9/11 conspiracy theories

[5][6] Another prominent belief is that the Pentagon was hit by a missile launched by elements from inside the U.S. government,[7][8][9] or that hijacked planes were remotely controlled, or that a commercial airliner was allowed to do so via an effective stand-down of the American military.

One explanation is that the rise in popularity stemmed more from growing criticism of the Iraq War and the newly re-elected President George W. Bush than from any discovery of new or more compelling evidence or an improvement in the technical quality of the presentation of the theories.

[11] Knight Ridder news theorized that revelations that weapons of mass destruction did not exist in Iraq, the belated release of the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, and reports that NORAD had lied to the 9/11 Commission, may have fueled the conspiracy theories.

[68] —Allen M. Poteshman, The Journal of BusinessThis study was intended to address the "great deal of speculation about whether option market activity indicated that the terrorists or their associates had traded in the days leading up to September 11 on advance knowledge of the impending attacks.

[75]A common claim among conspiracy theorists is that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) issued a stand down order or deliberately scrambled fighters late to allow the hijacked airplanes to reach their targets without interference.

However, NORAD was awaiting authorization to shoot it down, a decision that was ultimately obviated by the extraordinary bravery of the passengers who stormed the cockpit, leading to the plane's crash in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

[86] The collapse of the World Trade Center's North and South Towers was attributed by official investigations, including those conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to structural damage caused by the plane impacts and subsequent fires.

Demolition theory proponents, such as physicist Steven E. Jones, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin, argue that the aircraft impacts and subsequent fires were insufficient to explain the catastrophic collapses of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7.

The article by Harrit et al. contained no formal scientific rebuttal at the time of publication, but the editor-in-chief of the Open Chemical Physics Journal later resigned, adding to the controversy surrounding the study.

[95] Dave Thomas of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, noting that the residue in question was claimed to be thermotic because of its iron oxide and aluminum composition, pointed out that these substances are found in many items common to the towers.

Thomas said that in order to cut through a vertical steel beam, special high-temperature containment must be added to prevent the molten iron from dropping down, and that the thermite reaction is too slow for it to be practically used in building demolition.

[44] NIST reported that a simulation model based on the simple assumption that combustible vapors burned immediately upon mixing with the incoming air showed that "at any given location, the duration of gas temperatures near 1,000 °C was about 15 to 20 minutes.

"[104][105][106] In response to the conspiracy theorists' claim of a missile hitting the Pentagon, Mete Sozen, a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University argues that: "A crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building.

[118][119][120] The pressure group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request on December 15, 2004, to force the government to release video recordings from the Sheraton National Hotel, the Nexcomm/Citgo gas station, Pentagon security cameras and the Virginia Department of Transportation.

[134] Valencia McClatchey, a local woman who took the only photograph of the mushroom cloud from the impact of Flight 93 seconds after it hit the ground, says she has been harassed over the telephone and in person by conspiracy theorists, who claim she faked the photo.

[157] British investigative journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan claimed in their 2011 book The Eleventh Day that the Saudi Royal Family provided material and financial support to the hijackers and that the Bush Administration covered this up as well as their own alleged incompetence.

Time called the public assassination of Kennedy a "private, intimate affair" when compared with the attack on the World Trade Center, which was witnessed by millions of people and documented by hundreds of videographers; and said, "there is no event so plain and clear that a determined human being can't find ambiguity in it.

Prominent adherents of the movement include, among others, radio talk show host Alex Jones, theologian David Ray Griffin, physicist Steven E. Jones, software engineer Jim Hoffman, architect Richard Gage (of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth), film producer Dylan Avery, former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives Cynthia McKinney,[189][190] actors Daniel Sunjata, Ed Asner, and Charlie Sheen, political science professor Joseph Diaferia and journalist Thierry Meyssan.

These three groups are:[207] While discussion and coverage of these theories is mainly confined to Internet pages, books, documentary films, and conversation, a number of mainstream news outlets around the world have covered the issue.

The Norwegian version of the July 2006 Le Monde diplomatique sparked interest when they ran, on their own initiative, a three-page main story on the 9/11 attacks and summarized the various types of 9/11 conspiracy theories (which were not specifically endorsed by the newspaper, only recensed).

[211][212] An article in the September 11, 2006, edition of Time magazine comments that the major 9/11 conspiracy theories "depend on circumstantial evidence, facts without analysis or documentation, quotes taken out of context and the scattered testimony of traumatized eyewitnesses", and enjoy continued popularity because "the idea that there is a malevolent controlling force orchestrating global events is, in a perverse way, comforting".

"[213] Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph published an article titled "The CIA couldn't have organised this ..." which said "The same people who are making a mess of Iraq were never so clever or devious that they could stage a complex assault on two narrow towers of steel and glass" and "if there is a nefarious plot in all this bad planning, it is one improvised by a confederacy of dunces".

[237] Andrew Napolitano, a legal analyst for Fox News and former judge at the New Jersey Superior Court, voiced support for skepticism about the collapse of the high-rise building, and for Rivera investigating the event.

[250] Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein co-authored a 2009 paper which used members of the 9/11 Truth movement and others as examples of people who suffer from "crippled epistemologies", to public trust and the political system.

Rick Bell, the director of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York chapter, who was a witness to the 9/11 attacks, said that "no amount of money" would persuade him to allow the group to talk at his headquarters and said that Gage lacks credibility among the professional community.

[253] U.S. representative Peter T. King, chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee, said 9/11 conspiracy theorists "trivialize" the "most tragic event to affect the United States" and that "[p]eople making these claims are disgraceful, and they should be ashamed of themselves".

[261] In 2008, calls for the resignation of Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories for the United Nations, were partially based on his support investigating the validity of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

[263] In February 2009, Aymeric Chauprade, a professor of geopolitics at CID military college in Paris, was fired by French Defence Minister Hervé Morin for writing a book entitled Chronicle of the Clash of Civilizations that espoused 9/11 conspiracy theories.

[264] In September 2009, Van Jones, an adviser to US President Barack Obama, resigned after his signature on a 2004 petition calling for an investigation into whether government officials deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur and other controversial statements came to light drawing criticism.

According to an international poll that same year, huge majorities in Muslim countries prefer to believe baseless conspiracy theories rather than listen to the mainstream facts of what happened on September 11, 2001, in New York City and Washington.