher - who are questioning
the official account of 9/11.
Mr Meacher, who last year proposed holding a screening of Loose
Change at the House of Commons (he later changed his mind), has
said of 9/11: "Never in modern history has an event of such cataclysmic
significance been shrouded in such mystery. Some of the key facts
remain unexplained on any plausible basis."
These words were written in a foreword for Professor David Ray
Griffin's bestselling book, The New Pearl Harbour (a pointed reference
to the conspiracy theory that President Roosevelt allowed the
Japanese to assault the U.S. fleet in 1941, in order to force
America into World War II).
Griffin, now nearing retirement, is emeritus professor at the
Claremont School of Theology in California and a respected philosopher.
While Loose Change is capturing the interest of internet devotees,
Professor Griffin's equally contentious theories are receiving
standing ovations in book clubs across the U.S.
Together, the book and the movie have raised the question: could
the attack be a carbon copy of Operation Northwoods, an aborted
plan by President Kennedy to stage terror attacks in America and
blame them on Communist Cuba as a pretext for a U.S. invasion
to overthrow Fidel Castro?
In other words, on a fateful September morning in 2001, did
America fabricate an outrage against civilians to fool the world
and provide a pretext for war on Al Qaeda and Iraq?
This, and other deeply disturbing questions, are now being furiously
debated on both sides of the Atlantic.
Why were no military aircraft scrambled in time to head off
the attacks? Was the collapse of the Twin Towers caused by a careful
use of explosives? How could a rookie pilot - as one of the terrorists
was - fly a Boeing 757 aircraft so precisely into the Pentagon?
And who made millions of dollars by accurately betting that shares
in United and American Airlines, owners of the four doomed aircraft,
were going to fall on 9/11 as they duly did?
An extremely high volume of bets on the price of shares dropping
were placed on these two airline companies, and only these two.
In the three days prior to the catastrophe, trade in their shares
went up 1,200 per cent.
Initially, like most people in America, Professor Griffin dismissed
claims the attacks could have been an inside job.
It was only a year later, when he was writing a special chapter
on American imperialism and 9/11 for his latest academic tome,
that the professor was sent a 'timeline' on the day's events based
entirely on newspaper and television accounts. It was then that
he changed his mind.
And one of the most puzzling anomalies that he studied was that
none of the hijacked planes was intercepted by fighter jets, even
though there was plenty of time to do so and it would have been
standard emergency procedure in response to a suspected terrorist
attack.
Indeed, it is mandatory procedure in the U.S. if there is any
suspicion of an air hijack. In the nine months before 9/11, the
procedure had been implemented 67 times in America.
Readers of The New Pearl Harbour and viewers of Loose Change
are reminded that it was 7.59am when American Airlines Flight
11 left Boston. Fifteen minutes later, at 8.14am, radio contact
between the pilot and air traffic control stopped suddenly, providing
the first indication that the plane might have been hijacked.
Flight 11 should have been immediately intercepted by fighter
pilots sent up from the nearby McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.
They could have made the journey to the World Trade Centre in
three minutes.
But, surprisingly, F-15 fighter jets were instead ordered out
of an airbase 180 miles away at Cape Cod. They appear to have
flown so slowly - at 700mph, instead of their top speed of 1,850mph
- that they did not arrive in time to stop the second attack,
on the South Tower of the World Trade Centre. They were 11 minutes
too late.
And this is not the only worrying question. Incredibly, the
attack on the Pentagon was not prevented either. The defence headquarters
was hit by the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 at 9.38am.
But fighter jets from Andrews Air Force Base, just ten miles from
Washington, weren't scrambled to intercept it.
Instead, jets were ordered from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia,
100 miles away. By the time they arrived, Flight 77 had already
hit the Pentagon.
So what of the fall of the Twin Towers?
The official version is that the buildings collapsed because
their steel columns were melted by the heat from the fuel fires
of the two crashed planes.
It is a mantra that has been repeated in White House briefings,
official inquiries into 9/11, leaks by the American intelligence
services and almost every TV documentary on the attack in the
U.S. and Britain.
But, according to the allegations of Loose Change (which are
endorsed by Professor Griffin), the science does not stand up.
Steel does not begin to melt until it reaches around 2,800 degrees
Fahrenheit, but open fires of jet fuel - such as those in the
Twin Towers inferno - cannot rise above 1,700 degrees.
Professor Griffin and the makers of Loose Change are convinced
the Twin Towers were deliberately blown up.
The film shows clip after clip of the towers coming down in
one fell swoop to loud and distinct booms. Were they the sound
of detonators being set off?
And the Pentagon attack? The hotly disputed theory of the film
and Professor Griffin is that a passenger plane never hit the
building at all.
The terrorist pilot, Hani Hanjour, was so slow to learn the
fundamentals at flight school that his tutors reported him to
the authorities for his incompetence five times.
How could he have guided the huge aircraft in such a complex
manoeuvre into the building? And if he did, what happened to the
aircraft?
The Loose Change narrator says: "The official explanation is
that the intense heat from the jet fuel vapourised the entire
plane. Indeed, from the pictures, it seems there was no discernible
trace of a fully loaded Boeing 757 at the crash scene.
"But if the fire was hot enough to incinerate a jumbo jet, then
how could investigators identify 184 out of 189 dead people found
at the defence headquarters?"
Intriguingly, the narrator adds: "The only visible damage to
the outer wall of the Pentagon is a single hole no more than 16ft
in diameter. But a Boeing 757 is 155ft long, 44ft high, has a
124ft wingspan and weighs almost 100 tons.
"Are we supposed to believe that it disappeared into this hole
without leaving any wreckage on the outside? Why is there no damage
from the wings or the vertical stabiliser or the engines which
would have slammed into the building?
"Remember how big the engines were," the film adds persuasively.
"If six tons of steel and titanium banged into the Pentagon
at 530mph, they would bury themselves inside the building, leaving
two very distinct imprints. And yet the only damage to the outer
wall is this single hole."
And what of the Boeing's 40ft high tail? "Did it obligingly
duck before entering the building?" asks Professor Griffin.
So if a commercial aircraft did not hit the building, what did?
The wildest of all the theories in Professor Griffin's writings
- echoed in Loose Change - is that the Pentagon was attacked by
a military missile of some kind. Certainly, several onlookers
quoted in the film claim that they saw a tiny aircraft piercing
the defence HQ.
Another witness says it made a shrill noise, quite unlike a
giant passenger plane.
So if it wasn't hijacked and flown by a terrorist into the Pentagon,
what happened to Flight 77, last heard of on its way to Ohio?
No one knows. But one thing is sure, asserts Professor Griffin.
Dick Cheney, the U.S. vice- President, and Condoleezza Rice, at
the time President Bush's national security adviser, were in the
White House bunker as the drama unfolded.
They, and their advisers, knew a hijacked aircraft was heading
towards Washington. The obvious target was the White House, not
the Pentagon. Yet Cheney and Rice were never evacuated from the
White House. Did someone in high places already know that they
were safe and that it was the Pentagon that was going to be the
target?
Of course, no account of 9/11 by the conspiracy lobby is complete
without a minute-by-minute observation of President Bush's behaviour.
He was hundreds of miles away in Florida, about to read a book
to primary school children when the worst terrorist attack of
the modern age happened.
The President reportedly showed little reaction when an aide
told him that the first plane had crashed into the Twin Towers.
Why not?
He, apparently, told the school's principal: "A commercial plane
has hit the World Trade Centre, but we're going ahead with the
reading thing anyway."
Then President Bush, who is also the commander-in-chief of the
American military, settled down to recite My Pet Goat to a group
of seven-year-olds.
He was interrupted a few minutes later by a whispered message
in his ear from an aide that a second aircraft had hit the Twin
Towers.
The President's face, captured by photographers at the school,
remained completely passive. He showed no sign of emotion.
Now it must have been obvious a terrorist maelstrom was being
unleashed on his country. But three days later, back in the American
capital, he was a different man. By now he was certain that Osama
Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda henchmen were to blame.
Surrounded by the Christian evangelist preacher Billy Graham,
a cardinal, a rabbi and an imam, the President delivered a sermon
in America's national cathedral in Washington.
The words he uttered are recounted by both Professor Griffin
and the makers of Loose Change.
President Bush announced: "Our responsibility to history is
already clear: to answer these attacks waged against us by stealth,
deceit and murder and rid the world of evil."
The scene had been swiftly set for the West's war on terror.
Loose Change
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501
London Evening Standard
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/home/
An
explosion of disbelief - fresh doubts over 9/11
