IMAGINE, for a moment that the awful terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were in fact a conspiracy. That they were an inside job.
Imagine that the Twin Towers were detonated rather than just fell. Imagine that the Twin Towers had been deliberately wired up for destruction and collapsed from the top down, even though buildings wired for demolition always collapse from the bottom.
Now imagine the legions of people who would’ve had to spend months, completely undetected, concealing tonnes of explosives in the two towers to generate enough explosive force to take down both buildings. Imagine those people performing this sinister covert work despite the security and sniffer dogs which had been permanently stationed on site ever since the Trade Center truck bombing in 1993.
Keep imagining. Imagine that the plane which struck the Pentagon was, as some claim, a missile. Overlook the fact that a hijacked civilian aircraft, which was clearly visible on the radar at the Pentagon, completely disappeared off the radar right at the moment the Pentagon was impacted by the ‘missile’.
Imagine these and many other incredible acts of stealth and coincidence. And now consider this. That no American, in 14 years, has ever come forward to admit it. That not a single one of the tens of thousands of people required to orchestrate the greatest attack on American soil has ever felt guilty about it, or been moved to speak for any reason.
Consider that not one of these people, not one, ever felt moved to spill the beans because they were broke and thought they could make money with a book or movie deal.
Ask yourself whether you truly believe that so many Americans would be evil enough, compliant enough, covert enough and efficient enough to pull an operation like this off without detection.
Or is it more likely, perhaps, that a small group of 19 men, trained and led by a well-funded international terrorist organisation, were better placed to organise the operation undetected.
Ask yourself that question, and then ask yourself this.
Did a man widely considered to be the least intelligent US president of all time really have the capacity to organise this? And if so, why? Plenty of previous US presidents had mobilised the military in the Middle East and beyond without murdering 2,973 of their own citizens.
Why concoct such a fiendishly intricate plot? To what end?
These are the questions conspiracy theorists won’t answer. Because they can’t. BecaAn insight into the mind of a 9/11 conspiracy believer
This is a story about 9/11 conspiracy believers. Its beginnings were two years ago, when I penned a really quick piece entitled “Six really stupid 9/11 conspiracies debunked in about six seconds”.
The tone of that piece was deliberately belligerent. I’d always thought few people seriously subscribed to such theories. Turns out I underestimated the passion of the 9/11 conspiracy theory believers. A good journalist understands his audience. On that day I failed that test.
But there’s a key test that the 9/11 conspiracy theory believers consistently fail too, and that is the test of common sense.
Allow me to illustrate this with the specific example of an Australian sportsman who is a 9/11 conspiracy believer. The sportsman in question won a major international event in the 2000s. You have probably heard of him.
On Monday, with the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks looming, I reached out to the sportsman. Here’s the first email I sent him, with one or two extremely minor details changed in order to protect his identity:
Me to him, politely:
Sportsman, my name’s Ant.
This week, I am preparing some stories for 9/11. As you clearly can see, I am not a believer in any of the 9/11 conspiracy theories, for a number of reasons.
But I’m interested this week in talking to those who do, and perhaps drawing out of them a coherent argument as to why they believe what they believe. Would you be interested in participating?
Please let me know. At the very least, I thought you might send me your number so we can at least chat about this in a civilised manner without trading insults.
How’s that sound?
Cheers - Ant Sharwood
Him to me, with venom:
I wonder if you actually believe the official story or you are simply not allowed to write what really happened. The mainstream media reward journalists like yourself that don’t step out of line.
I’ve never met a sane person that after seeing World Trade Center 7 just fall down still actually believe the official narrative. Yet you refer to people that think buildings don’t just fall down as ‘nutters’. Yet the building owner Larry Silverstein admits that they ‘pulled it’, you do know that?
Your only argument is that ‘conspiracy theorists’ are ‘stupid’. Great argument.
I’m certainly not interested in promoting anything you do. I’m especially not going to give you the chance to try make me out to be some sort crackpot.
84% of people are intelligent enough to figure out something is not right about 9/11. I guess the other 16% work for the corporate media.
I can only assume that you have not done your research because if you had you would be supporting the truth. Why else did they find thermite in the basement of the twin towers? You do know that right?
This person is looking for bodies, not evidence of the illuminati. Picture: Doug Kanter / AFP PHOTO Source: AFP
Well, I was a little annoyed by that response for several reasons, not least that Larry Silverstein was actually talking about pulling out the firemen from a bulding engulfed in flames to save their lives, not pulling down the building. So I fired back to Sportsman with a little attitude myself.
Me to him, with venom:
Sportsman, it is my opinion that you are wrong about 9/11. It is absolute undeniable fact that you are wrong about me.
I have never, ever, ever, ever maintained a line on any issue which my bosses, or anyone else, want me to write. There are countless examples of this in my back catalogue of stories which I invite you to peruse. It’s here.
So if you have me pencilled in as some thoughtless lackey bending to the narrative will of my superiors, you are so far off mark it’s not funny. We may disagree on 9/11 but my beliefs are founded on no lack of free thought.
Rather, I have processed the conspiracy information and rejected it. That’s not compliancy. In fact it’s the exact opposite. It’s the very free thinking you accuse me of lacking.
If you don’t want to put your case forward in the piece I’m writing later this week, that’s your prerogative and I respect it.
Cheers - Ant Sharwood
One of the most horrific and enduring 9/11 images was the people trapped in the upper levels of the twin towers. Many jumped. Some held hands while they did so. At least two hundred people are believed to have taken the fateful plunge. Many conspiracy believers argue their government did this to them. Source: Supplied
Sportsman then changed tack. He started playing the “my hyperlink is bigger than yours” game that all conspiracy believers love.
You know how it works. They send you the link to some video, any video, which features a ridiculously obtuse, incorrect factoid, and circulate it as evidence that they are doing real investigative thinking, thereby dismissing the non-believers as brainless, submissive ‘sheeple’.
Him to me:
Watch this short video about the Thermite debate.
You will notice at the bottom of it that if you go by the amount of “likes”and ‘dislikes you are right that 90% of people think one thing and 10% the opposite.
These are just cold hard facts, nothing about “Elvis leaving the building”.
You can run from the truth but you can’t hide, conspiracy believers. Picture: Doug Kanter / AFP PHOTO Source: AFP
The thermite argument is refuted so easily I won’t insult you with a hyperlink. But the interesting thing is that Sportsman thought the number of likes vs dislikes was a meaningful figure on a video whose audience would have been almost entirely conpsiracy believers. This I pointed out in my next correspondence.
Me to him, with venom:
Sportsman, that is a truly infantile argument. It’s like arguing that 90 per cent of fans of the sport you played enjoy watching that sport on television. Well of course they do. But what would the number be if you asked the entire population? The people who watch and believe videos like this, Sportsman, are a completely unrepresentative sample of the general population.
Therefore the number of likes on such a video are as predictably high as they are meaningless. These really are some unbelievably basic errors of logic you’re falling for here. I could go on, but won’t. Instead I suggest you read an article on the psychology of people who claim to know the truth. Try this one.
Him to me, still playing “my hyperlink is bigger than yours”
News flash. This was a plane. Yes, a plane, not a missile. Source: News Corp Australia
Now that link proved to be an interesting one. It led to a story with the headline: “Scientific Poll: 84% Reject Official 9/11 Story”.
Published in 2006, the story is on a website called prisonplanet.com and has the byline of Steve Watson and Alex Jones. Jones is a famously eccentric conspiracy theorist who said the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012 had “some of the telltale signs of an inside job”.
But the really interesting fact, as I tried to explain to Sportsman, was that the whole premise of the article he sent me was false.
Here’s what the real poll question was.
“When it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?”
In other words, it was a question about whether Bush was too complacent about terror threats before 9/11. Most people would answer yes to that. About 84% in fact. You could probably count me among them.
But the poll question as reported on prisonplanet.com was different. It read:
“Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Like a Mad magazine fold-in, the abbreviated question completely changed the picture. By falsely presenting the question thus, prisonplanet.com completely twisted the data, making the 84% figure apply to something it never really applied to.
This I tried to explain to Sportsman, without much luck.
Me to him:
Sportsman, again you have misinterpreted information. You may be a little shocked to learn that the full question in that poll was as follows:
“When it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?”
As you can see, this is a completely different question to the one you sent me. Absolute apples and oranges. The article you sent me took the 84% figure and applied it to a question of their own making. In short, they invented their own truth. Or should I say, their own falsification.
Imagine if someone pulled the same trick on you. Imagine if someone asked: “Do some people in your sport cheat? And imagine of 84% of people answered “yes” and I then twisted that to say that “84% of people believe that you cheated”.
It would be a blatant lie. But that lie would be repeated. Just like all those 9/11 conspiracy theories.
A final point. I must confess I found that whole article a little disturbing, in particular the paragraph that read:
“We have not taken the country back yet and the cabal that has taken control of the government continues to systematically use 9/11 and the war on terror as an excuse to destroy the Constitutional foundations of law and order in America.”
Sportsman, when you start getting into the territory of mythical organisations controlling the government like puppets, I’m afraid you instantly destroy even your flimsiest shreds of credibility. You’ve probably got yourself the makings of a decent Dan Brown novel, though.
Cheers.
The new memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for Flight 93 which went down in a field there. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images/AFP Source: AFP
Him to me:
Anthony,
We will just have to agree to disagree.
Regards,
Sportsman
Me to Him:
Perhaps it’s that stubbornness which made you such a fine athlete. I hope it serves you well in the rest of your life.
Cheers.
A WORD TO ALL YOU conspiracists out there, and others. I will personally be uploading your comments today in the interests of free speech, which we all hold dear. By all means debate the content of this article. But keep the tone civil or your comments go in the cyberbin. Cheers — Ant Sharwood.use no one can.
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